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The Promise of Access: Technology, Inequality, and the Political Economy of Hope
Why simple technologicalsolutions to complex social issues continue to appeal to politicians and professionals who should (and often do) know better.Why do we keep trying to solve poverty with technology? What makes us feel that we need to learn to code--or else? In The Promise of Access, Daniel Greene argues that the problem of poverty became a problem of technology in order to manage the contradictions of a changing economy.Greene shows how the digital divide emerged as a policy problem and why simple technological solutions to complex social issues continue toappeal to politicians and professionals who should (and often do) know better.Greene shows why it is so hard to get rid of the idea--which he terms the access doctrine--that the problem of poverty can be solved with the right tools and the right skills. This way of thinking is so ingrained that is adopted by organizations that fight poverty--which often refashion themselves toresemble technology startups. Drawing on years of fieldwork, Greene explores how this plays out in the real world, examining organizational change in technology startups, public libraries, and a charter school in Washington, DC. He finds that as the libraries and school pursue technological solutions, they win praise and funding but alsomarginalize and alienate the populations they serve. Greene calls for new political alliances that can change the terms on which we understand technology and fight poverty.Winner of the McGannon Book Award for the best book published in 2021 concerning media policy, activism, and social justice.
259 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 6, 2021
34 people are currently reading
1368 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 29, 2022
I am a Dan Greene stan I fear. 4.5/5 rounded up!
- for a book mostly about academic ethnographic fieldwork, this was pleasantly accessible and clearly written. For a book that touches on neoliberalism, Marxist social reproduction, Gramsci, etc., The Promise of Access is refreshingly grokkable
- Greene is adept in his deployment of thick description: rich descriptive ethnography is thoughtfully paired with theory, historical context, and political analysis
- Greene is broadly structural in his critique but always makes space for individual and collective agency. By and large all subjects in the book are treated with care and respct, without condescension. Greene is aware of his own class, race, and gender privilege and is clearly very intentional about his portrayal and verbiage.
Read this for Reboot fellowship!
- for a book mostly about academic ethnographic fieldwork, this was pleasantly accessible and clearly written. For a book that touches on neoliberalism, Marxist social reproduction, Gramsci, etc., The Promise of Access is refreshingly grokkable
- Greene is adept in his deployment of thick description: rich descriptive ethnography is thoughtfully paired with theory, historical context, and political analysis
- Greene is broadly structural in his critique but always makes space for individual and collective agency. By and large all subjects in the book are treated with care and respct, without condescension. Greene is aware of his own class, race, and gender privilege and is clearly very intentional about his portrayal and verbiage.
Read this for Reboot fellowship!
February 19, 2025
Daniel Greene conducted what he calls "field research", which he incorporates into his book in 3 separate chapters detailing a start up, a library, and a charter school. By coincidence, these locations parallel many aspects of my own life of privilege and I have many personal experiences reaping the benefits of these "bootstrapped" institutions to a massive positive impact in my life/career. So reading this book hit close to home to say the least. But first, a note on form: These "micro studies" are sandwiched between exposition and then conclusion. I found both the exposition (ie the historical context Greene decided to include and his analysis of it) and the expounding of his theory from the field work very compelling. However, during the 3 field work chapters, I was incredibly disengaged (in fact, reading it was actually guaranteed to put me to sleep, even at 8:30 in the morning). This is likely a personal preference on my part. I find that I don't like when authors adopt a "day in the life" approach or get into minute details for chapters at a time. I thought when Greene was expounding his theory and supplementing that section with his case studies, he was able to provide a much stronger argument. I don't disagree that his field work adds a valuable aspect to his argument, I just disagree with the format and dissemination of his findings in the structure of this book.
Greene provides his audience with an important understanding of dangers of using "venture" funding models and applying start up expectations upon schools and our educational system. No matter how compelling the ethos of innovation in education, he deftly points out the severe limitations of this approach. Perhaps the most dystopian example of this phenomena is the use of Salesforce in the charter school profiled in this book. Save the children from Salesforce!!! In an era where the wealthy have an increased share of influence over the public sphere, forcing schools to capitulate to the educational policy whims of the ultra rich (cough, Bill Gates) then re-adjust or fail when those same ultra rich donors tire or change their minds is a prescient observation of life in 2025. If the tech billionaires can get everyone to willingly teach themselves to code, thereby increasing the pool of the labor market competing for jobs at their companies, they can effectively reduce worker power at inception- and we all willingly play into this. If everyone can code, or if everyone is "technical", then no one is. The tech elite will no longer need to compete via high wages to attract talent. They have built a talent pipeline to come to them by forcing the start-up-ification of schools and libraries.
Greene provides his audience with an important understanding of dangers of using "venture" funding models and applying start up expectations upon schools and our educational system. No matter how compelling the ethos of innovation in education, he deftly points out the severe limitations of this approach. Perhaps the most dystopian example of this phenomena is the use of Salesforce in the charter school profiled in this book. Save the children from Salesforce!!! In an era where the wealthy have an increased share of influence over the public sphere, forcing schools to capitulate to the educational policy whims of the ultra rich (cough, Bill Gates) then re-adjust or fail when those same ultra rich donors tire or change their minds is a prescient observation of life in 2025. If the tech billionaires can get everyone to willingly teach themselves to code, thereby increasing the pool of the labor market competing for jobs at their companies, they can effectively reduce worker power at inception- and we all willingly play into this. If everyone can code, or if everyone is "technical", then no one is. The tech elite will no longer need to compete via high wages to attract talent. They have built a talent pipeline to come to them by forcing the start-up-ification of schools and libraries.
September 26, 2025
Based on a case study on the gentrification of DC, an in-depth analysis of what the expectation of "bootstrapping" does to a community. Kind of a logical companion to The Good University which I'm reading now - endless needs to innovate mean less longevity of community and fractured relationships between services and customer, students and teachers, librarians and library patrons etc. It was pretty dense tho
May 19, 2024
It is a fascinating text that analyzes the access doctrine as a mode of social reproduction. My favorite is the chapter in which Greene goes in-depth about the origins of the access doctrine within the neoliberal years of Clinton-Gore. This book is also essential for understanding the modern debates on artificial intelligence as it is also painted as a crucial step for countries in “the new economy.”
Read
October 11, 2021Although it's as important as understanding how technocrats got stimulated that influence policy making, we could perhaps drill into the neuro-endocrinological mechanism that guide technophile stimulation, which can also be "low-tech" design
February 12, 2025
The actual content of this book: 🤌🏻chef’s kiss🤌🏻
The readability of this book: 🫤meh🫤
The readability of this book: 🫤meh🫤
Want to read
May 4, 2025Recomendado en https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.co...
July 21, 2024
🔖 p174 The access doctrine made it seem as though such opportunities were available to all via the internet, and thus any individual economic struggles were just that—and never the fault of deindustrialization, capital flight, stagnant wages, or a shrunken, punitive welfare state.
✍️ I discovered the book title in podcast "The Ezra Klein Show" last year featuring Tressie McMillan and Emily Drabinski, the president of the American Library Association. Drabinski recommended the book at the end of the show. It might be the best book I’ll read this year on social reproduction.
My jaw dropped on the floor when reading the first chapter, which delves into the origins of reframing poverty as a problem of technology during the Clinton-Gore neoliberalism era of the 1990s. This narrative has shaped today's prevailing common sense that the sole solution to persistent poverty lies in enhancing individual human capital. The implication is that if the poor can code, they won't be poor anymore. Accompanied by a retreating welfare state, the government transforms institutions traditionally providing community services (such as schools and libraries) into training centers where the underprivileged can learn to code or become the ideal entrepreneurial labor force demanded by capitalism.
The author critiques the philosophy of neoliberal urban development and examines the conflicting forces within the professional-managerial class, highlighting the tension between institutions and the groups they are meant to serve, while also exploring the rising popularity of this philosophy. As a reader with limited background knowledge on technological solutionism, I now have a much clearer understanding of its history and current implementations in social reproduction and the issues it causes. The book prompts me to reconsider the role and mission of public service institutions, as well as other topics such as scalability and the issues surrounding the meritocratic model. Here are the most intriguing findings for me from the reading:
1. Capital requires labor to maintain its circulation but cannot create labor. Today, alongside the disinvestment in social production, major tech companies shift the responsibility of on-the-job training to schools, expecting labor to possess all required skills, although the definition of "skill" is ambiguous (p.179).
2. The idea of shifting the burden of risks to individuals also extends to retirement planning.
3. The U.S. government shifted administrative capacity in public services toward expanding the carceral state to control the working poor (p.169).
4. Predatory inclusion: “bootstrapping resembles processes of predatory inclusion observed in settings like consumer credit and for-profit education. It extends long-withheld opportunities or resources to marginalized groups seeking social mobility, but on terms that disadvantage them in the long term and eventually reproduce inter-group inequality (p.169)”.
5. Bootstrapping may secure short-term financial stability for libraries or schools but at the expense of addressing the true needs of patrons or students. For example, homeless patrons need a safe space to stay and rest during extreme weather, rather than an innovation space where inactivity is penalized.
6. The reproduction of racial biases is involved in the process of bootstrapping. For instance, teachers promote a hidden curriculum that suggests only the working style of White professionals (laptop plus iced latte) is acceptable.
🔖 p191 We built these coping strategies to make overwhelming economic inequality sensible and navigable. But if access today means, fundamentally, an opportunity to compete, then an alternative should not be so hard to imagine. Because if the world as it currently exists is one where we must be granted the tools necessary to strive for excellence, to innovate beyond our current dire straits, to outcompete inequality, then surely another world is possible where innovation is boring and excellence is unnecessary because the good life is ordinary. What would we compete for if so many would not starve for losing? There is so much work we have to do.
✍️ I discovered the book title in podcast "The Ezra Klein Show" last year featuring Tressie McMillan and Emily Drabinski, the president of the American Library Association. Drabinski recommended the book at the end of the show. It might be the best book I’ll read this year on social reproduction.
My jaw dropped on the floor when reading the first chapter, which delves into the origins of reframing poverty as a problem of technology during the Clinton-Gore neoliberalism era of the 1990s. This narrative has shaped today's prevailing common sense that the sole solution to persistent poverty lies in enhancing individual human capital. The implication is that if the poor can code, they won't be poor anymore. Accompanied by a retreating welfare state, the government transforms institutions traditionally providing community services (such as schools and libraries) into training centers where the underprivileged can learn to code or become the ideal entrepreneurial labor force demanded by capitalism.
The author critiques the philosophy of neoliberal urban development and examines the conflicting forces within the professional-managerial class, highlighting the tension between institutions and the groups they are meant to serve, while also exploring the rising popularity of this philosophy. As a reader with limited background knowledge on technological solutionism, I now have a much clearer understanding of its history and current implementations in social reproduction and the issues it causes. The book prompts me to reconsider the role and mission of public service institutions, as well as other topics such as scalability and the issues surrounding the meritocratic model. Here are the most intriguing findings for me from the reading:
1. Capital requires labor to maintain its circulation but cannot create labor. Today, alongside the disinvestment in social production, major tech companies shift the responsibility of on-the-job training to schools, expecting labor to possess all required skills, although the definition of "skill" is ambiguous (p.179).
2. The idea of shifting the burden of risks to individuals also extends to retirement planning.
3. The U.S. government shifted administrative capacity in public services toward expanding the carceral state to control the working poor (p.169).
4. Predatory inclusion: “bootstrapping resembles processes of predatory inclusion observed in settings like consumer credit and for-profit education. It extends long-withheld opportunities or resources to marginalized groups seeking social mobility, but on terms that disadvantage them in the long term and eventually reproduce inter-group inequality (p.169)”.
5. Bootstrapping may secure short-term financial stability for libraries or schools but at the expense of addressing the true needs of patrons or students. For example, homeless patrons need a safe space to stay and rest during extreme weather, rather than an innovation space where inactivity is penalized.
6. The reproduction of racial biases is involved in the process of bootstrapping. For instance, teachers promote a hidden curriculum that suggests only the working style of White professionals (laptop plus iced latte) is acceptable.
🔖 p191 We built these coping strategies to make overwhelming economic inequality sensible and navigable. But if access today means, fundamentally, an opportunity to compete, then an alternative should not be so hard to imagine. Because if the world as it currently exists is one where we must be granted the tools necessary to strive for excellence, to innovate beyond our current dire straits, to outcompete inequality, then surely another world is possible where innovation is boring and excellence is unnecessary because the good life is ordinary. What would we compete for if so many would not starve for losing? There is so much work we have to do.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews