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

Jennifer Petersen's book "How Machines Came to Speak" explores how legal conceptions of "speech" have changed over time due to new media technologies. She argues that speech has evolved from a narrow category of oratory and print publication to a broad, abstract conception encompassing expressive nonverbal actions, algorithms, and data. Court cases involving new media technologies have played a significant role in this shift, leading to the disarticulation of speech from individual speakers. Petersen warns that future innovations like 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.

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 08 April 2022
Publisher: Duke University Press

Jennifer Petersen's "How Machines Came to Speak" explores the transformation of legal conceptions of "speech" in response to new media technologies over the last century. She argues that the legal category of speech has evolved from a narrow category of oratory and print publication to a broad, abstract conception encompassing expressive nonverbal actions, algorithms, and data. Petersen examines pivotal US court cases in which new media technologies, such as phonographs, radio, film, and computer code, played a significant role in this shift. In these cases, courts understood speech as mediated through technology, disarticulating it from individual speakers. 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.

Weight: 586g
Dimension: 159 x 237 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781478013600