The title had me interested, but skimming through this post and the excerpt tells me that the book is actually just the usual low quality social justice commentary about racism/police brutality/etc. not-so-cleverly disguised as a tech-related book.
- A guy gets to present his theory of the racist software infrastructure, as "a Professor" while one has to scan his Twitter timeline to see him as the political hack that he is. Bosch should have pointed out he worked for the DNC (On a general note: Hey America, you do realize there are people outside of your country without the slightest interest in having their own history bent over your domestic infighting?).
- Of course our databases are racist, mysoginistic and transphobic - just as we are (“The next frontier in gender rights is inside databases.”)!
- Book title's like Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech are just slipped in, like they aren't the giant red flag of bias that they are.
- "I’ve been really interested over the past several years to watch the power of the tech activists and tech labor movements" is giving me straight up maoist vibes of the 1970s when upper-class academics in Western Europe larped as "working-class" in and around auto-manufacturing sites, but the working class wasn't having it.
Let's see whether that failure also repeats itself and how the outfall of this will look (the snubbed academics then turned to "the environment" as a new ward allwing them to more openly spite the "Lumpenproletariat")
"Contributors discuss a host of topics, such as how university databases were programmed long ago to accept only two genders, "
Living life reacting so strongly to things you might not immediately agree with sounds exhausting. Good luck with
There's also the bit about hoping developers say no to cheating emissions standards. Picking that example and not, say - not assisting the Chinese government in surveilling their citizens shows exactly where the author wants to take these ideas.
These themes would be fun to discuss in some environment, but it's pretty clear that the goal is to create a page turner first, push a message second, produce insight last.
The author is funded by New America. An organization founded by a lady famous for helping Sandinistas sue the US government to for foreign intervention, then signing off on one of the worst interventions in the Global War on Terror in Libya.
It is possible that this is just ad copy for an otherwise good book, but forgive us for assuming that the person passing out christian literature at the party is probably mostly interested in converting new christians.