Inattention Economy

Lisa Nakamura is the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor in the Department of American Cultures and the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is author of several books, including Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet and Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet (Minnesota, 2007).

"A groundbreaking rereading of the entire history of the internet, The Inattention Economy is a monumental work that shifts how we understand its genesis. Calling for redress and reparations for the women of color whose work was exploited in the internet's creation, Lisa Nakamura presents a bold and compelling interrogation of digital racial capitalism."—Grace Kyungwon Hong, author of Death beyond Disavowal: The Impossible Politics of Difference"The Inattention Economy is a crucial analysis of the way digital technologies have been systematically built out of the embodied labor of women of color. Lisa Nakamura brings new life to 'women of color' as a politically potent category in discussions of new technologies, using it as a prism to diffract the strategic resistance women employ despite ongoing exploitation and erasure."—Kalindi Vora, author of Reimagining Reproduction: Essays on Surrogacy, Labor, and Technologies of Human Reproduction"[Nakamura] convincingly argues that the internet (in particular, social media) would not exist without the underpaid or unpaid invisible labor of women of color." —Kirkus Reviews

• ContentsIntroduction: The Inattention Economy1. Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women and the Racialization of Early Electronic Manufacture2. The Queen of Myspace: Tila Tequila and the Asian American Roots of Social Media3. The Toxic Embodiments of Artificial Diversity: Feeling Good About Feeling Bad in the MetaverseConclusion. "Fuck You, Pay Me": Digital Reparations for the Inattention EconomyAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex