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.

Kill It with Fire chronicles the challenges of dealing with aging computer systems, along with sound modernization strategies. How to survive a legacy apocalypse “Kill it with fire,” the typical first reaction to a legacy system falling into obsolescence, is a knee-jerk approach that often burns through tons of money and time only to result in a less efficient solution. This book offers a far more forgiving modernization framework, laying out smart value-add strategies and proven techniques that work equally well for ancient systems and brand-new ones. Renowned for restoring some of the world’s oldest, messiest computer networks to operational excellence, software engineering expert Marianne Bellotti distills key lessons and insights from her experience into practical, research-backed guidance to help you determine when and how to modernize. With witty, engaging prose, Bellotti explains why new doesn’t always mean better, weaving in illuminating case studies and anecdotes from her work in the field. You’ll learn: Where to focus your maintenance efforts for maximum impact and value How to pick the right modernization solutions for your specific needs and keep your plans on track How to assess whether your migrations will add value before you invest in them What to consider before moving data to the cloud How to determine when a project is finished Packed with resources, exercises, and flexible frameworks for organizations of all ages and sizes, Kill It with Fire will give you a vested interest in your technology’s future.

"This anthology of original historical essays examines how social relations are enacted in and through computing using the twin frameworks of abstraction and embodiment. The book highlights a wide range of understudied contexts and experiences, such as computing and disability, working mothers as technical innovators, race and community formation, and gaming behind the Iron Curtain"--

In Silicon Valley Imperialism, Erin McElroy maps the processes of gentrification, racial dispossession, and economic predation that drove the development of Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area and how that logic has become manifest in postsocialist Romania. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Romania and the United States, McElroy exposes the mechanisms through which the appeal of Silicon Valley technocapitalism devours space and societies, displaces residents, and generates extreme income inequality in order to expand its reach. In Romania, dreams of privatization updated fascist and anti-Roma pasts and socialist-era underground computing practices. At the same time, McElroy accounts for the ways Romanians are resisting Silicon Valley capitalist logics, where anticapitalist and anti-imperialist activists and protesters build on socialist-era worldviews not to restore state socialism but rather to establish more just social formations. Attending to the violence of Silicon Valley imperialism, McElroy reveals technocapitalism as an ultimately unsustainable model of rapacious economic and geographic growth.

Chronicles History of Computer Pioneers & the Industry They Founded