Future Histories

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

By: Lizzie O’Shea

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Hardcover | 1 July 2019

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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 the Paris Commune tell us about earlier experiments in sharing resources-like the Internet-in common? 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.

About the Author

Lizzie O'Shea is a lawyer, writer, and broadcaster. She 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 Herald, among others.

Industry Reviews

"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

"Polemical and eclectic." - Choice

"There's plenty of history in Future Histories, but the perspective is polemical and eclectic: a pinch of socialism, a dash of anarchism, relentless strictures on digital misconduct, and, throughout, a salutary call to use technology to fulfill humanity's potential." - T. P. Johnson, Choice

"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." - New Books Network

"O'Shea's approach is avowedly episodic as she mines history for illuminating gems." - Hettie O'brien, Times Literary Supplement

"This insightful, provocative book is an intellectual kaleidoscope that sits effortlessly at the crossroads between investigation, history and radical philosophy." - Victorian Premier's Literary Award panel

"A startlingly original book, one that belies comparison to most other books... Although it is not, I would argue, a fair expectation that writers who analyse or expose societal problems should also be the ones to prescribe the remedies to solve them, this hefty task is one that O'Shea takes on with aplomb and considerable skill." - Ruby Hamad, Meanjin

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