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Join the first session of the Liu Institute for Global Issu es webinar series to learn about The Smartphone Society with autho r Nicole Aschoff.
The rapidly growing power of US tech companies to d ominate digital markets has alarmed policymakers around the world. Google\, Amazon\, and Facebook are increasingly compared to the robber barons of th e Gilded Age — a time of skyrocketing inequality and corporate overreach. C ongressional investigators recently argued that “these firms have too much power\, and that power must be reined in and subject to appropriate oversig ht and enforcement.” Observers are right to be worried. But reining in Big Tech will require us to look beyond digital markets to how capitalism itsel f has evolved over the past decade. Technology companies have used our smar tphones to forge a new frontier of appropriation and exploitation with prof ound political\, social\, and ecological implications.
Presen
ter: Nicole Aschoff
Faculty Host: SPPGA Professor Ramana\, Simon
s Chair in Disarmament\, Global and Human Security\; Director\, Liu Institu
te for Global Issues\, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs\, UBC
Student Host: Alexander Howes\, Master of Public Policy and Global Affa
irs\, UBC
Bio: Nicole Aschoff is the author of T he Smartphone Society and The New Prophets of Capital\, the m anaging editor of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism\, and an ed itor-at-large at Jacobin magazine. She holds a PhD in sociology fr om Johns Hopkins University and previously taught at Boston University. She lives in Cambridge\, Massachusetts.
Nicole’s new book is called The Smartphone S ociety: Technology\, Power and Resistance in the New Gilded Age. ( You can order the book from Beacon.) Using the smartphone as a lens\, she examin es the cultural\, political\, and economic shifts reshaping American societ y since the birth of the smartphone in 2007. In particular\, she interrogat es the defining tension of digital life: the stark disconnect between the o rdinary smartphone user seeking entertainment\, connection\, information\, and justice\, and the tech companies looking to profit from our every tap a nd swipe.
You can reach her on Twitter: @Nico leAschoff
Co-hosted by: The Liu Institute for Gl obal Issues\, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs\, UBC