Lisa Nakamura offers a powerful counterhistory of Silicon Valley in The Inattention Economy, which argues for both recognition and material compensation for the labor of the women of color who built the internet. Nakamura exposes how these women—including Tila Tequila, the first true internet influencer of the MySpace era—have been structurally excluded from racial capitalism’s benefits and focuses on how their work makes possible the platforms ingrained in our daily lives. Nakamura is joined here in conversation with Cassius Adair, André Brock, Jr., and Wendy Sung.

Lisa Nakamura is the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor in the Department of American Cultures and the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is author of several books, including The Inattention Economy, Cybertypes, and Digitizing Race.

Cassius Adair is assistant professor at the School of Art, Media, and Technology, part of the Parsons School of Design at The New School.

André Brock, Jr., is an associate professor of Black Digital Media at Georgia Tech and author of Distributed Blackness.

Wendy Sung is assistant professor of race, visuality, and digital culture in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA.

Episode references:

-“Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women and the Racialization of Early Electronic Manufacture,” American Quarterly 66, no. 4.

-The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene / Celine Parreñas Shimizu

-Race After the Internet / Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White, editors

-Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto / Legacy Russell

-This Bridge Called My Back / Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, editors

-Distributed Blackness / André Brock Jr.

-Violent Virality / Wendy Sung (forthcoming)

-Digitizing Race / Lisa Nakamura

-”Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women and the Racialization of Early Electronic Manufacture,” Lisa Nakamura, American Quarterly 66 no. 4.

Praise for the book:
"A groundbreaking rereading of the entire history of the internet."
—Grace Kyungwon Hong

"A crucial analysis of the way digital technologies have been systematically built out of the embodied labor of women of color."
—Kalindi Vora

The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internetby Lisa Nakamura is available from University of Minnesota Press for purchase and also in an open-access edition available for download. Thank you for listening.