ABSTRACT
This chapter situates digital-era dilemmas relative to those of previous socio-technical milieux, focusing on US urban residential and work life from the early 20th century through the present. Organizationally, it sets the context for ensuing chapters with referents to problems and processes, and substantively, it elicits general similarities among objectifying and subjectifying effects of technological advance over time, recognizing different context-specific processes. The approach shows that despite new efficiencies, each step of technological ‘advance’ carries corrosive effects on social relations and relations of production, although vulnerabilities vary, as do responses among subjects across socio-technical milieux, and at any one point in time, relative to entrenched racialized, classed, and gendered hierarchies. Further, subjective effects of technological change intensify over time, and cumulative effects have produced unprecedented feelings of alienation and dependence on technology. Objectifying effects that differentially affect populations persist, but effects are more visible than ever with the advent of mobile devices and social media, enabling ordinary citizens to document and display crimes against racialized populations. Old modes of marginalization continue alongside new, digital-era capacities, deepening inequality. Yet, some subjects refuse the relegation of thought to machines and act on their marginalization by weaponizing thoughtfulness to harness affordances of algorithmic governance towards their needs.
