A guide for reading and gifting for technology and society readers
It’s our mission to publish books at the intersection of science, technology, art, social science, and design that challenge and empower our readers. To help you uncover your next big idea, we’ve crafted a guide for reading and gifting that’s bursting with titles that exemplify the MIT Press: intellectual daring content, rigorous scholarly standards, a rich interdisciplinary focus, and beautiful distinctive designs.
Read on to discover new technology and society books, and explore even more big ideas in our full guide.
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Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation by Greg Epstein
Today’s technology has overtaken religion as the chief influence on twenty-first century life and community. In Tech Agnostic, Harvard and MIT’s influential humanist chaplain Greg Epstein explores what it means to be a critical thinker with respect to this new faith. Encouraging readers to reassert their common humanity beyond the seductive sheen of “tech,” this book argues for tech agnosticism—not worship—as a way of life. Without suggesting we return to a mythical pre-tech past, Epstein shows why we must maintain a freethinking critical perspective toward innovation until it proves itself worthy of our faith or not.
The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood by James Boyle
Chatbots like ChatGPT have challenged human exceptionalism: we are no longer the only beings capable of generating language and ideas fluently. But is ChatGPT conscious? Or is it merely engaging in sophisticated mimicry? And what happens in the future if the claims to consciousness are more credible? In The Line, James Boyle explores what these changes might do to our concept of personhood, to “the line” we believe separates our species from the rest of the world but that also separates “persons” with legal rights from objects.
The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age by Thomas S. Mullaney
A standard QWERTY keyboard has a few dozen keys. How can Chinese—a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet—be input on such a device? In The Chinese Computer, Thomas S. Mullaney sets out to resolve this paradox, and in doing so, discovers that the key to this seemingly impossible riddle has given rise to a new epoch in the history of writing—a form of writing he calls “hypography.” Based on fifteen years of research, this pathbreaking history of the Chinese language charts the beginnings of electronic Chinese technology in the wake of World War II up through to its many iterations in the present day.
The Secret Life of Data: Navigating Hype and Uncertainty in the Age of Algorithmic Surveillance by Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert
In The Secret Life of Data, Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert explore the many unpredictable, and often surprising, ways in which data surveillance, AI, and the constant presence of algorithms impact our culture and society in the age of global networks. The authors build on this basic premise: no matter what form data takes, and what purpose we think it’s being used for, data will always have a secret life. How this data will be used, by other people in other times and places, has profound implications for every aspect of our lives—from our intimate relationships to our professional lives to our political systems.