Adam Greenfield is an expert in smart cities, urban design and emergent technologies. In his latest book, Radical Technologies, Greenfield discusses the new technologies changing our lives at rapid speed: blockchain beyond Bitcoin, machine learning, AI, the internet of things, 3D printing, autonomous drones and driverless cars.
The leading technology and urban thinker draws on his experience as former head of user-interface design at Nokia and his current position as Senior Urban Fellow at LSE Cities and instructor in Urban Design at the Bartlett, UCL.
A field manual to the technologies that are transforming our lives.
The evangelists of technology promise innovations—from smartphones and 3D printing to bitcoin, AI and machine learning—to transfigure our lives. But at what cost?
In this urgent and revelatory excavation of our Information Age, Adam Greenfield forces us to reconsider our relationship with the networked objects, services and spaces that define us.
We already depend on the smartphone to navigate every aspect of our existence. We’re told that innovations—from augmented-reality interfaces and virtual assistants to autonomous delivery drones and self-driving cars—will make life easier, more convenient and more productive. 3D printing promises unprecedented control over the form and distribution of matter, while the blockchain stands to revolutionise everything from the recording and exchange of value to the way we organise the mundane realities of the day to day. And, all the while, fiendishly complex algorithms are operating quietly in the background, reshaping the economy, transforming the fundamental terms of our politics and even redefining what it means to be human.
Having successfully colonised everyday life, these radical technologies are now conditioning the choices available to us in the years to come. How do they work? What challenges do they present to us, as individuals and societies? Who benefits from their adoption? In answering these questions, Greenfield’s timely guide clarifies the scale and nature of the crisis we now confront—and offers ways to reclaim our stake in the future.
[no_blockquote text=”Adam Greenfield goes digging into the layers that constitute what we experience as smooth tech surface. He unsettles and repositions much of that smoothness. Radical Technologies is brilliant and scary.” show_border=”yes” show_quote_icon=”yes”]
Saskia Sassen, Columbia University, author of Expulsions
[no_blockquote text=”We exist within an ever-thickening web of technologies whose workings are increasingly opaque to us. In this illuminating and sometimes deeply disturbing book, Adam Greenfield explores how these systems work, how they synergize with each other, and the resultant effects on our societies, our politics, and our psyches. This is an essential book.” show_border=”yes” show_quote_icon=”yes”]
Brian Eno
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