"Insufferable Tools is a feminist critique of tech culture as it has congealed in the twenty-first century. Sarah Sharma uncovers how Big Tech patriarchs (as exemplified by the broligarchs: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg) discursively adhere to a tool-based approach to technologies in a way that corresponds to an extractive understanding of most of the worlds population in terms of their utility. Identifying these men as having their own form of media theory, one indebted to Marshall McLuhan, Sharma offers an account that pushes back on that and on its recruitment of a particular kind of inclusion she calls "Big Tech Feminism." Even among feminist critics, Sharma sees a lack of attention to this bro-ish media theory and the technological structures of power it has shaped. As we take a deeper look at their machinations and their technological designs, what we find is that they favor and cultivate media environments that permit them to wield tools where they themselves are never at risk of becoming the tool. In other words, the Big Tech patriarch doesnt reallythink of technologies as tools, but rather, they imagine technologies as environments in which to cultivate, manage, and extend their power. For them, the tool is everyone other than them. Insufferable Tools outlines how feminist media theory and feminism writ large should respond to all the truly insufferable tools of big tech patriarchy"-- Provided by publisher.
Insufferable Tools : Feminism Against Big Tech