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In our fast-paced, technology-driven world, there is a strong sense of untapped potential and unfulfilled promises. People today possess an unprecedented amount of power through their technological gadgets but often remain unaware of how to wield it effectively. This lack of understanding and agency leads to a plethora of societal problems, from passive consumerism to environmental degradation, fostering a sense of helplessness. Considerations of Cyber Behavior and Mass Technology in Modern Soci...

Our attention has been hijacked by the tsunami of devices, games and social media which now dominate our lives. This new technology brings efficiency, cost-savings and instantaneous information. But when our attention is the currency being traded by big tech firms, what price are we willing to pay for convenience? Addiction, anxiety, depression, loneliness, low self-esteem, empathy development, troubled relationships, fake news, propaganda and even threats to democracy are just some of challenge...

Born since the mid-1990s, Generation Z is the first generation never to know the world without the internet, and it is the most diverse generation yet. As Gen Z starts to emerge into adulthood and enter the workforce, what do we really know about them? And what can we learn from them? Gen Z, Explained is the authoritative portrait of this significant generation. It draws on extensive interviews that display this generation's candor, surveys that explore their views and attitudes, and a vast data...

Digitization of the human body, philosophically is "mating" with technology, and it represents the fusion of electronic technology with human biology, which reduces the barriers of physical, digital and biological life. The Internet of Bodies, that is the imminent development of the field of digitization of the human body on a large scale, is the inevitable future of technology at this moment. Instead of devices being connected to the Internet as in Internet of Things (IoT), human bodies can be...

Is postmodernity over? Does postmodernism still have anything important to say? Pragmatism, Technology, and the Persistence of the Postmodern argues “yes” to both. Despite the claims of a number of scholars that “postmodern” is over and done with, Andrew Wells Garnar demonstrates its continued relevance by carefully examining the use of information and communication technologies. These technologies illustrate many important postmodern concepts, thus showing the continued significance of postmode...

Refusing the digital world of late capitalism In this uncompromising essay, Jonathan Crary presents the obvious but unsayable reality: our “digital age” is synonymous with the disastrous terminal stage of global capitalism and its financialisation of social existence, mass impoverishment, ecocide, and military terror. Scorched Earth surveys the wrecking of a living world by the internet complex and its devastation of communities and their capacities for mutual support. This polemic by the aut...

A journey through the uncomputable remains of computer history Narrating some lesser known episodes from the deep history of digital machines, Alexander R. Galloway explains the technology that drives the world today, and the fascinating people who brought these machines to life. With an eye to both the computable and the uncomputable, Galloway shows how computation emerges or fails to emerge, how the digital thrives but also atrophies, how networks interconnect while also fray and fall apart....

Lightning Flowers weighs the impact modern medical technology has had on the author's life against the social and environmental costs inevitably incurred by the mining that makes such technology possible. What if a lifesaving medical device causes loss of life along its supply chain? That's the question Katherine E. Standefer finds herself asking one night after being suddenly shocked by her implanted cardiac defibrillator.In this gripping, intimate memoir about health, illness, and the invisibl...

An interdisciplinary, cross-cultural collection that decenters familiar narratives to provide a fresh perspective on what artificial intelligence is today, and what it might become. Historians, media theorists, science-fiction writers, philosophers, and artists from China and elsewhere reexamine the nation’s intense engagement with AI, moving beyond the clichés that still dominate contemporary debate. Today, visions of the contested future of AI veer between common planetary goals and a new Co...

You've been getting ripped off.The rules that have protected consumers for decades are failing. Companies are spying on us. Many of the products we once trusted are dangerous and failing at alarming rates. Whether we are buying a crib, a small appliance, an iPhone app, or shopping for car insurance, it's become harder than ever to know whether the choices we make in the marketplace are putting us at risk-either from physical harm or the abuse of our personal data by hackers or corporations.This...

In this increasingly neoliberal gig economy, exponentially expanding with technological advances, the ability to work online remotely has led some western millennials to travel the world to work and play, while making a subsistence living as digital platform workers. Digging beneath the superficial newspaper articles that highlight beach-bound, bikinied workers, adorned with laptops, this book asks, what are the social implications of adopting the subcultural lifestyle known as ‘Digital Nomadism...

Silicon Valley wants us to believe that technology will revolutionize our cities and the ways we move around. Autonomous vehicles will make us safer, greener, and more efficient. On-demand services like Uber and Lyft will eliminate car ownership. Micromobility devices like electric scooters will be at every corner, and drones will deliver goods and services. Meanwhile visionaries like Elon Musk promise to eliminate congestion with tunnels, and Uber help with flying cars. The future of tra...

This inaugural edited collection for the Communicating Responsible Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion series presents new critical discourse alongside cutting-edge practical work at the crossroads of PR, CSR, and DEI. The collection explores the active promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion as a public relations responsibility and provides new avenues for critiquing the ways in which power operates through public relations work and theory building. Featuring contributions from leading schol...

How does a smartphone change our experience of walking in a city? How does Google change how we learn? And how do matching algorithms change how we date? Engaging these and other questions, this open access book analyzes the transformation of everyday life in the Big Tech era. Although movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter would not have happened in the way they did without corporate social media platforms, these platforms are not designed for emancipation, but to maximize user engagemen...

Intersubjectivity considered as both historical phenomenon and nascent mode of present-day relation.This collection of essays considers the relationship between performance, subjectivity, and human agency. Encompassing both historical and speculative perspectives, this book explores the ways in which nonhuman (or trans/post-human) entities complicate notions of subjectivity and exert intersubjective pressures of their own on social, political, scientific, and philosophical discourses. Ranging fr...