Book Club: We Just Build Hammers

Greetings (m)otherboard friends and allies,

What if we told you the ethical questions facing AI today were first asked 100 years ago?

We’re writing to invite you to join a collective time travel journey as we kick off our inaugural book club with We Just Build Hammers: Stories from the Past, Present and Future of Responsible Tech, written by God(m)other, open source legend, and Executive Director of Organization for Ethical Source, Coraline Ada Ehmke. 

There couldn’t be a more timely read. We Just Build Hammers is the book everyone in tech (or who uses tech) will and should be talking about. 

We start next week, on April 16 8–9:30pm EDT. Join us as a (m)otherboard supporting member, or sign up just for the club.

Fear not! There’s an e-book available and we’re covering a little bit at a time. Join for as much as you can:

• April 16 Part I: The World Set Free, Chapters 1–3
• April 30 Part II: The Parable of the Locksmith, Chapters 4–6
• May 14 Part III: Walking Around A Mile High, Chapters 7–9
• May 28 Part IV: An Ambiguous Heterotopia, Chapters 10–13

From H.G. Wells predicting the atomic bomb to Edmund Berkeley fighting for ethical computing in the 1950s, to Samuel Delany’s groundbreaking science fiction as a forerunner of the tech justice movement, Coraline’s riveting and accessible historical narrative reveals how speculative fiction has repeatedly shaped technological reality—and how today’s tech pioneers are repeating the same ethical struggles their predecessors faced. The book also invites us to dream the impossible into possibility, together. 

“We Just Build Hammers” uncovers:

• How a Hungarian physicist read a sci-fi novel that led directly to the Manhattan Project
• The forgotten “conscience of computing” who warned us about technology’s dangers in 1947
• How the cyberpunk movement inspired—then lost control of—today’s internet
• The untold history of marginalized voices fighting for humanity in technology
• A roadmap for how we might approach today’s AI ethics challenges

“My generation of technologists was raised to believe that the code we wrote was fundamentally neutral. We were building tools, like hammers,” writes Coraline. “Over the course of my career, seeing the scale of the impact of even the most innocuous-seeming technologies on the world, I began questioning that fundamental belief.” We need voices like Coraline’s now more than ever.

As AI, surveillance technology, and automated decision systems increasingly shape our world, this book arrives at exactly the right moment to help us understand the historical context of today’s ethical challenges. We’ll also imagine what a future where technology and society evolve and thrive together in a vibrant, flourishing heterotopia in service to all life might look like, one that our future ancestors will inherit.

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With love and can’t wait to see you soon,

—The God(m)others

P.S. Lately the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime” has been running through our heads as a soundtrack to the daily current events. You know the one? “And you may ask yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?’” Here is our collective bewilderment and grief: gosh, how did we get here. (m)otherboard is here to show you how, together. Let’s dive in!