The history of technology is often told as a history of progress. Thomas Dekeyser turns this story on its head, leading a journey to the critical junctures where people have rejected and tried to undo, rather than adopt, new technologies. In Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine, Dekeyser challenges readers to rethink the terms of our technological present and future. Here, Dekeyser is joined in conversation with Brian Merchant and Sarah Sharma.

Thomas Dekeyser is a filmmaker and lecturer in human geography at the University of Southampton and author of Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine.

Sarah Sharma is acting Vice Dean, Research and Program Innovation at the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto, where she is also professor of media theory at the ICCIT/Faculty of Information and director of the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology. Sharma is author of Insufferable Tools: Feminism Against Big Tech and In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics.

Brian Merchant is author of Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech and The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone. He is a reporter in residence at the AI Now Institute, former technology columnist at the Los Angeles Times, co-founder and editor of Vice’s speculative fiction outlet TERRAFORM, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wired, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, and Fast Company.

EPISODE REFERENCES:

Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1985 essay)

Film: Machines in Flames

Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine by Thomas Dekeyser is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.