Adam Greenfield

A field manual to the technologies that are changing our lives at bewildering speed Everywhere we turn, our everyday experience is being overlaid and interrupted by startling new technologies. Today, we depend on the smartphone as an interface to an urban environment we share with autonomous drones and self-driving cars, even as we use augmented-reality applications to interact with things that aren t quite there. Now 3D printing offers us unprecedented fine-grained control over the form and distribution of matter, while the blockchain promises to remake the way we record and exchange value. And all the while, fiendishly complex algorithmic systems are operating quietly, reshaping the economy, transforming the fundamental terms of our politics, and even beginning to etch away at what it means to be human. Just how did these things come to be? How do they work? What (and whose) values do they reproduce? And what kind of choices do they present us with? Radical Technologies raises all of these questions to the surface and provokes us to ask what we might want to do with them now, when we might still be able to shape their impact on our shared future."

The Design of Everyday Life

Radical Technologies

Computers affect us everyday from shopping online to paying tolls. This book looks at how this emerging technology will shape our lives.

The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing

Everyware

We are living through a long emergency - a near-continuous train of pandemics, heatwaves, droughts, resource wars and other climate-driven disasters. In Beyond Hope, Greenfield asks what might happen if the individual acts and networks of mutual aid that spring up in response to these times. Also how do these communities fuse, and are brought together in a single, coherent way of life?

Using examples from the astonishingly effective Occupy Sandy disaster-recovery effort in 2012, and the neighborhood-based mutual aid groups that sustained many during COVID lockdowns, to the large-scale, self-organised polities of municipalist Spain and Kurdish Rojava, Greenfield argues for rethinking local power as a bulwark against despair, a way to discover and develop the individual and collective capacities that have gone underutilized during all the long years of late capitalism - and a means for thriving in the face of impending catastrophe. 

Collective Power and Mutual Care in the Long Emergency

Beyond Hope

A manifesto and guide for building mutual aid groups and reclaiming power in a time of perpetual crisis

We are living through a Long Emergency: a near-continuous train of pandemics, heatwaves, droughts, resource wars and other climate-driven disasters. In Lifehouse, Adam Greenfield asks what might happen if the tactics and networks of care that spring up in response to these times might be brought together in a single, coherent way of life?

Using examples from the Black Panthers’ “survival programs,” the astonishingly effective Occupy Sandy disaster-relief effort and the neighborhood-based mutual aid groups that sustained many during COVID lockdowns to the large-scale, self-organised polities of municipalist Spain and Kurdish Rojava, Greenfield argues for rethinking local power as a bulwark against despair — a way to discover and develop the individual and collective capacities that have gone underutilized during all the long years of late capitalism, and a means for thriving in the face of impending catastrophe.

Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire

Lifehouse

Against the Smart City

Mark Shepard

Urban Computing and Its Discontents

A field manual to the technologies that are transforming our lives Everywhere we turn, a startling new device promises to transfigure our lives. But at what cost? In this urgent and revelatory excavation of our Information Age, leading technology thinker Adam Greenfield forces us to reconsider our relationship with the networked objects, services and spaces that define us. It is time to re-evaluate the Silicon Valley consensus determining the future. 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 revolutionize everything from the recording and exchange of value to the way we organize 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 colonized 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.

«Un libro illuminante, capace a tratti di inquietare. Un testo fondamentale». Brian Eno «Tecnologie radicali è un saggio geniale e allarmante». Saskia Sassen

Tecnologie radicali

Fiction. CIRCA is a dark comedy featuring Henry Colmes, a high school sophomore trying to find his place. It is also the story of Henry as a thirty-something cub reporter trying to track down an elusive cult leader in order to interview him for the man's own obituary. At once heartfelt, tragic, and surreal, CIRCA, the debut novel from author Adam Greenfield, looks at the pivotal moments in a person's life that lead to decisions they can never take back and, ultimately, never forget.

Adam Greenfield

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