Review of Your Computer is on Fire

Abstract

Your Computer Is On Fire presents a history of the problems that plague technoculture, from Silicon Valley itself to the Valley’s reaches in the Global South. Most importantly, the volume homes in on how the history of computing intersects with larger histories of racial capitalism, dispossession, outsourcing, and colonialism. This book could not have appeared at a more opportune time. In planning stages since 2015, and based on a series of symposia held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, and Stanford University from 2016 on, this sixteen-chapter edited volume takes up long-standing issues in critical studies of computing, using history to situate and potentially transform hierarchical tech workplaces and problematic appeals to techno-solutionism as a salve for society’s ills. Fire serves as a reminder of computing’s relationship to materiality, its tendency to consume vast amounts of resources and literally burn hot, and its capacity for great destruction on both an environmental and human level. YCIOF is meant to sound the alarm, acting as a wakeup call for academics and technologists who may bear some resemblance to the “This is fine” dog surrounded by burning flames meme.