Web of Our Own Making

£22.99

Web of Our Own Making

The Nature of Digital Formation

Media studies: internet, digital media and society Sociology: family and relationships Social, group or collective psychology Political science and theory Impact of science and technology on society Digital and information technologies: social and ethical aspects

Author: Anton Barba-Kay

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Language: English

Published by: Cambridge University Press

Published on: 11th May 2023

Format: LCP-protected ePub

ISBN: 9781009324816


Introduction

There no longer seems any point to criticizing the internet. We indulge in the latest doom-mongering about the evils of social media-on social media. We scroll through routine complaints about the deterioration of our attention spans. We resign ourselves to hating the internet even as we spend much of our waking lives with it. Yet our unthinking surrender to its effects-to the ways it recasts our aims and desires-is itself digital technology's most powerful achievement.

A Web of Our Own Making

examines how online practices are reshaping our lives outside our notice. Barba-Kay argues that digital technology is a "natural technology"-a technology so intuitive as to conceal the extent to which it transforms our attention. He shows how and why this technology is reconfiguring knowledge, culture, politics, aesthetics, and theology. The digital revolution is primarily taking place not in Silicon Valley but within each of us.

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