This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our supporters at Petrian.com

and by Verso Books, which has loads of great left-wing titles,

perfect for dig listeners like you.

One that you might like is future histories,

what Ada Lovelace, Tom Payne,

and the Paris Commune teach us about digital technology by Lizzie O'Shea.

When we talk about technology, we always talk about the future,

which makes it hard to figure out how to get there.

In future histories, Lizzy O'Shea argues that we need to stop looking forward and start looking backwards.

Weaving together histories of computing and 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.

What, she asks, can the Paris Commune tell us about earlier experiments in sharing resources, like the Internet in common.

Can debates over digital access be guided by Tom Paine's theories of democratic economic redistribution?

And how is Elon Musk not a visionary,

but a throwback to Victorian-era utopians?

In engaging sparkling prose, O'Shea shows us how very human our understanding of technology is,

and what potential exists for struggle, for liberation, for art and poetry in our digital present.

Future histories is for all of us, makers, coders, hacktivists, Facebook users, self-styled Lettites, who find ourselves in a brave new world.

Future Histories, What Ada Lovelace, Tom Payne, and the Paris Commune teach us about digital technology.

By Lizzie O'Shea, out now from Verso Books. Welcome to the Dig, a podcast from Jacobin magazine. My name is Daniel Denver and

this interview was recorded in Santiago de Chile, but right now as I read these

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