Part I: Tech Criticism Origins and Tensions

What does technology criticism look like in practice? How is the relationship between technology companies and journalism affecting critical journalism? How can criticism help surface the assumptions and values behind technologies and their development? Which writers—critics or otherwise—contribute to the public discourse about technology and society, and how?

Foundations of Tech Criticism

How have public intellectuals and theorists approached technological change in the past? How is technology criticism changing?

• Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization, 1934¹⁸³
• Martin Heidegger, Question Concerning Technology, 1954¹⁸⁴
• Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964¹⁸⁵
• Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, 1964¹⁸⁶
• Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, 1985¹⁸⁷
• Kevin White, “The Killer App” 1994¹⁸⁸

Silicon Valley + the Media

How is the relationship between technology companies and journalism changing? How does this limit the critical voice of the media in holding technology powers accountable to society? When revenue and access to audience are mediated by technology powers, how does this constrain who can afford to publish probing criticism about technology?

• Adrienne Lafrance, “Access, Accountability Reporting and Silicon Valley,” 2016¹⁸⁹
• John Herrman, “Tech Is Eating Media. Now What?,” 2015¹⁹⁰
• Mike Ananny, “It’s Time to Reimagine the Role of a Public Editor, Starting at The New York Times,” 2016¹⁹¹
• Emily Bell, “Facebook Is Eating the World,” 2016¹⁹²
• Ben Smith, “Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists,” 2014¹⁹³
• Nellie Bowles, “What Silicon Valley’s Billionaires Don’t Understand about the First Amendment,” 2016¹⁹⁴

Critic = Luddite/Anti-Progress?

How and why does technology resist criticism? How does criticism move beyond Luddite, anti-progress associations?

• Michael Sacasas, “What Does the Critic Love?,” 2012¹⁹⁵
• Evan Selinger, “Why It’s Too Easy To Dismiss Technology Critics: Or, The Fallacies Leading A Reviewer To Call Nicholas Carr Paranoid,” 2014¹⁹⁶
• Jill Lepore, “The Disruption Machine,” 2014¹⁹⁷

Tech Ideology

What do technologists take for granted, and what are their shared influences and epistemological stances? How do those positions and assumptions surface in our technologies and in a technologically driven society?

• Ellen Ullman, Close to the Machine, 1997¹⁹⁸
• Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture, 2006¹⁹⁹
• Elmo Keep, “Future Perfect,” 2015²⁰⁰
• Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” 1995²⁰¹

Means and Ends of Criticism

What is technology criticism for? Who is its intended audience? How can it affect real change, socially and politically? What does radical technology criticism look like, and what are its limits?

• Matt Buchanan, “Waiting for the Next Great Technology Critic,” 2013²⁰²
• Mendelsohn, “A Critic’s Manifesto,” 2012²⁰³
• Ursula Franklin, The Real World of Technology, 1990²⁰⁴
• Evgeny Morozov, “The Taming of Tech Criticism,” 2015²⁰⁵

Who is a “Critic”

Which voices are represented and published today? Who gets to—or wishes to—call themselves a “critic”? What have critics of technology accomplished so far?

• Henry Farrell, “The Tech Intellectuals,” 2013²⁰⁶
• Jillian C. York, “Closed Network,” 2014²⁰⁷
• Astra Taylor and Joanne McNeil, “Dads of Tech,” 2014²⁰⁸
• Tressie McMillan Cottom, “How to Make a Pundit,” 2014²⁰⁹
• Jenny Davis, “Our Devices Are Not Turning Us into Unfeeling Robots,” 2015²¹⁰
• Rose Eveleth, “Why Aren’t There More Women Futurists?,” 2016²¹¹
• Sara M. Watson, “How Virginia Heffernan Is Reinventing Tech Criticism,” 2016²¹²