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Geleceğin Tarihleri: Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine ve Paris Komünü Bize Dijital Teknoloji Hakkında Ne Öğretebilir?
Aynı zamanda çok iyi bir yazar olan hukukçu Lizzie O’Shea’ye göre, teknolojiyi anlamanın anahtarı gelecekte değil geçmişte. Geleceğin Tarihleri bunu savunuyor ve bizi dijital çağın pratik ve devrimci olanaklarını keşfetmeye davet ediyor: İnternet bugün teknoloji devleri tarafından hangi amaçlarla kullanılıyor? Sanal âlemin bizi gözetlemesi, hakkımızda veri toplaması ve bu verilerle yalnızca pazarlamacılığın değil, devletlerin denetim tekniklerinin de geliştirilmesi karşısında ne yapabiliriz? Daha da önemlisi, sürekli gelişen dijital teknolojiyi kamu yararına kullanmak mümkün mü, nasıl?
O’Shea yeniliğin kaynağında kapitalist hayal tacirlerinin aksine, yalnızca bireysel çıkarları görmüyor; kâr hırsından uzak kolektif çabaların dijital alanın ortaya çıkışında oynadığı rolü de hatırlatıyor. Günümüzün teknoloji CEO’larının ufuksuzluğa ve bayat bir ütopyacılığa saplanmış toplum tasavvurları yerine Paris Komünü’nün bize internet etiği hakkında neler söyleyebileceğini soruyor. Dijital alanı demokratikleştirmek için Karl Marx’ın yanı sıra Thomas Paine ile Frantz Fanon’un devrimci çalışmalarında ilham kaynakları buluyor. Teknoloji sermayedarlarının “kendi suretlerinde yaratmak” istedikleri internet dünyasının karşısına potansiyel özgürlük olanaklarını çıkarıyor.
Kısacası Geleceğin Tarihleri, olduğu gibi kabul etmeye meyilli olduğumuz bu dünya karşısında, bizi düşünmeye ve başka bir gelecek kurmaya çağırıyor.
O’Shea yeniliğin kaynağında kapitalist hayal tacirlerinin aksine, yalnızca bireysel çıkarları görmüyor; kâr hırsından uzak kolektif çabaların dijital alanın ortaya çıkışında oynadığı rolü de hatırlatıyor. Günümüzün teknoloji CEO’larının ufuksuzluğa ve bayat bir ütopyacılığa saplanmış toplum tasavvurları yerine Paris Komünü’nün bize internet etiği hakkında neler söyleyebileceğini soruyor. Dijital alanı demokratikleştirmek için Karl Marx’ın yanı sıra Thomas Paine ile Frantz Fanon’un devrimci çalışmalarında ilham kaynakları buluyor. Teknoloji sermayedarlarının “kendi suretlerinde yaratmak” istedikleri internet dünyasının karşısına potansiyel özgürlük olanaklarını çıkarıyor.
Kısacası Geleceğin Tarihleri, olduğu gibi kabul etmeye meyilli olduğumuz bu dünya karşısında, bizi düşünmeye ve başka bir gelecek kurmaya çağırıyor.
344 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2019
67 people are currently reading
1772 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
May 4, 2023
"State surveillance is more heavy-handed and disciplinary, while surveillance capitalism is designed to appear consensual, convenient...they work in a complementary manner." (pg 46)
• FUTURE HISTORIES: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us About Digital Technology by Lizzie O'Shea, Verso Books, 2019.
Found this book hard to put down, finishing in a short span of days, and in-between, discussing extensively with my partner.
O'Shea is an Australian attorney & advocate of human rights in digital spaces, and brings considerable knowledge of technological and social history to this book, encouraging the reader (and society) to employ this "usable history" in thinking about technology in the present and future.
The book really captured me in chapter 3, entitled "Digital Surveillance Cannot Make Us Safe: Policing Bodies and Time on London's Docks", likening the early policing models for dockworkers in 1790s England to the surveillance empire that now captures our everyday actions in digital and real-life spaces. O'Shea dips further into policing here, comparing "stop and frisk" with digital discrimination. She looks at how the Big 4 reframed surveillance in a way that people invite it into their homes & bodies - the phones we are holding now to watches, speakers, doorbells, and even our refrigerators, HVAC systems - "the internet of things".
"Surveillance capitalism, disguised as a drive for personal efficiency, becomes equated with self-actualization." (pg 105)
Other subjects O'Shea dips into:
• Responsibility + Technology - a look at 1970s car manufacturers cutting costs that harmed and killed people and inherent bias in Silicon Valley, the role of social media in stoking cultural division.
• techno-utopianism
• Open Source, digital commons, collective movements
• digital citizenship + self-determination mapped by Frantz Fanon
• Indigenous wisdom in caring for the digital environment
Each of these chapters could have been a whole page here, and an entire dissertation by someone else...
A fantastic book - applying a historical and philosophical lens to technology and innovation in our everyday lives.
• FUTURE HISTORIES: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us About Digital Technology by Lizzie O'Shea, Verso Books, 2019.
Found this book hard to put down, finishing in a short span of days, and in-between, discussing extensively with my partner.
O'Shea is an Australian attorney & advocate of human rights in digital spaces, and brings considerable knowledge of technological and social history to this book, encouraging the reader (and society) to employ this "usable history" in thinking about technology in the present and future.
The book really captured me in chapter 3, entitled "Digital Surveillance Cannot Make Us Safe: Policing Bodies and Time on London's Docks", likening the early policing models for dockworkers in 1790s England to the surveillance empire that now captures our everyday actions in digital and real-life spaces. O'Shea dips further into policing here, comparing "stop and frisk" with digital discrimination. She looks at how the Big 4 reframed surveillance in a way that people invite it into their homes & bodies - the phones we are holding now to watches, speakers, doorbells, and even our refrigerators, HVAC systems - "the internet of things".
"Surveillance capitalism, disguised as a drive for personal efficiency, becomes equated with self-actualization." (pg 105)
Other subjects O'Shea dips into:
• Responsibility + Technology - a look at 1970s car manufacturers cutting costs that harmed and killed people and inherent bias in Silicon Valley, the role of social media in stoking cultural division.
• techno-utopianism
• Open Source, digital commons, collective movements
• digital citizenship + self-determination mapped by Frantz Fanon
• Indigenous wisdom in caring for the digital environment
Each of these chapters could have been a whole page here, and an entire dissertation by someone else...
A fantastic book - applying a historical and philosophical lens to technology and innovation in our everyday lives.
January 29, 2020
Thoughtful, accessible, and well-researched, bringing together a wide variety of ideas for how digital technology could be managed to serve people, not profit. Recommended for anyone who is sick of Silicon Valley's propaganda.
(This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.)
(This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.)
May 21, 2019
This book grabbed me with it's subtitular promise to connect digital technology and radical histories including the Paris Commune, a short lived but influential experiment with anarchism in 1871. The author skillfully critiques the enclosure of the digital commons by corporations and billionaire "thought leaders," whose vision for technological utopia is found to be equal parts naive and disingenuous.
"Some of the people lauded as being the most visionary in our society end up having some of the most mundane ideas. Technology capitalists love to talk up the sparkling possibilities of technology--of unleashing potential in an interconnected society. But often what is revealed in these manifestos is little more than an unambitious extension of the status quo."
O'Shea unpacks the many failings of what is termed "technology capitalism," opting not to use the more common "technocapitalism." I found this phrase a bit awkward, particularly as it often shares the page with other "capitalisms" such as "surveillance capitalism," but understand its utility in describing an economy where profit from technology subordinates human concerns, much as financial products do under "finance capitalism."
"[Early] experiments combining poetry and mathematics, imagination and practicality, were the beginning of a field that is changing our society in all sorts of radical ways. But there are limits to this kind of collaborative human potential, and they are imposed by capitalism."
The approach taken by this book--through the construction of a "usable past"--draws on a rich history of philosophy, social struggle, and experimentation to address familiar issues often wrongly framed as having no historic precedent (e.g. biased algorithms). Among others, Jane Jacobs, Sigmund Freud, William Morris, Ada Lovelace, Thomas Paine, Frantz Fanon, proletarian unions, and native governance structures inform O'Shea's vision for an accessible, equitable, and democratic future in which an open digital ecosystem increases our capacity for fulfillment, solidarity, and self-determination.
I greatly appreciated O'Shea's treatment of the "privacy versus security" myth (by delving into the history of policing) and the perils of technological utopianism (through the previously mentioned story of the Paris Commune). Particularly strong insights are made into the crucial role that increasingly politicized tech workers could play in contesting technology capitalism itself.
In terms of shortcomings, O'Shea's writing is sometimes a victim of its own enthusiasm, leaping onward to new topics in a manner that left me unsure how they connected to the previous page. There was also a crucially under-explored topic and potential contradiction in the author's treatment of states. I was disappointed that although the book addresses governments with consistent skepticism, O'Shea calls explicitly for the socialization *by government* of the internet and various corporations. This even occurs on the same page as a quotation by indigenous educator Taiaiake Alfred rejecting the hegemony of western statecraft. What might socialization of digital resources look like in a world without states, and how might technology itself contribute to such a world? Disappointingly, these questions are not addressed here.
Recommended for organizers, activists, technologists, history geeks, and the rest of us who find ourselves increasingly trapped within silicone cages!
"Some of the people lauded as being the most visionary in our society end up having some of the most mundane ideas. Technology capitalists love to talk up the sparkling possibilities of technology--of unleashing potential in an interconnected society. But often what is revealed in these manifestos is little more than an unambitious extension of the status quo."
O'Shea unpacks the many failings of what is termed "technology capitalism," opting not to use the more common "technocapitalism." I found this phrase a bit awkward, particularly as it often shares the page with other "capitalisms" such as "surveillance capitalism," but understand its utility in describing an economy where profit from technology subordinates human concerns, much as financial products do under "finance capitalism."
"[Early] experiments combining poetry and mathematics, imagination and practicality, were the beginning of a field that is changing our society in all sorts of radical ways. But there are limits to this kind of collaborative human potential, and they are imposed by capitalism."
The approach taken by this book--through the construction of a "usable past"--draws on a rich history of philosophy, social struggle, and experimentation to address familiar issues often wrongly framed as having no historic precedent (e.g. biased algorithms). Among others, Jane Jacobs, Sigmund Freud, William Morris, Ada Lovelace, Thomas Paine, Frantz Fanon, proletarian unions, and native governance structures inform O'Shea's vision for an accessible, equitable, and democratic future in which an open digital ecosystem increases our capacity for fulfillment, solidarity, and self-determination.
I greatly appreciated O'Shea's treatment of the "privacy versus security" myth (by delving into the history of policing) and the perils of technological utopianism (through the previously mentioned story of the Paris Commune). Particularly strong insights are made into the crucial role that increasingly politicized tech workers could play in contesting technology capitalism itself.
In terms of shortcomings, O'Shea's writing is sometimes a victim of its own enthusiasm, leaping onward to new topics in a manner that left me unsure how they connected to the previous page. There was also a crucially under-explored topic and potential contradiction in the author's treatment of states. I was disappointed that although the book addresses governments with consistent skepticism, O'Shea calls explicitly for the socialization *by government* of the internet and various corporations. This even occurs on the same page as a quotation by indigenous educator Taiaiake Alfred rejecting the hegemony of western statecraft. What might socialization of digital resources look like in a world without states, and how might technology itself contribute to such a world? Disappointingly, these questions are not addressed here.
Recommended for organizers, activists, technologists, history geeks, and the rest of us who find ourselves increasingly trapped within silicone cages!
September 21, 2019
I don't tend to review the tech/politics/philosophy books I read, but Future Histories is an interesting look at how a collective digital future could be possible by looking at past and present thought, commons, and communes.
April 27, 2020
A really refreshing approach; each chapter is an application of a historical event or critical/cultural theory to a current issue regarding technology and justice. Some of the tech examples were familiar to me (as in every tech x society work tends to cite the same case studies), but I'm sure a theory person reading this would feel the same about Freud and Fanon.
It's hard to pick a favorite chapter, but I especially liked the chapters on:
- Fanon, privacy, and digital self-determination
- Indigenous knowledge systems and governance of modern infrastructure
- collaborative approaches to building tech; what happens when incentives are misaligned
More scholarship like this!!
It's hard to pick a favorite chapter, but I especially liked the chapters on:
- Fanon, privacy, and digital self-determination
- Indigenous knowledge systems and governance of modern infrastructure
- collaborative approaches to building tech; what happens when incentives are misaligned
More scholarship like this!!
December 16, 2021
Good, but not quite what I was hoping for. When I read non-fiction like this, I'm much more interested in being presented an analysis of the facts (in this case, the ways in which history and the modern digital world mirror each other) rather than proposals of solutions.
This book would have been more my speed with more of the former and less of the latter.
This book would have been more my speed with more of the former and less of the latter.
January 19, 2020
"We are facing a future in which some of the best technological developments are made in relation to warfare or commerce rather than freedom and empowerment. Digital technology has become a machinery for producing billionaires rather than lives of dignity for the billions."
The above quote from near the end of Future Histories, in a sense, captures the ambitions of this book which is both a refreshing and hugely illuminating read. Given how central new social media led technologies are becoming in all our lives, this book is of great value. O'Shea writes from a firm left-wing stance - her account of the Paris Commune is a pleasure to read - and for this reason tackles matters such as the power and abuse of technology from a view point that is actually rarely heard.
There are no simple solutions hinted at in this book, rather the potential of technology is examined and acknowledged. Capitalism, sadly and not surprisingly, will misuse the massive human achievements that are the internet and advanced computerisation, for it own narrow ends but this should not lead us throw out the baby with the bathwater (sorry for the cliché!). Technology could be used to extend human freedom, rid the world of poverty and many of the other ills that are still with us. It's all about how society is current ordered and what its present priorities are - technology itself is broadly neutral.
How technology could benefit an alternative society is one of the important issues examined and explored here. Do we really need more technological advances at this stage in human history? The answer is a resounding no. What we do need to do is to look at how society is now organised, and change that. In different hands, present day technology could hugely advance equality and well-being on this planet.
The above quote from near the end of Future Histories, in a sense, captures the ambitions of this book which is both a refreshing and hugely illuminating read. Given how central new social media led technologies are becoming in all our lives, this book is of great value. O'Shea writes from a firm left-wing stance - her account of the Paris Commune is a pleasure to read - and for this reason tackles matters such as the power and abuse of technology from a view point that is actually rarely heard.
There are no simple solutions hinted at in this book, rather the potential of technology is examined and acknowledged. Capitalism, sadly and not surprisingly, will misuse the massive human achievements that are the internet and advanced computerisation, for it own narrow ends but this should not lead us throw out the baby with the bathwater (sorry for the cliché!). Technology could be used to extend human freedom, rid the world of poverty and many of the other ills that are still with us. It's all about how society is current ordered and what its present priorities are - technology itself is broadly neutral.
How technology could benefit an alternative society is one of the important issues examined and explored here. Do we really need more technological advances at this stage in human history? The answer is a resounding no. What we do need to do is to look at how society is now organised, and change that. In different hands, present day technology could hugely advance equality and well-being on this planet.
April 8, 2020
More concrete calls to action than I expected! And important reminders to think about what I am condoning when I participate in certain parts of the digital economy.
I expected O'Shea to take tech companies more to task for profiting so much on OSS without contributing back to it. I think she could've been more critical of that and if she had it would have strengthened some of her arguments more.
// Notes
- TINA applies to how we're socialized into needing certain digital services.
- "Just as Colquhoun pursued his thought experiments on 18th century dock workers, Thiel imposes his visions on twenty-first century netizens." -- I want this quote as a time-and-place jumping musical, please.
- Call to publicize predictive policing algorithms.
-The comparison between Ford literally calculating the costs of more tests and letting people die with how the NSA leaves software vulnerabilities undetected is so thought provoking and thoroughly done.
- Why aren't we regulating the creation of tech like we regulate new cars? Real world oppressions are being replicated.
- I loved the idea of abstract identification, and getting to meet your digital doppelgänger (again, regulation)
- (126) The description of Luddites opposing technology because the benefits were not being equitably distributed or its damage being accounted for (reduction of production costs) was so. good.
- (146) I learned FUD is a thing Microsoft invented to manipulate customers.
- (183) I loved the argument about returning to negotiating on the politics of time, and the case for a shorter work week. Reading about how early philosophers considered these ideas, and predicted a future with fewer working hours, surprised me.
- I appreciated stores about how rivers have personhood in certain countries, drawing and often directly related to indigenous activists.
I expected O'Shea to take tech companies more to task for profiting so much on OSS without contributing back to it. I think she could've been more critical of that and if she had it would have strengthened some of her arguments more.
// Notes
- TINA applies to how we're socialized into needing certain digital services.
- "Just as Colquhoun pursued his thought experiments on 18th century dock workers, Thiel imposes his visions on twenty-first century netizens." -- I want this quote as a time-and-place jumping musical, please.
- Call to publicize predictive policing algorithms.
-The comparison between Ford literally calculating the costs of more tests and letting people die with how the NSA leaves software vulnerabilities undetected is so thought provoking and thoroughly done.
- Why aren't we regulating the creation of tech like we regulate new cars? Real world oppressions are being replicated.
- I loved the idea of abstract identification, and getting to meet your digital doppelgänger (again, regulation)
- (126) The description of Luddites opposing technology because the benefits were not being equitably distributed or its damage being accounted for (reduction of production costs) was so. good.
- (146) I learned FUD is a thing Microsoft invented to manipulate customers.
- (183) I loved the argument about returning to negotiating on the politics of time, and the case for a shorter work week. Reading about how early philosophers considered these ideas, and predicted a future with fewer working hours, surprised me.
- I appreciated stores about how rivers have personhood in certain countries, drawing and often directly related to indigenous activists.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 9, 2021
Brilliant, far reaching book about our history, our present and our future. Its kind of historical-soft-si-(non-)fi, if you get me.
June 12, 2025
So much more fire than the tagline had me believe. I especially enjoyed the discussion around surveillance state urbanism, digital capitalism, and the environmental analogy
September 30, 2025
A unique read synthesizing lots of big ideas! IDK shit about tech so this was very informative for me and made me both more concerned and hopeful at the same time. "The past shapes our present and future and how we tell our histories and what lessons we pull from it directs where we will go next." Here are my notes:
On the importance of democratic control of tech and revolution: Don Carlos & the Franciscan friars corpse believed to heal dying Prince with head injury then turned into a Saint and the first automaton made of wood which can roll its eyes, raise and kiss its cross, mouth silent prayer and is still in working condition after 400 years. What the automaton points to thematically: gizmos like this were precursors to the tech we use today employing entertainment, authority, and mystery about how it works, owned by the monarchy- who commands the highest tech weilds the highest power.
Mindscapes: Freud and the analogy of the mind as a city with city planning influenced by society, connected by O'Shea to the internet and online social spaces and what we fill our minds with "the space of our minds is increasingly used for consumption and surveillance" as online worlds become bigger parts of our personal worlds and online is increasingly designed around marketing and surveilling. O'Shea then applies Jane Jacobs analysis of city planning to these online social spaces to challenge social control and capitalism in favor of prioritizing organic communities and marginalized people. Public commons online are increasingly enclosed and people are increasingly siphoned into individualized algorithms, effectively segregating and privatizing the web.
"Privacy is the right to self" -Edward Snowden. When data miners create an identity for you and cater your online presence around this to best sell you things we loose the autonomy to create our own identities and to feed our mindscapes what we want to, and to participate in re-creating ourselves and the stories we wish to tell about ourselves aka symbolic intereactionism.
Panopticon analogy- knowing that were being watched online by the NSA, etc has led to much self censorship esp by leftists. Increasing collaboration between for profit data miner and law enforcement.
the NSA finds back doors to citizen data and is invested in keeping them open to spy which leads to increased vulnerability to hacks, our privacy isn't the cost for our security as the government likes to spin it, instead if privacy increases so does security.
Policing data is like virtual stop and frisk recreating systemic inequalities because the data it is fed from past policing work is full of rampant prejudice which it is therefore bound to recreate.
Companies will always want to put onus for harm from product onto consumers: cigarettes, junk food, flamable cars, etc ➡️ the discourse I see on insta of people joking "I built this algorithm brick by brick" when we actually have very little autonomy or even transparency over our algorithms which recreate systemic injustices and then feed them back to us in a vicious cycle.
Palantir- evil surveillance corp for US military & policing.
Our perception of algorithms as logical, objective and fair is false, and it is concerning how widely they've been adopted from parole applications to job and college applications. Algorithms are human designs and subject to our same subjectivities and can be structured and restructured by us just like any of our concepts. We could design digital infrastructure to work against prejudice and discrimination but instead technological capitalism feeds on reproducing inequalities.
Increasing surveillance in homes by smart tech is often used by abusers.
Maybe tech companies shouldn't be outsourcing their ethics- "move fast break things" is the mindset of someone who doesn't expect they'll have to pick up the pieces. White men and the culture of Silicon Valley seeps into the culture and direction of the internet & tech.
Technological utopianism- the idea that advancing tech will advance society past its inequalities and problems perhaps without any foundational restructuring or socio-political revolution, it enables optimistic passivity and isn't grounded in material reality, this theory was initially developed during the US industrial revolution in which the direction of change wasnt critiqued just its acceleration, explicitly avoiding class struggle. Taken up and combined with libertarianism by Silicon Valley.
O'Shea contrasted this with the Paris Commune, rule by and for the people with a marked redistribution of resources, she goes on to say tech requires a reimagining of how things work such that tech giants which hope to embody technological utopia are instead creating the comunards that will to see to their undoing and re-doing.
Ada Lovelace- Lord Byron's daughter and one of the first computer scientists who worked on the drafts for the 1st computer with her husband Charles Babbage, she compared computing to poetry a philosophical math.
Luddites- O'Shea compares to Ananymous, bands of workers who destroyed tech that they thought would mechanize and take away their jobs and were defended by Byron. Part of the argument stems from Marx's theory of alienation and how our identities get entangled with work and creation, our impact in the world is made real though our labor. What we do with surplus labor is one of the major sites of contestation in politics- does it belong to capitalists or the workers? This question doesn't go away just because the amount of surplus labor changes as facilitated by tech.
As everything is increasingly computerized and computer code is increasingly privatized and made secret the less safe we become because we are alienated from the code which was initially dreamed as a collaborative process with no clear producers and consumers and instead one great group project and also more likely to be faulty because there's fewer eyes and less oversight over it with the NSA and other bodies invested in keeping backdoors hidden for their own peeping at everybody's expense, esp as tech is increasingly a part of everything from cars, to planes, to health care when it is buggy or exploited there are very scary consequences.
Thomas Paine and a universal capital grant or "land rent" for a fund towards social mobility for all by those who hoard resources because all humans are entitled to the riches that come from the earth, sustenance, and access to society not because of their productivity but by merit of simply being human.
Companies like Google & FB trying to provide public access to internet but at the secret cost of monopolizing public infrastructure, skirting bidding and review processes, and mining data. Parallels to when GM bought up and destroyed public transportation. Fighting instead for internet access as a right like any utility and as a tool for enhanced democratic participation.
Recessions are pushing automation ahead which is leading to increasing unemployment and a growing class of the "precariat" precarious workers who are increasingly exploited and unstable due to the scarcity of jobs. We must advocate for a future that allows all to benefit from increasing automation rather than just the elites. In order to do this we have to detach human worth from productivity.
Politics of time- 8 hr work day initially fought for to help spread work out between people and therefore decrease unemployment.
France: the right to disconnect, workers rights about not having to check emails and work phones during off hours.
We have to dismantle over-work culture so our communities and families and our lives can benefit. Its also greener to work less.
Graeber and bullshit jobs- eliminating "work" that isnt adding anything to society and is only creating waste and value actual care and problem solving more.
The future is co-operative- hell yea!
Solutions to automization: universal basic income, job guarantee policy (gov jobs for all to update infrastructure, care work, etc), social insurance (centrally planned social services for all). A new deal for the technological age.
O'Shea also goes on to apply Fanon to this problem to advocate for digital sovereignty, and uses the parallel experience of Algerian freedom fighters accepting the radio for their cause despite initial skepticism about using the colonizers tools even to fight back against them. "We have to be cautious not to recreate another Europe in Africa" we also have to be careful not to just recreate another Europe online as we fight to reclaim our data and social spaces.
Lessons can be taken from the Environmental Justice mvmt seeing the internet as a common resource, gathering space, generative landscape, etc that shouldn't be enclosed, monopolized, or extracted from.
The internet was developed with public funding but was given away to corporations unnecessarily due to neoliberal ideology and revolving door politics, taking the internet back is feasible and other countries have done so.
Intellectual property rights are a secondary enclosure of the commons in the digital age, but it can be pushed back against, when big tech/social/cultural shifts occur there is an opening to pivot society more easily than after a precedent is really set.
On the importance of democratic control of tech and revolution: Don Carlos & the Franciscan friars corpse believed to heal dying Prince with head injury then turned into a Saint and the first automaton made of wood which can roll its eyes, raise and kiss its cross, mouth silent prayer and is still in working condition after 400 years. What the automaton points to thematically: gizmos like this were precursors to the tech we use today employing entertainment, authority, and mystery about how it works, owned by the monarchy- who commands the highest tech weilds the highest power.
Mindscapes: Freud and the analogy of the mind as a city with city planning influenced by society, connected by O'Shea to the internet and online social spaces and what we fill our minds with "the space of our minds is increasingly used for consumption and surveillance" as online worlds become bigger parts of our personal worlds and online is increasingly designed around marketing and surveilling. O'Shea then applies Jane Jacobs analysis of city planning to these online social spaces to challenge social control and capitalism in favor of prioritizing organic communities and marginalized people. Public commons online are increasingly enclosed and people are increasingly siphoned into individualized algorithms, effectively segregating and privatizing the web.
"Privacy is the right to self" -Edward Snowden. When data miners create an identity for you and cater your online presence around this to best sell you things we loose the autonomy to create our own identities and to feed our mindscapes what we want to, and to participate in re-creating ourselves and the stories we wish to tell about ourselves aka symbolic intereactionism.
Panopticon analogy- knowing that were being watched online by the NSA, etc has led to much self censorship esp by leftists. Increasing collaboration between for profit data miner and law enforcement.
the NSA finds back doors to citizen data and is invested in keeping them open to spy which leads to increased vulnerability to hacks, our privacy isn't the cost for our security as the government likes to spin it, instead if privacy increases so does security.
Policing data is like virtual stop and frisk recreating systemic inequalities because the data it is fed from past policing work is full of rampant prejudice which it is therefore bound to recreate.
Companies will always want to put onus for harm from product onto consumers: cigarettes, junk food, flamable cars, etc ➡️ the discourse I see on insta of people joking "I built this algorithm brick by brick" when we actually have very little autonomy or even transparency over our algorithms which recreate systemic injustices and then feed them back to us in a vicious cycle.
Palantir- evil surveillance corp for US military & policing.
Our perception of algorithms as logical, objective and fair is false, and it is concerning how widely they've been adopted from parole applications to job and college applications. Algorithms are human designs and subject to our same subjectivities and can be structured and restructured by us just like any of our concepts. We could design digital infrastructure to work against prejudice and discrimination but instead technological capitalism feeds on reproducing inequalities.
Increasing surveillance in homes by smart tech is often used by abusers.
Maybe tech companies shouldn't be outsourcing their ethics- "move fast break things" is the mindset of someone who doesn't expect they'll have to pick up the pieces. White men and the culture of Silicon Valley seeps into the culture and direction of the internet & tech.
Technological utopianism- the idea that advancing tech will advance society past its inequalities and problems perhaps without any foundational restructuring or socio-political revolution, it enables optimistic passivity and isn't grounded in material reality, this theory was initially developed during the US industrial revolution in which the direction of change wasnt critiqued just its acceleration, explicitly avoiding class struggle. Taken up and combined with libertarianism by Silicon Valley.
O'Shea contrasted this with the Paris Commune, rule by and for the people with a marked redistribution of resources, she goes on to say tech requires a reimagining of how things work such that tech giants which hope to embody technological utopia are instead creating the comunards that will to see to their undoing and re-doing.
Ada Lovelace- Lord Byron's daughter and one of the first computer scientists who worked on the drafts for the 1st computer with her husband Charles Babbage, she compared computing to poetry a philosophical math.
Luddites- O'Shea compares to Ananymous, bands of workers who destroyed tech that they thought would mechanize and take away their jobs and were defended by Byron. Part of the argument stems from Marx's theory of alienation and how our identities get entangled with work and creation, our impact in the world is made real though our labor. What we do with surplus labor is one of the major sites of contestation in politics- does it belong to capitalists or the workers? This question doesn't go away just because the amount of surplus labor changes as facilitated by tech.
As everything is increasingly computerized and computer code is increasingly privatized and made secret the less safe we become because we are alienated from the code which was initially dreamed as a collaborative process with no clear producers and consumers and instead one great group project and also more likely to be faulty because there's fewer eyes and less oversight over it with the NSA and other bodies invested in keeping backdoors hidden for their own peeping at everybody's expense, esp as tech is increasingly a part of everything from cars, to planes, to health care when it is buggy or exploited there are very scary consequences.
Thomas Paine and a universal capital grant or "land rent" for a fund towards social mobility for all by those who hoard resources because all humans are entitled to the riches that come from the earth, sustenance, and access to society not because of their productivity but by merit of simply being human.
Companies like Google & FB trying to provide public access to internet but at the secret cost of monopolizing public infrastructure, skirting bidding and review processes, and mining data. Parallels to when GM bought up and destroyed public transportation. Fighting instead for internet access as a right like any utility and as a tool for enhanced democratic participation.
Recessions are pushing automation ahead which is leading to increasing unemployment and a growing class of the "precariat" precarious workers who are increasingly exploited and unstable due to the scarcity of jobs. We must advocate for a future that allows all to benefit from increasing automation rather than just the elites. In order to do this we have to detach human worth from productivity.
Politics of time- 8 hr work day initially fought for to help spread work out between people and therefore decrease unemployment.
France: the right to disconnect, workers rights about not having to check emails and work phones during off hours.
We have to dismantle over-work culture so our communities and families and our lives can benefit. Its also greener to work less.
Graeber and bullshit jobs- eliminating "work" that isnt adding anything to society and is only creating waste and value actual care and problem solving more.
The future is co-operative- hell yea!
Solutions to automization: universal basic income, job guarantee policy (gov jobs for all to update infrastructure, care work, etc), social insurance (centrally planned social services for all). A new deal for the technological age.
O'Shea also goes on to apply Fanon to this problem to advocate for digital sovereignty, and uses the parallel experience of Algerian freedom fighters accepting the radio for their cause despite initial skepticism about using the colonizers tools even to fight back against them. "We have to be cautious not to recreate another Europe in Africa" we also have to be careful not to just recreate another Europe online as we fight to reclaim our data and social spaces.
Lessons can be taken from the Environmental Justice mvmt seeing the internet as a common resource, gathering space, generative landscape, etc that shouldn't be enclosed, monopolized, or extracted from.
The internet was developed with public funding but was given away to corporations unnecessarily due to neoliberal ideology and revolving door politics, taking the internet back is feasible and other countries have done so.
Intellectual property rights are a secondary enclosure of the commons in the digital age, but it can be pushed back against, when big tech/social/cultural shifts occur there is an opening to pivot society more easily than after a precedent is really set.
August 29, 2021
This book opens with a fascinating story of a mechanical friar robot (now housed at the Smithsonian) described by a figurative sculptor and artist named Elizabeth King. King’s thesis is that this monastic automaton was likely made by an Italo-Spanish engineer named Juanelo Turriano in the 16th century. Turriano was a gifted clockmaker, and it was often these highly skilled clock technicians and makers that created these medieval and Renaissance automata. Simon Schaffer did an excellent program for Spark called “Mechanical Marvels: Clockwork Dreams” in which he talks about how these clockmakers, who were working with higher and higher precision components, and creating more and more sophisticated mechanisms, combining these mechanical components in a way to essentially ‘program’ a large number of actions and behaviours into their robots. These automata often began as parts of large-scale clock projects with animated ornaments and figures. What comes to mind are cuckoo clocks, which my mom loves, especially the Black Forest variety, and I had to purchase and bring one home from Germany when I visited Frankfurt for work. I had zero leg room on the plane ride home because of that cuckoo clock.
These clock automata were (in many ways) precursors to the programmed machinery and even artificial intelligence of today. Adrienne Mayor’s book “Gods and Robots” draws a much longer genealogy of automata, back to antiquity and also ancient China and India. She mentions these water-powered automata in both India and China, and so I find it also fascinating that Juanelo Turriano had also made a sophisticated system of water works in 16th century Toledo called “Artificio de Juanelo” which used large waterwheels to pump water into the city.
It is remarkable how interconnected the history of computing and digital technology is with the history of mechanism, energy, and hydropower technology. Simon Schaffer’s BBC program “Mechanical Monsters” also includes an excellent section on Babbage, who had designed a very sophisticated mechanical computer to make calculations much more accurately than humans were prone to make. He had far more faith in steam and precision mechanisms than human calculators. Babbage never did complete the construction of his full designs, but his analytical engine has since been assembled at various museums in the UK and works absolutely perfectly.
O’Shea in this book actually spends a whole chapter on Ada Lovelace who Babbage would actually work very closely with during his lifetime. I discovered Ada Lovelace while still an undergraduate student. I was very fascinated by ‘maker’ culture back then, especially with Limor Fried and her company Adafruit. I still used stuff sold by Adafruit even during my time working in electrical engineering while prototyping and testing various circuit designs for projects. Ada Lovelace was very much a hero for me in my late undergraduate years, and so it was neat to read more about her life in this book.
With the exception on the chapter on Jane Jacobs (who I also appreciate, but am far more critical of than O’Shea) I found this book a very enjoyable read. The chapter on Jacobs maybe betrayed a certain anti-modernist (or at least postmodernist) dismissal of modernist planning and design, which I think Jacobs perpetuated and which I think aligns very neatly with processes of gentrification and a bourgeois condescension towards affordable public housing projects that early modernist socialist planners had worked on developing. Where O'Shea better channeled this skepticism was on her chapter critiquing various types of utopianism including that of the utopian socialist Edward Bellamy and his novel Looking Backward and how neatly it aligns with modern utopians (e.g. Elon Musk who laughably calls himself a socialist). While I had encountered William Morris' critique of Bellamy's novel, it was really nice to read O'Shea's angle on it. Morris rightly critiqued Bellamy's utopia as a 'state-managed monopoly' and I think Peter Frase astutely refers to this political economy as a type of capitalism without capitalists, and that still does not get to the core issues of profit, wage labour, freedom, worker's control and ownership, and so on.
Besides the Marxist analysis spread throughout the entire book, the sections on Tom Paine, on the Paris Commune, and especially on Fanon were really fun to read. O’Shea includes this really fascinating quote by Fanon and extends it into ways we might think about the internet and digital technology today:
“Algerian society made an autonomous decision to embrace the new technique, and thus tune itself in on the new signaling systems brought into being by the Revolution.”
One last thing that I was particularly interested in (related to my interest in rivers and hydropower) was O’Shea’s chapter on London’s 19th century dockworkers, and how the threat of their collective action provoked a ruling class reaction that would become the basis of contemporary capitalist surveillance and modern policing. O’Shea identifies Patrick Colquohoun as the architect of modern policing and it was dockworkers along the Thames River over which his disciplining project was applied. To set some context, O’Shea cites the historian Linebaugh’s explanation of the worker practice of pilfering, which is actually something my grandfather regularly did to feed his family (including my mom) in Singapore. He often brought back food like potatoes to either eat or to sell and those pilfered objects very much became a matter of survival or death. My mom for example was severely undernourished and had to receive powdered milk supplements in school as prescribed by school doctors, and without those pilfered objects she may never have made it through childhood alive. Anyway O’Shea comments on the practice of factory workers as well as these longshoreman like my grandfather, but in London rather than the port of Singapore in colonial Malaya (where my grandfather worked):
“The historian Peter Linebaugh has written about how workers in manufacturing and production houses often supplemented their wages (if they were lucky enough to be paid any) by pilfering stock from their employers. It was customary to do this, especially at a time when workers were testing the limits of the idea of wage labor—a distinct change from their previous ways of life as artisans or peasants. Linebaugh documents social and even judicial recognition of this practice, whether it was warehouse laborers drinking the rum maturing in the storehouses, a printer retaining a copy of every book he assembled, or shipbuilders taking leftover timber for their own use… In the London of those days, this culture represented “a kind of ‘collective bargaining’ over the materials of production,” Linebaugh argues.
Among the merchants, however, it was increasingly thought of as theft. The construction of the wet dock put the river workers under increased scrutiny—the process of unloading sugar and other commodities could now be carefully tracked and measured…
In a direct attempt to protect their property and corral the dockers to conform to the relatively novel strictures of wage labor, John Harriott, a magistrate, farmer and businessman, came up with a plan for a professional police force. He was not the first to imagine such a thing, but his proposal was nonetheless unprecedented. He teamed up with Patrick Colquhoun, a merchant and statistician of repute, and Jeremy Bentham, the famed utilitarian philosopher. Colquhoun and Bentham brought their prestige and political judgment to Harriott’s bold ideas, and together these men sought to design organs of civil government that could address the challenges of the industrial age…
Specifically, this resulted in a proposal to the merchants’ committee to fund an experiment, which was duly accepted. The Marine Police Office opened in 1798 as a kind of pilot program. Officers were paid and uniformed, and their job was to watch over the wet docks. They supervised the workers and kept an eye on the ships and their cargo. They enforced working hours and were even responsible for paying out wages. When they encountered misbehavior, they did what was necessary to bring the errant workers before a magistrate.
It was a raging success, significantly reducing the merchants’ losses for a small price. Harriott congratulated himself for “bringing into reasonable order some thousands of men, who had long considered plunder as a privilege.” Working their magic in a way that would impress even the toughest political lobbyist, Harriott, Colquhoun and Bentham managed to convince Westminster to support the project, and the Marine Police Office came under state authority two years.”
I find it fascinating that 18th century river workers were the subjects of coercive surveillance that came to be one of the most ubiquitous arms of state violence: the police, formed principally for the purpose of protecting private property, commodity goods, and the maximization of profit. O’Shea’s focus is how this form of ruling class surveillance finds new forms within digital technology and the internet of today. However, I am very interested in the way this form of utilitarian state power and panoptical surveillance over labour would become entangled in 19th century colonialism and British empire. The British colonial port of Singapore would be established in 1819, and my grandfather would be a longshoreman in the early 20th century, and I find it so fascinating that water in so many ways enables the fluid circulation of commodities for capitalism. It not only is a means of generating rotational mechanical power in mills, but linear force to move commodities through canals and rivers, and a lubricant for transporting ocean-faring goods. This was also a theme of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's narrative in Love in the Time of Cholera.
While O’Shea does not mention this, as far as I can remember, Schaffer in his BBC program mentions the story of Charles Babbage examining the numerical tables of the Nautical Almanac which were vital for ship navigation and determining positional longitude. These printed tables of numbers were absolutely vital for the smooth operation of British commerce and the circulation of goods across the British empire. Babbage had found numerous errors while perusing these tables, which at the time were manually calculated by human computers. Babbage then had commented: “I wish to God these calculations were executed by steam.” And hence, his analytical engine which would become an early form of the modern computer. It’s fascinating to see these connections between Victorian engineering and the steam-powered industrial revolution, Ada Lovelace (whose father was the Romanticist poet Lord Byron), and the modern world of computing, digital technology, automation and artificial intelligence – are in so many ways continuous with the long history of these labour-saving devices known as water mills which in various forms continue to be the backbone of an economy completely dependent on electricity generated by way of rapidly rotating turbines, whether by water, wind, or steam (generated by way of fossil fuel combustion or nuclear fission).
These clock automata were (in many ways) precursors to the programmed machinery and even artificial intelligence of today. Adrienne Mayor’s book “Gods and Robots” draws a much longer genealogy of automata, back to antiquity and also ancient China and India. She mentions these water-powered automata in both India and China, and so I find it also fascinating that Juanelo Turriano had also made a sophisticated system of water works in 16th century Toledo called “Artificio de Juanelo” which used large waterwheels to pump water into the city.
It is remarkable how interconnected the history of computing and digital technology is with the history of mechanism, energy, and hydropower technology. Simon Schaffer’s BBC program “Mechanical Monsters” also includes an excellent section on Babbage, who had designed a very sophisticated mechanical computer to make calculations much more accurately than humans were prone to make. He had far more faith in steam and precision mechanisms than human calculators. Babbage never did complete the construction of his full designs, but his analytical engine has since been assembled at various museums in the UK and works absolutely perfectly.
O’Shea in this book actually spends a whole chapter on Ada Lovelace who Babbage would actually work very closely with during his lifetime. I discovered Ada Lovelace while still an undergraduate student. I was very fascinated by ‘maker’ culture back then, especially with Limor Fried and her company Adafruit. I still used stuff sold by Adafruit even during my time working in electrical engineering while prototyping and testing various circuit designs for projects. Ada Lovelace was very much a hero for me in my late undergraduate years, and so it was neat to read more about her life in this book.
With the exception on the chapter on Jane Jacobs (who I also appreciate, but am far more critical of than O’Shea) I found this book a very enjoyable read. The chapter on Jacobs maybe betrayed a certain anti-modernist (or at least postmodernist) dismissal of modernist planning and design, which I think Jacobs perpetuated and which I think aligns very neatly with processes of gentrification and a bourgeois condescension towards affordable public housing projects that early modernist socialist planners had worked on developing. Where O'Shea better channeled this skepticism was on her chapter critiquing various types of utopianism including that of the utopian socialist Edward Bellamy and his novel Looking Backward and how neatly it aligns with modern utopians (e.g. Elon Musk who laughably calls himself a socialist). While I had encountered William Morris' critique of Bellamy's novel, it was really nice to read O'Shea's angle on it. Morris rightly critiqued Bellamy's utopia as a 'state-managed monopoly' and I think Peter Frase astutely refers to this political economy as a type of capitalism without capitalists, and that still does not get to the core issues of profit, wage labour, freedom, worker's control and ownership, and so on.
Besides the Marxist analysis spread throughout the entire book, the sections on Tom Paine, on the Paris Commune, and especially on Fanon were really fun to read. O’Shea includes this really fascinating quote by Fanon and extends it into ways we might think about the internet and digital technology today:
“Algerian society made an autonomous decision to embrace the new technique, and thus tune itself in on the new signaling systems brought into being by the Revolution.”
One last thing that I was particularly interested in (related to my interest in rivers and hydropower) was O’Shea’s chapter on London’s 19th century dockworkers, and how the threat of their collective action provoked a ruling class reaction that would become the basis of contemporary capitalist surveillance and modern policing. O’Shea identifies Patrick Colquohoun as the architect of modern policing and it was dockworkers along the Thames River over which his disciplining project was applied. To set some context, O’Shea cites the historian Linebaugh’s explanation of the worker practice of pilfering, which is actually something my grandfather regularly did to feed his family (including my mom) in Singapore. He often brought back food like potatoes to either eat or to sell and those pilfered objects very much became a matter of survival or death. My mom for example was severely undernourished and had to receive powdered milk supplements in school as prescribed by school doctors, and without those pilfered objects she may never have made it through childhood alive. Anyway O’Shea comments on the practice of factory workers as well as these longshoreman like my grandfather, but in London rather than the port of Singapore in colonial Malaya (where my grandfather worked):
“The historian Peter Linebaugh has written about how workers in manufacturing and production houses often supplemented their wages (if they were lucky enough to be paid any) by pilfering stock from their employers. It was customary to do this, especially at a time when workers were testing the limits of the idea of wage labor—a distinct change from their previous ways of life as artisans or peasants. Linebaugh documents social and even judicial recognition of this practice, whether it was warehouse laborers drinking the rum maturing in the storehouses, a printer retaining a copy of every book he assembled, or shipbuilders taking leftover timber for their own use… In the London of those days, this culture represented “a kind of ‘collective bargaining’ over the materials of production,” Linebaugh argues.
Among the merchants, however, it was increasingly thought of as theft. The construction of the wet dock put the river workers under increased scrutiny—the process of unloading sugar and other commodities could now be carefully tracked and measured…
In a direct attempt to protect their property and corral the dockers to conform to the relatively novel strictures of wage labor, John Harriott, a magistrate, farmer and businessman, came up with a plan for a professional police force. He was not the first to imagine such a thing, but his proposal was nonetheless unprecedented. He teamed up with Patrick Colquhoun, a merchant and statistician of repute, and Jeremy Bentham, the famed utilitarian philosopher. Colquhoun and Bentham brought their prestige and political judgment to Harriott’s bold ideas, and together these men sought to design organs of civil government that could address the challenges of the industrial age…
Specifically, this resulted in a proposal to the merchants’ committee to fund an experiment, which was duly accepted. The Marine Police Office opened in 1798 as a kind of pilot program. Officers were paid and uniformed, and their job was to watch over the wet docks. They supervised the workers and kept an eye on the ships and their cargo. They enforced working hours and were even responsible for paying out wages. When they encountered misbehavior, they did what was necessary to bring the errant workers before a magistrate.
It was a raging success, significantly reducing the merchants’ losses for a small price. Harriott congratulated himself for “bringing into reasonable order some thousands of men, who had long considered plunder as a privilege.” Working their magic in a way that would impress even the toughest political lobbyist, Harriott, Colquhoun and Bentham managed to convince Westminster to support the project, and the Marine Police Office came under state authority two years.”
I find it fascinating that 18th century river workers were the subjects of coercive surveillance that came to be one of the most ubiquitous arms of state violence: the police, formed principally for the purpose of protecting private property, commodity goods, and the maximization of profit. O’Shea’s focus is how this form of ruling class surveillance finds new forms within digital technology and the internet of today. However, I am very interested in the way this form of utilitarian state power and panoptical surveillance over labour would become entangled in 19th century colonialism and British empire. The British colonial port of Singapore would be established in 1819, and my grandfather would be a longshoreman in the early 20th century, and I find it so fascinating that water in so many ways enables the fluid circulation of commodities for capitalism. It not only is a means of generating rotational mechanical power in mills, but linear force to move commodities through canals and rivers, and a lubricant for transporting ocean-faring goods. This was also a theme of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's narrative in Love in the Time of Cholera.
While O’Shea does not mention this, as far as I can remember, Schaffer in his BBC program mentions the story of Charles Babbage examining the numerical tables of the Nautical Almanac which were vital for ship navigation and determining positional longitude. These printed tables of numbers were absolutely vital for the smooth operation of British commerce and the circulation of goods across the British empire. Babbage had found numerous errors while perusing these tables, which at the time were manually calculated by human computers. Babbage then had commented: “I wish to God these calculations were executed by steam.” And hence, his analytical engine which would become an early form of the modern computer. It’s fascinating to see these connections between Victorian engineering and the steam-powered industrial revolution, Ada Lovelace (whose father was the Romanticist poet Lord Byron), and the modern world of computing, digital technology, automation and artificial intelligence – are in so many ways continuous with the long history of these labour-saving devices known as water mills which in various forms continue to be the backbone of an economy completely dependent on electricity generated by way of rapidly rotating turbines, whether by water, wind, or steam (generated by way of fossil fuel combustion or nuclear fission).
December 18, 2019
Holy moly the ambition of this book is staggering and Lizzie O’Shea is possibly a genius. There’s no tweaking around the edges here, this is full-blown revolution. It’s digital Marxism for a 21st century audience, but better in that Marx tended to make unsubstantiated claims willy-nilly whereas O’Shea’s arguments are structured and well-researched, but still very novel (at least for me).
Is it impolite to ask why all these revolutionary ideas are coming from someone who seemingly has no background in the tech industry? What have people in the tech field been doing for the last decade to be usurped by a lawyer?
My only criticism of this book is that it’s quite wordy, with long sentences that jam a lot in. It takes a bit of concentration and the style took me a while to adjust too. My mum refused to read it on the grounds that the subtitle is too long, and she’s an academic!
I still think it’s worth the effort.
Is it impolite to ask why all these revolutionary ideas are coming from someone who seemingly has no background in the tech industry? What have people in the tech field been doing for the last decade to be usurped by a lawyer?
My only criticism of this book is that it’s quite wordy, with long sentences that jam a lot in. It takes a bit of concentration and the style took me a while to adjust too. My mum refused to read it on the grounds that the subtitle is too long, and she’s an academic!
I still think it’s worth the effort.
February 5, 2025
I wanted to love this because the topic is right up my alley, but I struggled to get through it. I normally DNF nonfiction books that take this long to read, but this was recommended to me by someone who also is interested in technology and history, so I stuck with it. If you're interested in an overview of the topics tech ethicists and philosophers have been discussing for the last ten years, this is a reasonable starting point.
What I liked:
The author, who is Australian and unaffiliated with the U.S. press machine, does not shy away from calling out specific companies, leaders, and political ideologies. I was especially interested in Chapter 7, where O'Shea begins to discuss the concept of digital citizenship. She references Thomas Paine's critiques of the religious monolith and draws parallels to the modern tech monopolies.
What I struggled with:
Based on the structure of the book, which tackles one topic and names a historical event or figure through which to understand the modern issue, I thought there would be more depth. Within each chapter, O'Shea jumps around from example to example, historical to modern, which I found disorienting. In the end, each chapter was only a primer of topics like digital surveillance, tech utopianism, and the digital commons, referencing works like Shoshanna Zuboff's Surveillance Capitalism, which fully explore those ideas.
What I liked:
The author, who is Australian and unaffiliated with the U.S. press machine, does not shy away from calling out specific companies, leaders, and political ideologies. I was especially interested in Chapter 7, where O'Shea begins to discuss the concept of digital citizenship. She references Thomas Paine's critiques of the religious monolith and draws parallels to the modern tech monopolies.
What I struggled with:
Based on the structure of the book, which tackles one topic and names a historical event or figure through which to understand the modern issue, I thought there would be more depth. Within each chapter, O'Shea jumps around from example to example, historical to modern, which I found disorienting. In the end, each chapter was only a primer of topics like digital surveillance, tech utopianism, and the digital commons, referencing works like Shoshanna Zuboff's Surveillance Capitalism, which fully explore those ideas.
June 29, 2024
There are so many things I loved about this book and so many things that drove me crazy about this book. I really love how this included lessons from the past and looking into history to guide what our future in technology can look like. I felt like this read like a research paper more often than not. And sometimes it felt like examples and quotes were forced in order to make connections. I also did not always feel a connection between the different chapters and was wondering what is really being said here. There are also many parts that were repetitive. By the end, I was forcing myself to finish the book. Within these last chapters, there were still good information, but I was getting increasingly frustrated. Also, I feel like this was very abstract at points, and I don’t know what to do with the great information provided. What am I supposed to do to bring technological advances into common space instead of having it like so many other things be owned and controlled by the few wealthy that are making the decisions that oppress us in our supposed democracy? is awareness enough? And is optimism that enough people with the right skills and connections to technology are reading this book and moving forward with a more socialist direction for our use of technology going to help me not freak out in what our future may hold?
June 16, 2020
There exists a persistent assumption that the Internet, social media platforms, and our various daily engagements with digital technology are virtual and therefore disparate from real life. O’Shea challenges this assumption by pointing out the many explicit connections between turning points in (mostly) Western history and draws stark parallels with the daily incorporation of digital technology and associated legislation, terms and conditions into our lives. The technology is evolving rapidly, but as O’Shea points out, we have been here before.
This book is a well-written and clear introduction to Marxism. It also reminds us that the perspectives of Marx and Engels (and importantly, Fanon’s theorisation of self-determination) are useful tools to examine technology capitalism as it affects our lives today. O’Shea evokes the anti-enclosure movement to “socialise the cows” that echoed through Boston Common in the eighteenth century as a pathway toward creating digital commons where advancements in technology can benefit the many not the few. A timely reminder that we need to be more critical of the direction of digital technology and learn from the past. One could say that this book is particularly relevant today but that would be true of most days.
This book is a well-written and clear introduction to Marxism. It also reminds us that the perspectives of Marx and Engels (and importantly, Fanon’s theorisation of self-determination) are useful tools to examine technology capitalism as it affects our lives today. O’Shea evokes the anti-enclosure movement to “socialise the cows” that echoed through Boston Common in the eighteenth century as a pathway toward creating digital commons where advancements in technology can benefit the many not the few. A timely reminder that we need to be more critical of the direction of digital technology and learn from the past. One could say that this book is particularly relevant today but that would be true of most days.
August 11, 2023
The divide between common good and technology is getting bolder with the increased surveillance , biased algorithms, data ownership . The book has a right focus on how to use technology for common good and how to reclaim the power of technology to repurpose it for the good of many rather than few, either some tech utopians or totalitarian states.
It’s claim about channeling best technological developments to warfare or commerce rather than freedom and empowerment of society is a right point to discuss. Digital IP rights discussion is an interesting one to think about although some conventional rights discussions like medical inventions have not been concluded whether to be adapted for common good or for commerce. The discussion points are linked with historical events at a pre-tech era presenting the core of the discussions is about principle. The conclusion to have priority to build bridges between people with interest in tech , politics , history , data science art and activism to deal with challenges in order to shape a future defined by fairness and collective joy is a good final , though being a heavy task.
It’s claim about channeling best technological developments to warfare or commerce rather than freedom and empowerment of society is a right point to discuss. Digital IP rights discussion is an interesting one to think about although some conventional rights discussions like medical inventions have not been concluded whether to be adapted for common good or for commerce. The discussion points are linked with historical events at a pre-tech era presenting the core of the discussions is about principle. The conclusion to have priority to build bridges between people with interest in tech , politics , history , data science art and activism to deal with challenges in order to shape a future defined by fairness and collective joy is a good final , though being a heavy task.
July 19, 2020
required reading for anyone interested in current debates of technocracy, mass surveillance, algorithmic control, and its impacts on our identity, health, and democracy. a beautiful and accessible companion to Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, Benjamin's Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, and many others broaching the topic of our current surveillance state. (oh, the irony of posting this review on goodreads...)
October 3, 2022
A look into privacy and the right for “self realization” in our online lives.
The absurdly held notion that people used to have privacy, and were masters of their own thoughts is laughable!!!
People, the masses, never had the right to privacy. The tribe, then the church, (or other religions) was always telling people what to do and think.
Yes, it’s absolutely true that the scale is phenomenal, and the global influences are vast- but the bottom line- it’s not new.
The rich and powerful always told people what to think.
Rich people had some privacy, and education, but only to a point.
It’s a late 20th century concept to have the right to self actualization. Especially for women- so what the hell is the author alluding to????
And the book lost a star for the Edward Snowden bit. That traitor just received a Russian citizenship. He was no hero.
The absurdly held notion that people used to have privacy, and were masters of their own thoughts is laughable!!!
People, the masses, never had the right to privacy. The tribe, then the church, (or other religions) was always telling people what to do and think.
Yes, it’s absolutely true that the scale is phenomenal, and the global influences are vast- but the bottom line- it’s not new.
The rich and powerful always told people what to think.
Rich people had some privacy, and education, but only to a point.
It’s a late 20th century concept to have the right to self actualization. Especially for women- so what the hell is the author alluding to????
And the book lost a star for the Edward Snowden bit. That traitor just received a Russian citizenship. He was no hero.
May 29, 2019
Future Histories is a thought provoking and well researched book about history and technology. It provides a highly original introduction to the key issues in digital technology such as privacy, automation and social media. It does so by drawing heavily on the past, weaving together fascinating histories of computing, social movements (such as the eight-hour-work day), biographies of pioneers like Ada Lovelace and more. The book throws down the gauntlet, challenging us to draw on the lessons of history to chart a digital future that truly makes the world a better place. Highly recommend.
August 20, 2019
I listened to this as an Audiobook and the style of writing plus narration made it very boring to listen to but despite that I am still glad I read it. I certainly didn't agree with the basis of some thoughts, especially when they were following from something like that humans are basically good. But otherwise they were very interesting and sometimes quite eye opening about where technology has come from and been and where it could be going.
It is a thought provoking and seemingly well researched book that is worth the read for anyone who uses technology, which is pretty much everyone.
It is a thought provoking and seemingly well researched book that is worth the read for anyone who uses technology, which is pretty much everyone.
January 1, 2024
This was a phenomenal introduction into the ethical dilemmas with the modern tech landscape. This book touches on data privacy, net neutrality, artifical intelligence, the opacity of technology, and more. I learned so much from this book and I highly recommend this to anyone who works in or closely with the tech industry. Lizzie O'Shea does a remarkable job of both describing potential issues with the current state of the industry and of imagining a future that is equally effective while also being more sustainable and equitable.
June 6, 2021
An engaging, readable, and measured take on the direction that the "digital age" is trending in at the moment, and how we can avoid such a fate. O'Shea marshals together lessons of various stories from history and revolutionary theorists of the past to provide wonderful insight into the problems facing the way we use the Internet now. Anyone interested in building a better world should pick this book up.
August 24, 2021
Aside from two fantastic chapters, the work here feels like trodden ground to me. Perhaps I'm not the intended audience. My initial enthusiasm for the book deflated before the half way point. Fortunately another fascinating chapter near the end kept me going.
I won't say which parts for me, personally, set my intellect and imagination ablaze; read it and see what this literature does to your mind!
I won't say which parts for me, personally, set my intellect and imagination ablaze; read it and see what this literature does to your mind!
February 26, 2024
Future Histories makes a comprehensive case to democratically socialize the internet as a common good. It details ways to better protect users and preserve the history of technology, like it's a public infrastructure project and people are its citizens with rights (such as to privacy). Though, I read it as a book with so many "musts", "shoulds" and "oughts" -- it's unclear if it's written for the everyday user or for leaders in tech policy, despite being written so generally.
September 4, 2019
Unwieldy subtitle aside, this is an absolutely marvelous work of radical theory applied to some of the most urgent questions related to power and transformative movements in the digital age. O’Shea is a gifted writer whose lively and accessible prose is fun to read, only rarely belaboring a theoretical point or extending a descriptive case study or historical analogy beyond its welcome.
September 15, 2019
Et fascinerende prosjekt der forfatteren viser hvordan vi kan bruke historien til å forstå viktige aspekter ved dagens digitale hverdag. Hvordan kan vi lære av tidligere hendelser for å gjøre gode valg i dag. Hun argumenterer for hvorfor internett må være tilgjengelig for alle og at informasjon også stort sett må være åpen for alle for vårt felles beste.
March 7, 2020
Great book that goes into the failure of technology capitalism and suggests concrete steps to take to use taxpayer funded and developed technology for the benefit of humanity as a whole instead of lining the pockets of corporations who profit off our personal data. Very timely read that I would recommend to anyone who is looking for fresh opinions on political philosophy.
September 4, 2022
Although well crafted with the eyes on the ball, this is a rather introductory account of the design of systems and structures for exercising power. Especially Chapter Three, "Digital Surveillance Cannot Make Us Safe: Policing Bodies and Time on London's Docks", is very intriguing. A good read for students of design, communication and technology.
September 25, 2023
Feels like the most relevant book for the coming future. I love the way history was used to understand present day struggles, and imagine a brighter future. I also found so many perfect references of other works and authors that are incredibly useful. It convinced me (a history obsessed political science, lawyer wannabe) to consider technology in a whole new way.
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