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

A highly engaging tour through progressive history in the service of emancipating our digital tomorrow

Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, Australia

When we talk about technology we always talk about tomorrow and the future—which makes it hard to figure out how to even get there. In Future Histories, public interest lawyer and digital specialist Lizzie O’Shea argues that we need to stop looking forward and start looking backwards. Weaving together histories of computing and progressive 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.