In a world seemingly run by the whims and power plays of Musks and Zucks, Insufferable Tools cuts to the core of modern technology’s gendered politics. Sarah Sharma challenges the idea that the Big Tech broligarchs are neutral utilitarians who view technology as mere tools. She shows instead how these tech giants have turned the internet, and, increasingly, “real life” into a set of environments which they cultivate and manipulate to wield the real tools: us, the users. Sharma critiques a popular system of inclusion she calls “Big Tech Feminism” that attempts to incorporate and make useful people of color, queer people, and others who are seen as broken machines in the current gendered power structures. Deconstructing Big Tech’s patriarchal deployment of media theory to gain and maintain power, Sharma proposes a feminist techno-politics that can forge new futures free from the grip of the truly insufferable tools.

The contributors to Re-Understanding Media advance a feminist version of Marshall McLuhan’s key text, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, repurposing his insight that “the medium is the message” for feminist ends. They argue that while McLuhan’s theory provides a falsely universalizing conception of the technological as a structuring form of power, feminist critics can take it up to show how technologies alter and determine the social experiences of race, gender, class, and sexuality. This volume showcases essays, experimental writings, and interviews from media studies scholars, artists, activists, and those who work with and create technology. Among other topics, the contributors extend McLuhan’s discussion of transportation technology to the attics and cargo boxes that moved Black women through the Underground Railroad, apply McLuhan’s concept of media as extensions of humans to analyze Tupperware as media of containment, and take up 3D printing as a feminist and decolonial practice. The volume demonstrates how power dynamics are built into technological media and how media can be harnessed for radical purposes.

Contributors. Nasma Ahmed, Morehshin Allahyari, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Brooke Erin Duffy, Ganaele Langlois, Sara Martel, Shannon Mattern, Cait McKinney, Jeremy Packer, Craig Robertson, Sarah Sharma, Ladan Siad, Rianka Singh, Nicholas Taylor, Armond R. Towns, and Jennifer Wemigwans