[Linganth] How Machines Came to Speak

[Ilana Gershon]

Dear Colleagues,
Today on the blog Joseph Wilson talks to Jennifer Petersen about her book,
How Machines Came to Speak.

https://campanthropology.org

Best,
Ilana
Press blurb:
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.
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