Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal

Forthcoming Stanford University Press

From Munchausen by Tiktok to wellness apps to online communities to AI, the DISCO Network explores the possibilities that technoskepticism can create.

This is a book about possibility and refusal in relation to new technologies. Though refusal is an especially powerful mode—particularly for those who have historically not been given the option to say no—people of color and disabled people have long navigated the space between saying yes and saying no to the newest technologies. Technoskepticism relates some of these stories to reveal the possibilities skepticism can create.

The case for technoskepticism unfolds across three sections: the first focused on disability, the creative use of wellness apps, and the desire for diagnosis; the second on digital nostalgia and home for Black and Asian users who produced communities online before home pages gave way to profiles; and the third focused on the violence inherent in A.I.-generated Black bodies and the possibilities for Black style in the age of A.I. Acknowledging how the urge to refuse new technologies emerges from specific racialized histories, the authors also emphasize how care can look like an exuberant embrace of the new.

  • Technoskepticism

    Technoskepticism, co-written by an intergenerational group of 14 scholars at a five-day Book Jam intensive in summer 2023, argues for a critical position between possibility and refusal.

  • Our relationship with technology is often transactional, extractive, and exploitative, and this is especially true for people of color and disabled people. In this book we trace the lineages of contemporary A.I.-generated Black bodies that sing, speak, and speak back to (and of) us, algorithmically generated medical diagnoses that decide who or what is disabled and how we ought to be treated, and the uses of digital nostalgia to belatedly and selective re-member a platform history without people of color.

  • It might seem contrary, naive, or at worst straight up self-destructive for Black, disabled, Asian, and other people who’ve been on the wrong side of technology for so long to refuse to participate in what’s been called the Golden Age of A.I.. Refusal is an especially precious space of possibility, particularly for those who have historically not been given the option to say no, to evade, or to log off, people of color and disabled people have long navigated this space between saying yes and saying no to the newest technologies in ways that can empower and energize our awareness of the possibilities skepticism can create.

  • This monograph includes an immersive digital artwork entitled “Teknoskepticism Soundingboard: Observation of a Speculative Process” produced by Stephanie Dinkins and Josie Williams of the Future Histories Studio. Dinkins and Williams’ work addresses Blackness, A.I., and machine learning models and their piece walks the reader through a navigable virtual set of cabins containing images and sounds from our work co-authoring this book during a Book Sprint in the Pennsylvania Catskills in the summer of 2023. This piece provides a tactile and playful experience of collaboration across our similarities and differences.

Book Jam 2023