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  • Published: 18 May 2021
  • ISBN: 9780262539739
  • Imprint: MIT Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $90.00

Your Computer Is on Fire



Techno-utopianism is dead: Now is the time to pay attention to the inequality, marginalization, and biases woven into our technological systems.

Technology scholars declare an emergency: attention must be paid to the inequality, marginalization, and biases woven into our technological systems.

This book sounds an alarm: we can no longer afford to be lulled into complacency by narratives of techno-utopianism, or even techno-neutrality. We should not be reassured by such soothing generalities as "human error," "virtual reality," or "the cloud." We need to realize that nothing is virtual: everything that "happens online," "virtually," or "autonomously" happens offline first, and often involves human beings whose labor is deliberately kept invisible. Everything is IRL. In Your Computer Is on Fire, technology scholars train a spotlight on the inequality, marginalization, and biases woven into our technological systems.

  • Published: 18 May 2021
  • ISBN: 9780262539739
  • Imprint: MIT Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $90.00

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Praise for Your Computer Is on Fire

"[A] historian who has written extensively about labor in the tech sector..." --New York Timesr Hicks

"This sense for prefiguration, for imagining things not as they are but as they could be -- as we might come to understand them -- is what makes Mullaney more than just a historian." --The Daily Californianian