A will for the machine : computerization, automation, and the arts in South Africa / Mark Sanders.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sanders, Mark, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Automation--Political aspects--South Africa.

Automation.

Automation--Moral and ethical aspects--South Africa.

Labor supply--Effect of automation on--South Africa.

Labor supply.

Discrimination in employment--SouthAfrica.

Discrimination in employment.

Apartheid--South Africa.

Apartheid.

Arts--Political aspects--South Africa.

Arts.

Computer poetry.

Computers in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, [2026]

System Details:

text file PDF

Summary:

This study takes up the relations among computerization, labor, and the arts in South Africa. There are many books about the history and discourses of computerization in the United States but relatively little about these phenomena anywhere in the Global South. In A Will for the Machine, Mark Sanders outlines South Africa's entry into the computer age in the 1960s and '70sand explains how it coincided with the high point of apartheid. South Africa's government viewed automation and computerization as one way of barring Black Africans from skilled work and reserving it for whites. Sanders unpacks this peculiar history, relates it to early twentieth-century struggles around mechanization in mining and telephony in South Africa, and analyzes responses to it by the writers Miriam Tlali and J. M. Coetzee, the artist William Kentridge, and Handspring Puppet Company. Showing how the arts realize ideas about the ethics and politics of automation, Sanders contributes to debates about locally divergent understandings of computer technology and human-computer interaction.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Figures

Introduction

1 The Meaning of Automation

2 Computer Poetry

3 Race and Labor Women and Machines

4 The Puppet Theater

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (De Gruyter Brill, viewed January 9, 2026).

Other Format:

Print version: Sanders, Mark, A will for the machine

ISBN:

9780226844626

0226844625

OCLC:

1564059995

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license