Before becoming one of the major contemporary critics of AI and data systems, Kate Crawford wrote Adult Themes, a sharp study of adulthood.

It covers the realities of it all. The work without security, marriage without inevitability, family without a single script, culture without stable institutions, and the moral panic around people supposedly failing to “grow up.” Published in 2006, the book now reads as a useful time capsule of early-2000s anxiety, but also as something nastily prescient. Crawford looks at the collapse of old adult markers — career, house, marriage, children, retirement — and asks what happens when people are blamed for not following rules that the economy has already quietly shredded. You can see how she got stuck into AI much later on.

First Australian edition, published by Pan Macmillan Australia in 2006. Paperback. Good used condition with light shelf wear and minor handling to covers and edges; internally clean and sound.