The networked computer represents an exciting opportunity to reshape the world in an image of sustainable prosperity, shared collective wealth, democratized knowledge and respectful social relations. But such a world is only possible if we actively decide to build it. Central to that task is giving ordinary people the power to control how the digit

How we engage with the world on an individual level is deeply connected to the context we find ourselves in and the social forces it represents.

The purpose of a usable past is not simply to be a record of history. Rather, by building a shared appreciation of moments and traditions in collective history, a usable past is a method for creating the world we want to see. It is about “cutting the cloth” of history, as Brooks put it, to suit a particular agenda. It is an argument for what the fu

Digital technology is treated as a force of nature, without an agenda, inevitable and unstoppable. The past that has survived in the minds of the current generation is one that reflects what has happened rather than what is possible.

Objects like clocks and automatons are in many ways the predecessors to modern digital technology. You needed to be both an engineer and an artist to build these kinds of machines—technology was often entertaining, inspiring, frightening and useful, all at the same time. In this sense, the path to the modern networked computer was paved with excruc

This led him, in 1918, to call for the creation of what he called a “usable past.” Speaking to his contemporaries in an intelligent and vivid essay, he outlined the need for history that creative minds could draw upon. “The present is a void,” he wrote, “and the American writer floats in that void because the past that survives in the common

Society is often treated as an object, which digital technology does things to, rather than a community of people with agency and a collective desire to shape the future.

Our past tells us about our present—how it was just one of many possible futures claimed by those who came before. In this context, both the creation and use of technology express a kind of power relation.

Our current society reveres some kinds of labor and debases others, and the power of technology to improve our world and livelihood is not equally distributed.