What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us About Digital Technology

When we talk about technology we always talk about tomorrow and the future -- which makes it hard to figure out how to even get there. With engaging, sparkling prose, public interest lawyer and digital specialist Lizzie O'Shea argues that we need to stop looking forward and start looking backwards. Weaving together histories of computing and progressive social movements with modern theories of the mind, society, and self, O'Shea constructs a "usable past" that can help us determine our digital future. Future Histories is for all of us--makers, coders, hacktivists, Facebook-users, self-styled Luddites--who find ourselves in a brave new world.

Speaker: Author Lizzie O'Shea, in conversation with tech writer Wendy Liu

4th floor meeting room.