[Commlist] new book: Automation Is a Myth

We would like to announce a new publication from Stanford University 
Press, which we hope will be of interest.

*Automation Is a Myth*

*Luke Munn***

*https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/9781503631427/automation-is-a-myth/*

*Receive a 20% discount online*:*

*CSLS2022*

*Valid until 11:59 GMT, 31^st December 2022. Discount only applies to 
the CAP website.

"Warehouses, factories, fields, supermarkets, smart-homes. These are 
just some of the material sites that confront myths of automation in 
Luke Munn's tightly crafted book traversing racial histories, gender 
politics, contemporary labor regimes, and global logistics. Fantasies of 
autonomous technologies and visions of freedom, we discover, are almost 
always accompanied by human endurance and suffering, as well as 
sparkling acts of collective ingenuity that mess with machines. Munn 
critically furnishes the bleak, uneven world of automation with 
alternatives for technology design inspired by activists, artists, and 
social movements. A perfect handbook for diagnosing the future-present 
of automated worlds." *- Ned Rossiter author of **/Software, 
Infrastructure, Labor/***

  "Accessibly written and powerfully argued, Luke Munn's /Automation is 
a Myth/carefully demonstrates how the fiction that automation is 
everywhere and that every aspect of labor and production can or will be 
automated obscures racialized and gendered power relations and precludes 
opportunities to shape more radical technologically mediated futures. 
With wide ranging historical and geopolitical examples of automation 
fantasies, Munn forcefully demonstrates the importance of 
contextualizing and de-universalizing conversations about labor, 
technology and automation." - author of Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots 
and the Politics of Technological Futures - Neda Atanasoski || "An 
engaging, insightful, and instructive read, this book offers a 
compelling new perspective on the future of labor-saving technology. 
More than a myth-buster, Munn is an original voice who offers a vision 
for a more humane and productive economy." *- Frank Pasquale author of 
**/New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI/*

For some, automation will usher in a labor-free utopia; for others, it 
signals a disastrous age-to-come. Yet whether seen as dream or 
nightmare, automation, argues Munn, is ultimately a fable that rests on 
a set of triple fictions. There is the myth of /full autonomy/, claiming 
that machines will take over production and supplant humans. But far 
from being self-acting, technical solutions are piecemeal; their support 
and maintenance reveals the immense human labor behind "autonomous" 
processes. There is the myth of /universal automation/, with 
technologies framed as a desituated force sweeping the globe. But this 
fiction ignores the social, cultural, and geographical forces that shape 
technologies at a local level. And, there is the myth of /automating 
everyone/, the generic figure of "the human" at the heart of automation 
claims. But labor is socially stratified and so automation's fallout 
will be highly uneven, falling heavier on some (immigrants, people of 
color, women) than others. Munn moves from machine minders in China to 
warehouse pickers in the United States to explore the ways that new 
technologies do (and don't) reconfigure labor. Combining this rich array 
of human stories with insights from media and cultural studies, Munn 
points to a more nuanced, localized, and racialized understanding of the 
"future of work."

*Luke Munn*is a researcher based in Aotearoa New Zealand exploring the 
social, political, and environmental impacts of digital cultures.

*Stanford University Press**| April 2022 | 184pp | 9781503631427 | PB | 
£16.99**

*Price subject to change.


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