Back
Ruha Benjamin: Race After Technology (2019, Polity) 4 stars

From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how …

Race after Technology

4 stars

Benjamin's work is a powerful overview of the ways in which technology--which can give the appearance of "neutrality"--actually serves to reinforce existing inequalities. The examples given in this book are profoundly disturbing (an AI-driven beauty contest picks nearly all white winners), and point to the ways in which technology obscures underlying power structures. Technological solutions to problems involve choices, and Benjamin argues that we need a better understanding of how those choices are made and whose interests they are serving.