Archive for publications, March 2026

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[Commlist] new book: The Need to Rename Tech

Sat Mar 21 10:58:17 GMT 2026




The Need to Rename Tech
Crystal Chokshi and Robin Mansell (Eds.)

The Need to Rename Tech is a book about words that fool us into thinking the digital technologies we use every day are beautiful, benign, and consequence-free.
They are not.
As the writers in this edited collection show, digital technologies have serious social, political, and climate consequences. These consequences are concealed by reductive nouns and misleading metaphors-think "learning management system" and "predictive tech"-brilliantly coined by the technology industry to resist change and sustain the status quo. Each of the 15 chapters in this book discusses a specific technology and, crucially, makes a move to rename it. Collectively, we subvert Big Tech's careful branding and rechristen today's most popular technologies in ways that point explicitly to their problems. This book proposes an alternative vocabulary for digital technologies in the Anthropocene, drawing attention to what they actually bring about instead of parroting Silicon Valley notions of what people should buy.

Get the Book here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-032-05155-4 or order a (library) copy. 20% discount code: PALAUT

About the editors

Robin Mansell (FAcSS, FBA) is Professor Emerita, London School of Economics and Political Science. She holds a Doctorate Honoris Causa, University of Fribourg and is recipient of the C. Edwin Baker Award (ICA Philosophy, Theory & Critique Division). Co-editor, Handbook of Media and Communication Governance (2024 Edward Elgar).

Crystal Chokshi is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication Studies at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada. She has published critical perspectives on technologies in The Journal of Digital Social Research, Surveillance & Society, Culture Machine, Real Life, and The Conversation Canada.
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