Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview
  • Future Histories

  • What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us About Digital Technology
  • By: Lizzie O'Shea
  • Narrated by: Cat Gould
  • Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (3 ratings)

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Future Histories

By: Lizzie O'Shea
Narrated by: Cat Gould
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

When we talk about technology we always talk about tomorrow and the future - which makes it hard to figure out how to even get there. In Future Histories, public interest lawyer and digital specialist Lizzie O'Shea argues that we need to stop looking forward and start looking backwards. Weaving together histories of computing and progressive 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? How can Frantz Fanon's theories of anti-colonial self-determination help us build a digital world in which everyone can participate equally? Can debates over equal digital access be helped by American revolutionary Tom Paine's theories of democratic, economic redistribution? What can indigenous land struggles teach us about stewarding our digital climate? And, how is Elon Musk not a future visionary but a steampunk throwback to Victorian-era technological utopians?

In engaging, sparkling prose, O'Shea shows us how very human our understanding of technology is, and how when we draw on the resources of the past, we can see the potential for struggle, for liberation, for art, and poetry in our technological present.

©2019 Lizzie O'Shea (P)2019 Tantor
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2
activate_samplebutton_t1

Listeners also enjoyed...

New Laws of Robotics cover art
The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded cover art
Think like a Commoner cover art
The Locust and the Bee cover art
The Evil Twins of Technocracy and Transhumanism cover art
Why Privacy Matters cover art
Which Side of History? cover art
BetweenBrains cover art
The Social Singularity cover art
Internet for the People cover art
Rules for a Flat World cover art
Artificial Intelligence: Confronting the Revolution cover art
Radical Technologies cover art
The 4th Revolution cover art
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism cover art
Race After Technology cover art

What listeners say about Future Histories

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.