Graduate school, as it happens, can get quite busy and not leave much time for analyzing the experience itself in a blog post. As I spend the summer catching up with the priorities I’ve let fall by the wayside while classes were on, I thought I’d offer proof of life by way of a reading list. Below are some of the most interesting books that have come to my attention during the course of my studies, but that I have not yet been able to engage with. They are presented below in alphabetical order, by author.
- Amerika, Mark. remixthebook, University of Minnesota Press, 2011.
- An exploration of remix culture that is itself a remixed artifact.
- Bhattacharyya, Gargi. We, the Heartbroken, Hajar Press, 2023.
- Essays on collective and personal grief in the context of racial capitalism and the pandemic.
- Borschke, Margie, This Is Not a Remix: Piracy, Authenticiy and Popular Music, Bloomsbury, 2017.
- Places digital music piracy and unauthorized remixing in historical context.
- Broussard, Meredith. More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech, MIT Press, 2023.
- On the myth of tech industry neutrality, and equitable solutions to algorithmic failures.
- Chen, Carolyn. Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley, Princeton University Press, 2022.
- Examining the relationship between spirituality and neoliberal work culture in the tech industry.
- Cohen, Nicole, and de Peuter, Greig. New Media Unions: Organizing Digital Journalists, Routledge, 2020.
- A look at how unionizing digital-first journalists led to a new union movement in journalism more broadly.
- Costanza-Chock, Sasha. Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need, MIT Press, 2020.
- Examining both the theory and practice of how justice and power intersect in the field of design.
- Crawford, Kate. Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Cost of Artificial Intelligence, Yale University Press, 2021.
- A critical look at the failings and costs of artificial intelligence, both political and environmental.
- Crosby, Andrew. Resisting Eviction: Domicide and the Financialization of Rental Housing, Fernwood Publishing, 2023.
- Case study of the fight over a rental-dominated neighbourhood in Ottawa.
- Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World, Verso, 2001.
- A blend of history, ecology, and politics that attempts to fill in some gaps in our understanding of how the modern world is shaped.
- Delfanti, Alessandro. The Warehouse: Workers and Robots at Amazon, Pluto Press, 2021.
- On Amazon’s use of technology in their warehouse infrastructure, focused on its oppressive tendencies and worker resistance.
- Dotorow, Cory. The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, Verso, 2023.
- An argument in favour of platform interoperability. I expect to argue with this one a lot.
- Doctorow, Cory, and Giblin, Rebecca. Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Capture Creative Labor Markets and How We’ll Win Them Back, Penguin Random House, 2023.
- On the anti-competitive features of contemporary capitalism, as seen in the arts industries.
- Duffy, Brooke Erin, Poell, Thomas, and Nieborg, David B. Platforms and Cultural Production, Wiley, 2021.
- Examining how tech platforms impact cultural production across several industries.
- Du Gay, Paul, et al. Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman (2nd ed.), SAGE Publications, 2013.
- Foundational text and case study on how contemporary culture studies work.
- Dyer-Witheford, Nick, Kjøssen, Atle Mikkola, and Sheinhoff, James. Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism, Pluto Press, 2019.
- A Marxist analysis of artificial intelligence.
- Foucade, Marion, and Healy, Kieran. The Ordinal Society, Harvard University Press, 2024.
- Another book about the effects of algorithmic pressures on contemporary life that problemetizes the more common critical takes.
- Gray, Mary L., and Suri, Siddharth. Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019.
- Anthropological examination of the labour exploitation required to make “smart” systems work.
- Greenfield, Adam. Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire, Verso, 2024.
- Not actually out for another five days, any book by Adam is worth noting, and should be at or near the top of an engaged person’s list. I received a PDF ARC, but have not yet had the opportunity to read much past the introduction, which is by itself one of the best things I’ve read in some time.
- Gunkel, David J. Of Remixology: Ethics and Aesthetics After Remix, MIT Press, 2022.
- Theorizing the moral and aesthetic value of remixing.
- Henaway, Mostafa. Essential Work, Disposable Workers: Migration, Capitalism, Class, Fernwood Publishing, 2023.
- On cross-border corporate power and the exploitation of migrant workers.
- Irani, Lilly. Chasing Innovation: Making Entrepreneurial Citizens in Modern India, Princeton University Press, 2019.
- Contextualizes the relationship between development and entrepreneurship, questioning the receivecd understanding of innovation and innovators.
- Johnson, Alix. Where Cloud Is Ground: Placing Data and Making Place in Iceland, University of California Press, 2023.
- An ethnography of Iceland’s data centre industry.
- McNeil, Joanne. Lurking: How a Person Became a User, MCD, 2020.
- A critical look at the Internet as a space for people, and how platforms shape the idea of personhood in that space.
- McQuillan, Dan. Resisting AI: An Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence, Bristol University Press, 2022.
- Exactly what it says on the tin.
- Medina, Eden. Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile, MIT Press, 2014.
- A study of Chile’s Project Cybersyn.
- Meikle, Graham. Deepfakes, Polity, 2022.
- The impact of certain AI technologies on trust in the contemporary media environment.
- Morozov, Evgeny. To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism, PublicAffairs, 2013.
- A critical examination of technological solutionism from one of the best tech journalists around.
- Mosco, Vincent. The Political Economy of Communication (2nd ed.), SAGE Publications, 2009.
- The definitive primer on the subject.
- Muldoon, James. Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim Our Digital Future from Big Tech, Pluto Press, 2022.
- How grassroots movements can take control of Internet platforms.
- Napoli, Philip M. Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age, Columbia University Press, 2019.
- An argument for considering large platforms as news media.
- Navas, Eduardo. Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling, Springer Vienna, 2012.
- Placing sampling culture in historical context.
- Navas, Eduardo, Gallagher, Owen, and burrough, xtine. The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies, Routledge, 2017.
- A collection of essays covering nearly every aspect of remix studies.
- Neyland, Daniel. The Everyday Life of an Algorithm, Palgrave Pivot Cham, 2019.
- An extended sociological case study that follows the development of a surveillance algorithm over three years.
- Owens, Jay. Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles, Abrams Books, 2023.
- A deep dive into the concept of dust, with all of its implications.
- Schneider, Nathan. Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life, University of California Press, 2024.
- An examination of how the often regressive ways we’ve chosen to govern online spaces has had a negative effect on how we govern other spaces, and what we might be able to do about it.
- Siles, Ignacio. Living with Algorithms: Agency and User Culture in Costa Rica, MIT Press, 2023.
- Case studies of user-algorithm relationships in the Global South.
- Steinhoff, James. Automation and Autonomy: Labour, Capital and Machines in the Artificial Intelligence Industry, Palgrave Macmillan Cham, 2021.
- Marxist analysis of labour in the AI industry.
- Tarnoff, Ben. Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future, Verso, 2022.
- An argument to de-privatize the Internet.
- Verdegem, Pieter (ed.). AI for Everyone? Critical Perspectives, University of Westminster Press, 2021.
- Critical perspectives on AI from a number of angles.
- Wallis, Glenn. A Critique of Western Buddhism, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.
- Exactly what it says on the tin.
