Technology’s Past and Future: The Need for Justice and Insight

How is technology changing our daily lives? And how may we change it for the better? Three recent books provide fascinating answers to these questions. Charlton McIlwain’s Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, From the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter, offers a compelling history and theory of how many forms of bias and subordination degraded online life, and how they can be combated. Joanne McNeil’s Lurking: How a Person Became a User, identifies the primary (if sometimes contradictory) concerns of people online: searching, safety, privacy, identity, community, anonymity, and visibility. And Frank Pasquale’s New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI, offers an inspiring vision of technological progress, in which human capacities and expertise are the irreplaceable center of an inclusive economy. Moderated by Christina Mulligan, Brooklyn Law School, Vice Dean Professor of Law: Internet Law & Intellectual Property