A User's Guide to the Age of Tech

Grant Wythoff

$180

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

University of Minnesota Press
03 September 2025

Impact of science & technology on society; Ethical & social aspects of computing

Series: Electronic Mediations

How users experience and influence technological change-when so much of that change feels out of our control

Every day, we casually employ one of the most complex tools ever created, using it to read the news, plan our day, and connect with friends. In A User's Guide to the Age of Tech, Grant Wythoff investigates the process by which now-ubiquitous technologies like our phones become integrated into our lives, showing how the ""gadget"" stage-before devices are widely adopted-opens the door for users to co-create these technologies and adapt them toward unexpected ends.

In this elegant, approachable work, Wythoff offers a view of how users make new technology their own, subverting dominant power structures and imagining uses never intended by their creators. Rooted in a detailed look into the history of technique (focusing on how we do things with tools rather than the tools themselves), A User's Guide to the Age of Tech proceeds to complicate, and influence, discussion of subjects like the digital divide and AI.

Drawing on a range of sources, including novels, patents, and newspapers, Wythoff explores the vernacular philosophies that have emerged from users and their diverse, everyday practices, bringing down to earth the conversation about digital titans, away from the abstracted domains of server farms and algorithms. Lodging a passionate argument that we know ourselves better than the data brokers who appear to wield influence over our psyches, Wythoff invites readers (and tech users) to imagine their own digital technique, acknowledge their vast expertise, and see its immense value.

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By: Grant Wythoff
Imprint: University of Minnesota Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 15mm
Weight: 249g
ISBN: 9781517918767
ISBN 10: 1517918766
Series: Electronic Mediations
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 03 September 2025
Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Grant Wythoff directs graduate student programs at the Center for Digital Humanities, Princeton University. He is cofounder of the cooperative mesh network and digital equity organization Philly Community Wireless and is editor of The Perversity of Things: Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering, and Scientifiction (Minnesota, 2016).

Reviews for A User's Guide to the Age of Tech

""Expertly blending history, theory, and contemporary practice, A User’s Guide to the Age of Tech offers a fresh and illuminating take on why our bodies still matter as much as the devices they control.""—Lauren F. Klein, coauthor of Data Feminism