What do (Techno) Feudalism, Cryptocurrency, Spearfishing, the Apple II, and the Metric System have in common?
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by Jacob Pleasants
Five (+1) Books Worth Reading
I have read quite a few great books over the last month or so, each of which is worth a full review (and an author Q&A!). But time is short, and so some mini reviews will have to suffice.
This is also a good time to give a shout out to our Civics of Tech Book Club selections, which are always worth reading. At the end of this post is a “bonus” review of Joy Buolamwini’s Unmasking AI, which we discussed at the end of March.
The five books I’m sharing here are ones that have maybe flown under your radar. They’re all recent publications, and while their topics vary, they all offer insights that speak to core Civics of Technology themes. Technologies are not mere tools. They are parts of sociotechnical systems of interacting material and human components. The technologies are not neutral because the societies in which they are created and deployed are not neutral. Each of these books tells a story of a particular “class” of technologies and their complex interactions with social systems. The technologies they address are familiar enough, but I ended up learning a whole lot more about their histories, their technical structures, and their sociocultural elements.
Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism
By Yanis Varoufakis, 2024
How will the rise of digital technologies - computers in particular - affect the capitalist economic systems that have been dominant for the past several centuries? Might those technologies entrench capitalism, or usher in something new that finally liberates the laboring class from the oppressive capitalist regime? Yanis Varoufakis wrestles with this question, and his answer is not at all what one might expect, or hope it be.
In short: rather than liberate us from the chains of capitalism, or even entrench capitalism, digital technologies have ushered in a new form of an old economic arrangement: (Techno)Feudalism. What does that mean? In essence, the foundation of feudalism is rent. The feudal lord exerts power over the laboring class (serfs) by restricting access (and extracting rent) to the means of production: land. Capitalism displaced feudalism by changing the primary means of productivity from land to “capital” (technology). Like the feudal lords, the capitalists held power over labor by restricting access to capital. Instead of extracting rent, capitalists extract profit by exploiting the labor harnessed by capital.
Varoufakis argues that today, the power of capitalist profit is beginning to wane, only to be replaced by a new form of (techno)feudalist rent. The Big Tech companies are vigorously pursuing a project of “enclosing” the internet by creating platforms and systems that we all are obliged to use. Once dominance has been established, then the rent extraction begins. The Amazon Marketplace is a canonical example: if you want to sell your wares on the internet, you are all but obligated to go through this platform, and Amazon is notorious for its extractive fees.
This book is full of economic history as well as analysis of the current intersections of technology and political economy. It addresses many technical details but is also highly accessible. Even if you don’t buy into the grand narrative that Varoufakis puts forth (and I admit that I have some doubts), it is a thought-provoking thesis that is absolutely worth considering.
Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets
By Brett Scott, 2022
Wouldn’t it be great if we could use technology to finally achieve a “cashless society?” Maybe we could even throw away our wallets and run all of our financial transactions through our phones. Just imagine how we could eliminate so much friction from our financial dealings!
In this book, Brett Scott presents a deep critical analysis of these impulses. The fundamental question he asks is, “Who do these financial technologies serve, and who do they not?” As he shows, for all of the convenience that financial technologies appear to bring, they also create systems that enable the extraction of wealth (e.g., transaction fees) and data. Those extractive capabilities, he argues, are the primary (though rarely disclosed) purposes of those systems; this is why they are being pushed on us. The technologists despise cash because it allows financial transactions to evade the systems of control and surveillance that they are trying to create. Scott therefore argues strongly that the “old” technology of cash has distinct advantages and plays a valuable role in our society.
This book does not shy away from the technical details of how our technological monetary and financial systems work. I personally learned a lot about how those systems function from this book. Understanding those details is essential for fully grasping the ways that those systems operate in society and the nature of their present and future impacts. Scott elucidates the inner workings of banking, credit cards, and even cryptocurrencies. By demystifying those technologies, we can see past the hype narratives around cashless transactions, and we can begin to envision better (cash) futures.
Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks
By Scott J. Shapiro, 2023
Now for a book that isn’t overtly about economics. In this book, Scott Shapiro presents a rollicking and fascinating history of hacking and cybersecurity. He centers five central cases (including the hack of Paris Hilton’s phone!), but also positions those cases within their broader social and technical histories. So, you’ll get the rich story of how exactly Paris Hilton’s phone was hacked, but also the backstory of why and how her phone became hackable.
In keeping with the other books that I’ve shared today, this one does not shy away from the technical details. You don’t need a background in Computer Science to understand this book, but a little familiarity is probably helpful (I consider myself firmly in the “semi-informed layperson” camp). There will be discussions of buffer overflows, DDOS attacks, and the like. But what makes this book interesting aren’t the technical weeds. Shapiro presents a compelling story of hacks and cybersecurity as fully sociotechnical systems, with historical contingencies. The computer systems we have are inherently vulnerable to hacks and attacks because those vulnerabilities derive from the very same foundations that make our systems so very useful to us. The implication here is that there is no technical fix to the problems of cybersecurity. More cryptography, more passwords, more forms of identification — these have a role to play, but they won’t solve the problems of security. Those problems arise from the ways that we as humans interact with and share our technological systems and how we interact with each other.
The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal
By Laine Nooney, 2023
Let’s take another step back into the history of computing! In 1977, the fledgling Apple released the Apple II computer. It wasn’t the first of its kind, but it proved to be deeply influential as a “personal computer” - one that could be owned by an individual rather than an entire office or research lab. But here’s the puzzle: the Apple II was a piece of computing hardware, but without software, its uses were extremely limited. Unless you had the knowledge, skills, and interest in doing all of your own programming, the Apple II was downright useless without a library of worthwhile programs. But this obviously creates a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. Software had to be created specifically for the Apple II, but who is going to write software for a piece of hardware that might not be widely used?
This book is about the dawn of the consumer software products that made the Apple II - and personal computers more generally - something that “regular people” (not just hobbyist programmers) would actually want to own. Nooney tells the origin stories of spreadsheet programs, computer games, and even programs that let you copy your floppy disks (against the wishes of the publishers!). What these histories reveal are the fascinating interactions between the technical characteristics of the hardware and software and the social and cultural environments into which they were gradually adopted. The Apple II age was not quite the moment of mass adoption that investors hoped to see. But it was a time period in which whole new segments of people became owners and users of computer hardware and software. How did the values of those new users/consumers interact with those of the developers/publishers? How did those interactions, along with the technical capabilities of the era, chart the path of technological development? This book gave me insight into these questions, and I could clearly see how those early sociotechnical developments set the stage for the world of computing that was to come later (and, incidentally, was the computing world in which I grew up!).
Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants
By James Vincent, 2022
One more book to share, and it’s quite different from the others. The other three books focus on contemporary digital technologies, while this one goes deep into the history of science and technology to tell the story of measurement. James Vincent shows how measurement - and its associated technologies - has been an integral part of human culture for millenia. So important, in fact, that instruments of “official” weights and measures can be found enshrined in the burial sites of ancient rulers and officials. Indeed, changes in government have often occurred in conjunction with changes in measurement - from ancient China to 18th-century France.
Today, we largely take our standardized system of weights and measures for granted. It seems utterly natural and logical to us. Every once in a while, one of us Americans gets jolted out of our complacency when we have to deal with the metric system (“The speed limit in this neighborhood is 40 km per hour? But that’s so fast!”). But even then, we can rest assured that there is a straightforward way to convert from one to the other (“Oh, that’s just 25 mph.”). This state of affairs is very recent. For much of human history, the precise definition of weights, lengths, volumes, and the like would vary widely from country to country, town to town, buyer to seller (not surprisingly, these inconsistencies were often used by the powerful for exploitative purposes).
Gradually, though, the work of scientists as well as technologists and politicians brought “order” to this menagerie, with profound cultural consequences. Not only were measurement systems “rationalized,” but entirely new measurement schemes were created to quantify what were previously qualitative aspects of human life (e.g., temperature, time). These developments were the products of peculiar sociocultural circumstances as much as they were milestones of technoscientific “progress.” The metric system, for instance, is a product of the French Revolution, wrapped up in its political philosophies and social values.
I will admit that my fascination with this book may very much be tied to my identity as a science educator and my enduring interest in the history of science. But even if you aren’t a “science person” (and if you aren’t, I might make it my mission to convince you otherwise), there is plenty to glean from this book. It reveals our measurement systems for the peculiar and influential technologies that they are.
BONUS
Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What is Human in a World of Machines
Joy Buolamwini, 2023
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, as I am already pretty familiar with Buolmwini’s work (via, for instance, Coded Bias, her 2017 TED Talk, AI, Ain’t I a Woman). Would the book be a synthesis of her critiques and analyses from the past decade, would it explore new territory, perhaps a bit of both? Somewhat unexpectedly, Buolamwini approaches the book more as a memoir than a “book about AI.” She tells her personal journey of entering the world of AI research, gradually becoming aware of the entrenched biases, and becoming an activist. She presents her technical arguments as well, of course - critiques of AI systems that not only require sociocultural awareness but also the technical knowledge that Buolamwini brings to bear.
The technical critiques were familiar to me, and yet there were still nuances and subtleties that I found illuminating. But for me, the more compelling part of the book is her story of burgeoning awareness. Buolamwini did not go off to graduate school to learn technology criticism; quite the opposite! And yet through a series of AI encounters that unsettled her, she pursued a path of not just an AI researcher but an activist, and a highly successful one at that. She developed an approach to speaking about AI in a language that both lay and technical audiences could understand.
So, pick up this book to not just learn about AI, but also about what it takes to speak truth to the tech mainstream.
So… what are y’all reading?