Logic Magazine, Issue 11: Care

by Ben Tarnoff (Editor), Moira Weigel (Editor)

Digital technologies tend to be depicted as steely or ethereal. A headless suit holds a giant computer chip. A bodiless hand holds a cell phone. A brain wired to a giant computer network bursts into rainbows of light. But technologies are not invulnerable—nor are the people who build and use them. The gig economy is not all Uber drivers—care workers are its fastest growing demographic.

This issue looks at technologies that are changing how we give and receive care—and the care that our machines themselves need.

260 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2020

About the author

Ben Tarnoff is a tech worker, writer, and co-founder of Logic Magazine. His most recent book is Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do—and How They Do It, co-authored with Moira Weigel. He has written for the New York Times, the Guardian, the New Republic, and Jacobin.

Reviews

[Rolin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stand out essays in this issues are:

"Informatics of the Oppressed" — very "michel-rolph trouillot"-esque approach to how power shapes the digital archive. presents fascinating histories of revolutionary cuban library systems and a network of "liberation theology" among S. American clergy interested in social justice

an interview with Sarah T Hamid on abolishing carceral technolgies

and "Built to Last" — a look at how power and gatekeeping is baked in computer languages. complex computer languages aren't necessarily better than simpler ones.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

this one didn't blow me out of the water like other issues, maybe because I read all the interviews first, and I don't find interviews as engaging as essays?
my favorite essays were...:
- computerized therapy one, which inspired me to get the author's visual novel game ELIZA!! it's so great
- cobol, and how people hated on it because it was easy to understand and made software engineering seem like a job that may not require as much skill as ya think
- how taiwan's single-payer healthscare system pwned Covid

[Kaleb Wulf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good magazine series I've been reading the past year. This issue has some pretty interesting articles about the tech infrastructure for the VA and record keeping in the Healthcare industry. The interview with the guy who essentially built the COBOL system for VA record keeping is actually pretty informative and the article about awful hospital campus design made me feel personally vindicated.

[Alexandre Coates · Rating 5 out of 5]

First edition of the magazine I've read, and was delighted by everything I read. From the insightful interview with an organizer in Amazon United to the standout article "Informatics of the Oppressed" - a fantastic piece on radical, empancipatory approaches to librarianship emerging from Cuba. A real insight into how information not only needs to be shared, but also produced. I still think about it regularly.