The Bleeding Edge. Bob Hughes
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‘Is new technology a blessing or a curse? In this engaging and powerful book, Bob Hughes shows it can be either - and that the answer depends, above all, on whether society is plutocratic or egalitarian. A must-read for all who care about humankind’s future.’
James K Boyce, University of Massachusetts Amherst, US.
‘Bob Hughes blows all the hype out of the water. He understands both the history and the technology. In this wonderful book he explains how inequality turns humanity into a destructive force that then uses technologies to cause harm.’
Danny Dorling, Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford.
‘Hughes’ book is much needed in helping us get beyond the glib national policies that seem to take both technology and inequality as givens. The Bleeding Edge deconstructs the causes of inequality and, while helping us understand that technology is not a panacea, it lets us truly understand for whom technologies are developed and sold.’
Joan Greenbaum, Professor Emerita of Environmental Psychology, City University of New York, US.
‘A fascinating study of how inequality inhibits technological innovations and how only an egalitarian society can truly sustain progress.’
Hsiao-Hung Pai, author of Chinese Whispers, Scattered Sand, Invisible and Angry White People.
‘The Bleeding Edge is truly the leading edge of books that challenge us to rethink the relationship between technology, capitalism and inequality. Rejecting both apocalyptic pessimism and techno-optimism, Hughes provides a compelling map to the future in which information technologies are harnessed for the common good. Powerfully argued and easy to read, this is one of those books that can help change the world.’
Betsy Hartmann, Professor Emerita of Development Studies and senior policy analyst, Population and Development Program, Hampshire College, US.
‘Hughes nails inequality to the wall with precision and passion. He weaves together multiple strands to make the case against inequality, from economics through anthropology; from evolutionary theory through social epidemiology. Then, once he has constructed his airtight logic, he colors it in with the emotional dimensions of life lived under oppressive hierarchy – or empowering egalitarianism. Hughes’ book dares us to stop begging for half-measures and instead demand our human birthright: full social and economic equality!’
Deborah S Rogers, President of Initiative for Equality, and affiliated to the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences at Stanford University, US.
‘Technology comes between us and our environment but, in this highly original book, Hughes shows how inequality comes between us and our technology. Inequality subverts technical progress, increases its environmental damage and prevents it from satisfying our real needs. This is a thesis we cannot afford to ignore.’
Richard Wilkinson, Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology at Nottingham University, UK, and co-author of The Spirit Level.
About the author
Bob Hughes worked as a schoolteacher, calligrapher, and in advertising before getting involved with computers in the mid-1980s, working on interactive information systems, running an interest group, and writing about the new industry’s unofficial history and creative traditions. Later, he became involved in campaigning for the rights of migrants, on whose labor the digital economy is built, and was a co-founder, in 2003, of No One Is Illegal UK. He taught digital media at Oxford Brookes University till 2013, with a particular interest in publishing for social change. He now lives and writes in southern France.
Acknowledgements
This book exists thanks to the kind people who read drafts, made suggestions, and encouraged it on its way. They include: Danny Dorling, Ursula Huws, Chris McEvoy, Nick Nuttgens, Hsiao-Hung Pai, Natasha Stotesbury, Joe Shaw, Ciaran Walsh, Betsy Hartmann and Jim Boyce, Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale, Sarah and Bob LeVine; and my friends at Oxford Brookes, especially Tom Betteridge, John LoBreglio, and all my colleagues in the Centre for Publishing Studies. I particularly want to thank Jonathan Rosenhead (emeritus professor of Operational Research at LSE), and Raul Espejo (Syncho Research, Lincoln; former leader of Chile’s Cybersyn project) for their time and patient explanations, which I hope I’ve not travestied.
My biggest debts are to Teresa Hayter, who lived with, read and tactfully critiqued the book as it evolved; and to New Internationalist for taking this on so wholeheartedly and so well – and for being such a clear and consistent voice for sanity and justice through more than 40 years of planetary mayhem.
The Bleeding Edge
Why technology turns toxic in an unequal world
First published in 2016 by
New Internationalist Publications Ltd
The Old Music Hall
106-108 Cowley Road
Oxford OX4 1JE, UK
newint.org
© Bob Hughes
The right of Bob Hughes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing of the Publisher.
Edited by Chris Brazier
Designed by Juha Sorsa
Front cover adapted by Juha Sorsa from Gustave Doré’s ‘Moses breaking the tablets of the law’, 1866
Indexed by Angie Hipkin
who hold environmental accreditation ISO 14001.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
(ISBN ebook 978-1-78026-339-7)
Contents
Foreword by Danny Dorling
Introduction
1 Technofatalism and the future – is a world without Foxconn even possible?
Two paradoxes about new technology
Humanity began with technology
Technology emerges from egalitarian knowledge economies
The myth of creative competition