1st Edition
Against Automation Mythologies Business Science Fiction and the Ruse of the Robots
Part I. Business Science Fiction 1. Future Expectations 2. "Harbingers of the Robot Age" 3. The Terminator, or, The Automation Fetish Part II. Original Automation 4. When Farmers Lost Their "Jobs" 5. Techno-republicanism Part III. Disenchanted Objects 6. The Misadventures of Baxter and Sawyer 7. Amazon, or, Automated Taylorism 8. Uber is a Science Fiction 9. The Smart Home: Still More Work for Mother 10. Care Robots 11. Watson, Champion of White Jeopardy!
Biography
J. Jesse Ramírez is Assistant Professor of American Studies at University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. His research and scholarship explores American cultural, literary and intellectual history, digital media and technologies, the cultural history of automation, science fiction and utopia, and ethnic studies. He is particularly interested in narratives regarding the future of technology and work.
"The achievement of Ramírez’s book is to have successfully estranged and demystified hegemonic conceptions of technological 'progress' that still persist in contemporary automation discourses. Simply put, his achievement is to have deautomated hegemonic ways of thinking automation. [...] For anyone interested in critical-utopian thinking, Ramírez’s monograph should prove reinvigorating and inspirational: a technoclasm that can blow up automated modes of thinking." -- Miguel Sebastián-Martín, Science Fiction Studies
