Read time: 4 minutes
🎧 Listened in audio
📢 Narrated by Andrea Emmes
⏱ Duration: 6 hours
🏷️ Publisher: HighBridge Audio & W.W. Norton & Company
Book Blurb:
Lisa Selin Davis takes a hard look at what the word “housewife” truly means, and how it has been weaponized, misunderstood, and mythologized over centuries. Tracing the role of women through history, from prehistoric hunters to modern-day mothers, Davis uncovers how society’s expectations of “women’s work” have shaped our understanding of family, value, and independence. Through meticulous research and cultural insight, Housewife makes a powerful case for recognizing the interdependence at the core of American life, and for giving women the freedom to choose their path without judgment.
Let’s talk about the book:
Here’s the trap this books sets. You pick this book up thinking you already know everything it’s going to say.
Biased algorithms? Check.
Silicon Valley bro culture? Sure
Designs that centers white men? Heard it.
But what Technically Wrong does so well is force you to look again, harder, under you realize how deep and deliberate these patterns run. Sara Wachter Boettcher takes all that vague, ambient awareness you’ve been carrying around and sharpens it into something that genuinely stings. She puts everyday examples under the microscope and makes you rethink things you’ve been clicking through without a second thought. By the time I finished listening, I wasn’t just nodding along, I was quietly furious, at the apps on my phone, at the terms I’d blindly accepted, at the screens designed to nudge me into handing out information I never actually needed to give.
Andrea Emmes’s narration adds urgency without aggression. She sounds like the voice that’s been whispering in the back of your head every time you accepted another T&C. She’s calm, clear, and never preachy, which is exactly what a book like this needs. Sara doesn’t just describe the problem. She makes you feel it. Her arguments are sharp enough on their own. They don’t need dramatic delivery. What they need is exactly what Emmes gives them.
At six hours, this book is a thoroughly doable listen. The kind that you can finish over a long weekend and immediately want to press into the hands of every person you know who works in tech. The brilliance of Technically Wrong is that it doesn’t pretend to surprise you with revelations. It reawakens your awareness. The book is a mirror and a challenge. If you know all this, why are you not doing something about it?
Would I recommend it?
This is a must-read for anyone who works in, uses, or even side-eyes technology (so… everyone!!) It’s uncomfortable in the best way. It’s sharp, necessary, and honest. This is for anyone who’s ever felt like an afterthought in a digital world, or wondered why an app is making their life harder instead of easier. This book will change the way you look at your phone, and the digital/tech world, and you can’t really unsee it then.
book Recommendations:
- Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil — If Technically Wrong lit a fire, this one adds fuel; it digs deep into how algorithms systematically harm the most vulnerable communities.
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy - Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez — Exposes how data collection ignores women entirely — the design bias conversation, extended into every corner of daily life.
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy - The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff — For when you want the full, terrifying picture of what companies actually do with the data they extract from you.
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy - Broad Band by Claire L. Evans — The forgotten history of the women who built the internet; a perfect companion read about who’s been sidelined in tech from the very beginning.
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy - Technically Wrong fans will love Design for Real Life by Eric Meyer & Sara Wachter-Boettcher — Because once you’re angry, this book actually gives you tools to build more inclusive digital experiences.
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
Tech Talk: Are We Part of the Problem?
What’s one app or website you’ve used recently that made you stop and question how it was designed, or who it was designed for? Drop it in the comments. Let’s talk digital empathy.
Book Links:
Want to purchase this or any of your favourite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider purchasing using the sites below. These sites work with independent local bookstore owners to fulfil your book orders. #SupportLocal
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org
Reading tracker: Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
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