Published in 2024
10 hours and 1 minute
Timandra Harkness is a British writer, presenter and comedian. She has contributed to several publications, including BBC Science Focus magazine and The Daily Telegraph, and authored the book Big Data: Does Size Matter?. Harkness has co-written and performed comedy shows related to science and mathematics, including collaborations with her mother Linda Cotterill and comedian Matt Parker. Since 2016, she has chaired the Data Debate series for the Alan Turing Institute and the British Library. She is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and a visiting fellow at the University of Winchester’s Centre for Information Rights.
What is this book about?
We already know how much of our data is collected and used to profile and target us. The real question is why, knowing all this, do we keep going back for more?
Technology has delivered a world that we expect to revolve around us, our needs and preferences, and our unique personalities. We willingly hand over intimate information about ourselves in return for a world that’s easier to navigate.
We live in the Personalised Century, where we view ourselves in terms of what rather than who we are – the objects of others’ recognition, rather than the subjects and authors of our own lives. Is this a sign of our shrinking sense of self?
Interrogating the historical currents that have brought us here, Harkness envisages a messier, riskier and less comfortable world than the one into which we’re sliding. Challenging readers to look at what’s missing from their personalised menus, Technology is not the Problem encourages us to look afresh at the familiar: not just the technology we use every day, how we relate to the world and those around us.
