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The great ideological cliché of our time, César Rendueles argues in Sociophobia, is the idea that communication technologies can support positive social dynamics and improve economic and political conditions. We would like to believe that the Internet has given us the tools to overcome modernity's practical dilemmas and bring us into closer relation, but recent events show how technology has in fact driven us farther apart. Named one of the ten best books of the year by Babelia El País, Sociophobia looks at the root causes of neoliberal utopia's modern collapse. It begins by questioning the cyber-fetishist dogma that lulls us into thinking our passive relationship with technology plays a positive role in resolving longstanding differences. Rendueles claims that the World Wide Web has produced a diminished rather than augmented social reality. In other words, it has lowered our expectations with respect to political interventions and personal relations. In an effort to correct this trend, Rendueles embarks on an ambitious reassessment of our antagonistic political traditions to prove that post-capitalism is not only a feasible, intimate, and friendly system to strive for but also essential for moving past consumerism and political malaise.
List of contents
Foreword: Culture Industry 2.0, or the End of Digital Utopias in the Era of Participation Culture, by Roberto Simanowski
Ground Zero: Sociophobia
1. Digital Utopia
2. After Capitalism
Coda: 1989
Notes
Index
About the author
Prof. Dr. phil. Roberto Simanowski, geboren 1963, lehrt Medienwissenschaft an der Universität Basel. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte sind Theorie, Geschichte, Ästhetik und Soziologie digitaler Medien, Intermedialität, Narrativität sowie Interkulturalität.
Summary
César Rendueles argues that technology has caused us to lower our expectations for personal relationships and political action. Sociophobia questions the cyber-fetishist dogma that lulls us into inflating the virtues of our passive relationship with technology in an ambitious reassessment of political theory.
Report
"The enthralling Sociophobia urges us to rethink critically certain fundamental terms of our times, such as cooperation, compromise, community, and participation, and it reminds us of the extent to which we are only partially rational beings--fragile, and wholly codependent." Lucía del Moral Espín, Revista Redes
