Details

ISBN-10: 1478014520
ISBN-13: 9781478014522
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publish Date: 04/08/2022
Dimensions: 9.00" L, 6.00" W, 0.63" H

How Machines Came to Speak: Media Technologies and Freedom of Speech

Paperback

Price: $27.95

Overview

In How Machines Came to Speak Jennifer Petersen constructs a genealogy of how legal conceptions of “speech” have transformed over the last century in response to new media technologies. Drawing on media and legal history, Petersen shows that the legal category of speech has varied considerably, evolving from a narrow category of oratory and print publication to a broad, abstract conception encompassing expressive nonverbal actions, algorithms, and data. She examines a series of pivotal US court cases in which new media technologies–such as phonographs, radio, film, and computer code–were integral to this shift. In judicial decisions ranging from the determination that silent films were not a form of speech to the expansion of speech rights to include algorithmic outputs, courts understood speech as mediated through technology. Speech thus became disarticulated from individual speakers. By outlining how legal definitions of speech are indelibly dependent on technology, Petersen demonstrates that future innovations such as artificial intelligence will continue to restructure speech law in ways that threaten to protect corporate and institutional forms of speech over the rights and interests of citizens.

Read More
Reviews
"At the intersection of legal studies, cultural history, and media history, Jennifer Petersen's book is a brilliant and groundbreaking study of the ways that modern First Amendment law has been shaped by judicial and cultural responses to the advent of new media technologies."–Samantha Barbas, Professor of Law, University at Buffalo School of Law
More Reviews

Details

ISBN-10: 1478014520
ISBN-13: 9781478014522
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publish Date: 04/08/2022
Dimensions: 9.00" L, 6.00" W, 0.63" H
Skip to content