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The Inattention Economy - Lisa Nakamura

The Inattention Economy

Seeing the Digital Labor of Women of Color

(Autor)

Buch | Hardcover
200 Seiten
2026
University of Minnesota Press (Verlag)
978-0-8166-9904-9 (ISBN)
CHF 146,60 inkl. MwSt
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Revealing the unheralded contributions of women of color to the foundation and development of the digital economy

The Inattention Economy challenges the widespread myth that the internet was born from the labor of a handful of white male entrepreneurs, recovering the uncredited and unpaid contributions of women of color. Focusing on three key inflection points in computing - the microchip era of the 1960s and '70s, the rise of social media in the 2000s, and A.I.-fueled virtual reality in the 2020s - Lisa Nakamura illuminates these women's instrumental roles in building new technologies and making them coherent to users.

From the Navajo women who manufactured the first semiconductor circuits in New Mexico to Tila Tequila, the queer Vietnamese American refugee who became the first true internet influencer in the MySpace age, to Black virtual reality creators, Nakamura highlights how women's gendered and racialized identities have uniquely positioned them to mediate the development and proliferation of new technologies. She exposes how these women have been structurally excluded from racial capitalism's benefits while their labor is considered as exploitable and inexhaustible as that of machines. Confronting this injustice, she focuses our attention on their work, which undergirds and makes possible the platforms ingrained in our daily lives.

Arguing for both recognition and material compensation for these women's labor, The Inattention Economy is a powerful counterhistory of Silicon Valley and a persuasive call to imagine a different kind of internet.

Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.

Lisa Nakamura is the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor in the Department of American Cultures and the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is author of several books, including Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet and Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet (Minnesota, 2007).

Contents

Introduction: The Inattention Economy

1. Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women and the Racialization of Early Electronic Manufacture

2. The Queen of Myspace: Tila Tequila and the Asian American Roots of Social Media

3. The Toxic Embodiments of Artificial Diversity: Feeling Good About Feeling Bad in the Metaverse

Conclusion. "Fuck You, Pay Me": Digital Reparations for the Inattention Economy

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag 23.3.2026
Zusatzinfo 15 black and white illustrations
Verlagsort Minnesota
Sprache englisch
Maße 140 x 216 mm
Gewicht 369 g
Themenwelt Geschichte Teilgebiete der Geschichte Technikgeschichte
Mathematik / Informatik Informatik
Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie
Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie
ISBN-10 0-8166-9904-6 / 0816699046
ISBN-13 978-0-8166-9904-9 / 9780816699049
Zustand Neuware
Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR)
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