Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life

I think this book might be a great primer for folks looking to understand emerging technologies as well as a serious critique of each to help temper a bit of the rampant hype that you're likely still seeing surrounding most of these. When new technologies are presented as a "paradigm shift" or an opportunity to increase our wealth, time, quality of life, we have a tendency to get swept up in the potential. Greenfield almost provides a framework for asking critical questions not just of the technology but of the role we take in it.

My "highlighter" ran out on this one with certain bites that really crystalized what I was already thinking about but hadn't encapsulated so succinctly. In particular, the section about blockchain beyond Bitcoin and its elaboration of DAO's, decentralized autonomous organizations. The author points to an example of a neighborhood organization that has a DAO pitched as an alternative for certain functions that have typically been managed in person or by small community groups. After this example, it's brought up that with the best that can be created for simplifying life in a community is modeling their ambitions after the market. The more I thought about the changes in blockchain since the book's publishing, primarily NFTs as an avenue for selling art, I've increasingly had the feeling that the artificial commoditization of otherwise available resources and recreation of market structures to put arbitrary values on these resources only serves to cheapen our ability to interact. Of course, there's more to wax poetic about here although many others have done significantly better.

Other resources:
"New Dark Age" by James Bridle
Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs (youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g)