Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune

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.