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

Future Histories by Lizzie OShea creatively connects the past and present to suggest how a better future can be ours, if we want it. Ms. OShea is an influential lawyer, writer and broadcaster who is renowned for her expertise around human, indigenous and digital rights. Demonstrating how past struggles can offer wisdom in our time of crisis, this outstanding book explains why the demand for digital democracy is integral to building a better world.

Each of the books eleven chapters are built around lessons learned from history. Ms. OShea applies these lessons to challenges facing us today. For example, the American revolutionary Tom Paines thoughts on common property might inspire us to demand digital citizenship rights. Technology can make it possible for ordinary people to participate more fully in the decisions that impact our daily lives.

Throughout the discussion, Ms. OShea displays an extraordinary level of insight into issues historical, technical and political. Importantly, Ms. OSheas unabashedly working class perspective effectively exposes the uselessness of those technology capitalists whose control of the technology has held back progress. Reminding us that the Internet was built using public monies, the author succeeds in opening readers minds to the possibility that technology can serve people rather than profit – but only if we want it.

I highly recommend this exceptional, timely and powerful book to everyone.

This book begins by explaining how human populations ended up becoming hopelessly commoditised and surveilled and governments and Big business alike. Reaching across the fields of history, antitrust law, copyright, artificial intelligence, political philosophy and more, O’Shea masterfully makes the case that we arrived exactly where we were aiming. But it’s in the second half of the book that O’Shea really hits her stride. There, she uses historical examples about how collaboration, socialization and public participation have successfully built happier and more resilient communities.

While I’m generally pessimistic about the future of human civilisation, I did feel a sensation of optimism growing as I learnt about the radical changes enacted by ordinary people (like the Parisian Communards back in 1871). I strongly recommend if you too have been feeling rather hopeless about the state of the world and are wondering how to fight back.

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