The DSI Reading Room | The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internet with Lisa Nakamura

Who built the digital economy, and whose labor has been overlooked in the stories we tell about its development? The Inattention Economy challenges familiar narratives of technological innovation by tracing the often uncredited and unpaid contributions of women of color across three pivotal moments in computing: the microchip era of the 1960s and ’70s, the rise of social media in the 2000s, and the emergence of AI-fueled virtual reality in the 2020s. Through the stories of Navajo women who manufactured early semiconductor circuits, Vietnamese American internet pioneer Tila Tequila, and Black virtual reality creators, the book examines how gendered and racialized labor has shaped the technologies and platforms embedded in everyday life. In doing so, it offers a counterhistory of Silicon Valley that calls for both recognition and material compensation for the labor that has made the digital economy possible. 
The DSI Reading Room is a conversation series featuring new books by Digital Studies Institute faculty and guest authors. Through public discussions, we explore emerging scholarship and the ideas shaping technology, culture, media, and society.

Lisa Nakamura is the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor in the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the lead Principal Investigator of the DISCO (Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration, and Optimism) Network. Nakamura is also the founding Director of the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan and has been writing about digital media, race, and gender since 1994. She has written books and articles on digital bodies, race, and gender in online environments, on toxicity in video game culture, and the many reasons that Internet research needs ethnic and gender studies. She is the author of The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internet (University of Minnesota Press, 2026), Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), and Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet (Routledge, 2002).

We strive to make our events accessible to all participants. This event will be a hybrid event with both a physical meeting space and an online meeting space.
CART will be provided. If you anticipate needing accommodations to participate, please email Eric Mancini at [email protected]. Please note that some accommodations must be arranged in advance, and we encourage you to contact us as soon as possible.