Geek heresy : rescuing social change from the cult of technology
(Book)

Book Cover
Average Rating
Published
New York : PublicAffairs, [2015].
ISBN
9781610395281, 161039528X
Status

Description

Loading Description...

Also in this Series

Checking series information...

Copies

LocationCall NumberStatus
Berwyn Public Library - Stacks303.483 TOYOn Shelf

More Like This

Loading more titles like this title...

More Details

Published
New York : PublicAffairs, [2015].
Format
Book
Physical Desc
xvi, 334 pages ; 25 cm
Language
English
ISBN
9781610395281, 161039528X

Notes

Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description
"In 2004, Kentaro Toyama, an award-winning computer scientist, moved to India to start a new research group for Microsoft. Its mission: to explore novel technological solutions to the world's persistent social problems. Together with his team, he invented electronic devices for under-resourced urban schools and developed digital platforms for remote agrarian communities. But after a decade of designing technologies for humanitarian causes, Toyama concluded that no technology, however dazzling, could cause social change on its own. Technologists and policy-makers love to boast about modern innovation, and in their excitement, they exuberantly tout technology's boon to society. But what have our gadgets actually accomplished? Over the last four decades, America saw an explosion of new technologies - from the Internet to the iPhone, from Google to Facebook - but in that same period, the rate of poverty stagnated at a stubborn 13%, only to rise in the recent recession. So, a golden age of innovation in the world's most advanced country did nothing for our most prominent social ill. Toyama's warning resounds: Don't believe the hype! Technology is never the main driver of social progress. Geek Heresy inoculates us against the glib rhetoric of tech utopians by revealing that technology is only an amplifier of human conditions. By telling the moving stories of extraordinary people like Patrick Awuah, a Microsoft millionaire who left his lucrative engineering job to open Ghana's first liberal arts university, and Tara Sreenivasa, a graduate of a remarkable South Indian school that takes children from dollar-a-day families into the high-tech offices of Goldman Sachs and Mercedes-Benz, Toyama shows that even in a world steeped in technology, social challenges are best met with deeply social solutions. "--,Provided by publisher.

Reviews from GoodReads

Loading GoodReads Reviews.

Citations

APA Citation, 7th Edition (style guide)

Toyama, K. (2015). Geek heresy: rescuing social change from the cult of technology . PublicAffairs.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

Toyama, Kentaro. 2015. Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology. PublicAffairs.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities (Notes and Bibliography) Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

Toyama, Kentaro. Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology PublicAffairs, 2015.

MLA Citation, 9th Edition (style guide)

Toyama, Kentaro. Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology PublicAffairs, 2015.

Note! Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy. Citation formats are based on standards as of August 2021.

Staff View

Loading Staff View.