Insufferable Tools Insufferable Tools

Insufferable Tools

Feminism Against Big Tech

  • Author: Sharma, Sarah
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • ISBN: 9781478062165
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2026
  • Month: March
  • Pages: 223
  • Language: English
In a world seemingly run by the whims and power plays of Musks and Zucks, Insufferable Tools cuts to the core of modern technology’s gendered politics. Sarah Sharma challenges the idea that the Big Tech broligarchs are neutral utilitarians who view technology as mere tools. She shows instead how these tech giants have turned the internet, and, increasingly, “real life” into a set of environments which they cultivate and manipulate to wield the real tools: us, the users. Sharma critiques a popular system of inclusion she calls “Big Tech Feminism” that attempts to incorporate and make useful people of color, queer people, and others who are seen as broken machines in the current gendered power structures. Deconstructing Big Tech’s patriarchal deployment of media theory to gain and maintain power, Sharma proposes a feminist techno-politics that can forge new futures free from the grip of the truly insufferable tools.
  • Cover
  • Contents
  • Introduction. “The Sex Organs of the Machine World”
  • 1. The Woman in Tech: A Useful Device
  • 2. The Tools in Mommy’s Basement
  • 3. And the Machine World Will Deliver Him His Wealth
  • 4. Broken Machines: Toward a Feminist Technological Determinism
  • Conclusion. A Techno-Feminist End to the Insufferable Tool
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index
    • A
    • B
    • C
    • D
    • E
    • F
    • G
    • H
    • I
    • J
    • K
    • L
    • M
    • N
    • O
    • P
    • Q
    • R
    • S
    • T
    • U
    • V
    • W
    • X
    • Y
    • Z

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