Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us About Digital Technology...

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Lizzie O'Shea

Future Histories

What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us About Digital Technology

Lizzie O'Shea

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Hardback

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English

Verso
01 July 2019

Social forecasting, future studies; Impact of science & technology on society; Ethical & social aspects of computing

When we talk about technology we always talk about the future — which makes it hard to figure out how to get there. In Future Histories, Lizzie O’Shea argues that we need to stop looking forward and start looking backwards. Weaving together histories of computing and social movements with modern theories of the mind, society, and self, O’Shea constructs a “usable past” that can help us determine our digital future.

What, she asks, can early experiments in democracy, like the Paris Commune, tell us about how to manage a collective resource like the internet? Can debates over equal digital access be guided by Tom Paine’s theories of democratic, economic redistribution? And, how is Elon Musk not a visionary but a throwback to Victorian-era utopians?

In engaging, sparkling prose, O’Shea shows us how very human our understanding of technology is, and what potential exists for struggle, for liberation, for art and poetry in our digital present. Future Histories is for all of us—makers, coders, hacktivists, Facebook-users, self-styled Luddites—who find ourselves in a brave new world.

By: Lizzie O'Shea
Imprint: Verso
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm, Spine: 30mm
Weight: 639g
ISBN: 9781788734301
ISBN 10: 1788734300
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 01 July 2019
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Lizzie O'Shea is a lawyer, writer, and broadcaster. An experienced lawyer in Australia and internationally, specializing in human rights and Aboriginal rights in Australia, she has represented refugees, activists, and people targeted by national security legislation. O'Shea is regularly featured on national television programs and radio to comment on law, digital technology, corporate responsibility, and human rights, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, and The Sydney Morning Health, among others. An experienced lawyer in Australia and internationally, specializing in human rights and Aboriginal rights in Australia, O'Shea has represented refugees, activists, and people targeted by national security legislation. She holds degrees from the University of Melbourne and an Masters in Law from Columbia University, specializing in corporate responsibility and digital technology, and sits on the boards of numerous non-profit community organizations, including Digital Rights Watch Australia.

Reviews for Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us About Digital Technology

Before we became big data bundles for the lackeys of Dorsey, Jobs, Zuckerberg, and Bezos, to exploit, the digital revolution seemed to promise a democratic utopia, a commons in cyberspace not governed by neoliberal norms. Can we realize that revolutionary dream and stop desiring our own domination? Incredibly, yet thrillingly and plausibly, Lizzie O'Shea argues that, if only we can mobilize history to serve rather than enervate us, the answer is yes. - Stuart Jeffries There has never been a better time to pull the politics of platform capitalism into the foreground where it belongs. Lizzie O'Shea brings a hacker's curiosity, a historian's reach and a lawyer's precision to bear on our digitally saturated present, emerging with a compelling argument that a better world is there for the taking. - Scott Ludlam A thought-provoking text for readers looking to approach the subject [of digital technologies] from a well-informed ... perspective. - Engineering and Technology Magazine