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Author: Astra Taylor
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
Published: 2014-04-15
Total Pages: 278
ISBN-13: 0007525605
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFrom a cutting-edge cultural commentator, a bold and brilliant challenge to cherished notions of the internet as the great leveler of our age.
Author: Astra Taylor
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2021-05-04
Total Pages: 183
ISBN-13: 164259475X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOver the last decade, author and activist Astra Taylor has helped shift the national conversation on topics including technology, inequality, indebtedness, and democracy. The essays collected here reveal the range and depth of her thinking, with Taylor tackling the rising popularity of socialism, the problem of automation, the politics of listening, the possibility of rights for the natural and non-human world, the future of the university, the temporal challenge of climate catastrophe, and more. Addressing some of the most pressing social problems of our day, Taylor invites us to imagine how things could be different while never losing sight of the strategic question of how change actually happens. Curious and searching, these historically informed and hopeful essays are as engaging as they are challenging and as urgent as they are timeless. Taylor 's unique philosophical style has a political edge that speaks directly to the growing conviction that a radical transformation of our economy and society is required.
Author: Collective Debt
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2020-06-23
Total Pages: 98
ISBN-13: 1642593826
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDebtors have been mocked, scolded and lied to for decades. We have been told that it is perfectly normal to go into debt to get medical care, to go to school, or even to pay for our own incarceration. We’ve been told there is no way to change an economy that pushes the majority of people into debt while a small minority hoard wealth and power. The coronavirus pandemic has revealed that mass indebtedness and extreme inequality are a political choice. In the early days of the crisis, elected officials drew up plans to spend trillions of dollars. The only question was: where would the money go and who would benefit from the bailout? The truth is that there has never been a lack of money for things like housing, education and health care. Millions of people never needed to be forced into debt for those things in the first place. Armed with this knowledge, a militant debtors movement has the potential to rewrite the contract and assure that no one has to mortgage their future to survive. Debtors of the World Must Unite. As isolated individuals, debtors have little influence. But as a bloc, we can leverage our debts and devise new tactics to challenge the corporate creditor class and help win reparative, universal public goods. Individually, our debts overwhelm us. But together, our debts can make us powerful.
Author: Astra Taylor
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2015-04-07
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781250062598
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"Taylor is the Marshall McLuhan or the Neil Postman of our new digital economy, the lonely voice raising urgent questions we need to answer together . . . If The People's Platform doesn't spark the conversation about the kind of democracy and culture we deserve, then we'll deserve the one we get."—NY1 News' The Book Reader The Internet has been hailed as an unprecedented democratizing force, a place where all can participate equally. But how true is this claim? In a seminal dismantling of techno-utopian visions, The People's Platform argues that the Internet in fact amplifies real-world inequities at least as much as it ameliorates them. Online, just as off-line, attention and influence largely accrue to those who already have plenty of both. A handful of giant companies remain the gatekeepers, while the worst habits of the old media model—the pressure to seek easy celebrity, to be quick and sensational above all—have proliferated in the ad-driven system. We can do better, Astra Taylor insists. The online world does offer a unique opportunity, but a democratic culture that supports work of lasting value will not spring up from technology alone. If we want the Internet to truly be a people's platform, we will have to make it so.
Author: Thomas Poell
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2021-10-14
Total Pages: 260
ISBN-13: 1509540520
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe widespread uptake of digital platforms – from YouTube and Instagram to Twitch and TikTok – is reconfiguring cultural production in profound, complex, and highly uneven ways. Longstanding media industries are experiencing tremendous upheaval, while new industrial formations – live-streaming, social media influencing, and podcasting, among others – are evolving at breakneck speed. Poell, Nieborg, and Duffy explore both the processes and the implications of platformization across the cultural industries, identifying key changes in markets, infrastructures, and governance at play in this ongoing transformation, as well as pivotal shifts in the practices of labor, creativity, and democracy. The authors foreground three particular industries – news, gaming, and social media creation – and also draw upon examples from music, advertising, and more. Diverse in its geographic scope, Platforms and Cultural Production builds on the latest research and accounts from across North America, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and China to reveal crucial differences and surprising parallels in the trajectories of platformization across the globe. Offering a novel conceptual framework grounded in illuminating case studies, this book is essential for students, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to understand how the institutions and practices of cultural production are transforming – and what the stakes are for understanding platform power.
Author: Andrew Keen
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Published: 2015-01-06
Total Pages: 249
ISBN-13: 0802192319
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe renowned Internet commentator and author of How to Fix the Future“expos[es] the greed, egotism and narcissism that fuels the tech world” (Chicago Tribune). The digital revolution has contributed to the world in many positive ways, but we are less aware of the Internet’s deeply negative effects. The Internet Is Not the Answer, by longtime Internet skeptic Andrew Keen, offers a comprehensive look at what the Internet is doing to our lives. The book traces the technological and economic history of the Internet, from its founding in the 1960s through the rise of big data companies to the increasing attempts to monetize almost every human activity. In this sharp, witty narrative, informed by the work of other writers, reporters, and academics, as well as his own research and interviews, Keen shows us the tech world, warts and all. Startling and important, The Internet Is Not the Answer is a big-picture look at what the Internet is doing to our society and an investigation of what we can do to try to make sure the decisions we are making about the reconfiguring of our world do not lead to unpleasant, unforeseen aftershocks. “Andrew Keen has written a very powerful and daring manifesto questioning whether the Internet lives up to its own espoused values. He is not an opponent of Internet culture, he is its conscience, and must be heard.” —Po Bronson, #1 New York Times–bestselling author
Author: Shoshana Zuboff
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2019-01-15
Total Pages: 658
ISBN-13: 1610395700
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.
Author: Nicholas J. Cull
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2019-04-15
Total Pages: 161
ISBN-13: 0745691234
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNew technologies have opened up fresh possibilities for public diplomacy, but this has not erased the importance of history. On the contrary, the lessons of the past seem more relevant than ever, in an age in which communications play an unprecedented role. Whether communications are electronic or hand-delivered, the foundations remain as valid today as they ever have been. Blending history with insights from international relations, communication studies, psychology, and contemporary practice, Cull explores the five core areas of public diplomacy: listening, advocacy, cultural diplomacy, exchanges, and international broadcasting. He unpacks the approaches which have dominated in recent years – nation-branding and partnership – and sets out the foundations for successful global public engagement. Rich with case studies and examples drawn from ancient times through to our own digital age, the book shows the true capabilities and limits of emerging platforms and technologies, as well as drawing on lessons from the past which can empower us and help us to shape the future. This comprehensive and accessible introduction is essential reading for students, scholars, and practitioners, as well as anyone interested in understanding or mobilizing global public opinion.
Author: Darin Barney
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Published: 2016-11-01
Total Pages: 377
ISBN-13: 1452952043
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJust what is the “participatory condition”? It is the situation in which taking part in something with others has become both environmental and normative. The fact that we have always participated does not mean we have always lived under the participatory condition. What is distinctive about the present is the extent to which the everyday social, economic, cultural, and political activities that comprise simply being in the world have been thematized and organized around the priority of participation. Structured along four axes investigating the relations between participation and politics, surveillance, openness, and aesthetics, The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age comprises fifteen essays that explore the promises, possibilities, and failures of contemporary participatory media practices as related to power, Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring uprisings, worker-owned cooperatives for the post-Internet age; paradoxes of participation, media activism, open source projects; participatory civic life; commercial surveillance; contemporary art and design; and education. This book represents the most comprehensive and transdisciplinary endeavor to date to examine the nature, place, and value of participation in the digital age. Just as in 1979, when Jean-François Lyotard proposed that “the postmodern condition” was characterized by the questioning of historical grand narratives, The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age investigates how participation has become a central preoccupation of our time. Contributors: Mark Andrejevic, Pomona College; Bart Cammaerts, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE); Nico Carpentier, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB – Free University of Brussels) and Charles University in Prague; Julie E. Cohen, Georgetown University; Kate Crawford, MIT; Alessandro Delfanti, University of Toronto; Christina Dunbar-Hester, University of Southern California; Rudolf Frieling, California College of Arts and the San Francisco Art Institute; Salvatore Iaconesi, La Sapienza University of Rome and ISIA Design Florence; Jason Edward Lewis, Concordia University; Rafael Lozano-Hemmer; Graham Pullin, University of Dundee; Trebor Scholz, The New School in New York City; Cayley Sorochan, McGill University; Bernard Stiegler, Institute for Research and Innovation in Paris; Krzysztof Wodiczko, Harvard Graduate School of Design; Jillian C. York.
Author: Farah Nayeri
Publisher: Astra Publishing House
Published: 2022-01-25
Total Pages: 274
ISBN-13: 1662600550
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFarah Nayeri addresses the difficult questions plaguing the art world, from the bad habits of Old Masters, to the current grappling with identity politics. For centuries, art censorship has been a top-down phenomenon--kings, popes, and one-party states decided what was considered obscene, blasphemous, or politically deviant in art. Today, censorship can also happen from the bottom-up, thanks to calls to action from organizers and social media campaigns. Artists and artworks are routinely taken to task for their insensitivity. In this new world order, artists, critics, philanthropists, galleries and museums alike are recalibrating their efforts to increase the visibility of marginalized voices and respond to the people’s demands for better ethics in art. But what should we, the people, do with this newfound power? With exclusive interviews with Nan Goldin, Sam Durant, Faith Ringgold, and others, Nayeri tackles wide-ranging issues including sex, religion, gender, ethics, animal rights, and race. By asking and answering questions such as: Who gets to make art and who owns it? How do we correct the inequities of the past? What does authenticity, exploitation, and appropriation mean in art?, Takedown provides the necessary tools to navigate the art world.
