A Web of Our Own Making

The Nature of Digital Formation

Antón Barba-Kay (Deep Springs College, California)

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Hardback

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English

Cambridge University Press
11 May 2023

Media studies; Political science & theory; Impact of science & technology on society; Ethical & social aspects of computing; Digital lifestyle

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.

By: Antón Barba-Kay (Deep Springs College California)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 159mm, Spine: 24mm
Weight: 600g
ISBN: 9781009324793
ISBN 10: 1009324799
Pages: 275
Publication Date: 11 May 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Antón Barba-Kay received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought in 2013. He was Professor of Philosophy at Catholic University from 2013–22. He is now Robert B. Aird Chair of Humanities at Deep Springs College-a liberal arts college on a cattle ranch in the Eastern Sierra.

Reviews for A Web of Our Own Making: The Nature of Digital Formation

'There have been plenty of books written about the digital age, but Anton Barba-Kay gives us something genuinely new. With a clinical yet passionate intelligence, he explains how the fusion of technology and being has forever changed who we are and how we live. A Web of Our Own Making is fierce, uncompromising, and essential.' Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows and The Glass Cage 'In compelling, elegant prose, Anton Barba-Kay lucidly diagnoses the full extent of our current technocultural crisis. His analysis is unflinching, and does not settle for any facile reassurances. But do not call his approach nostalgic, or, even worse, 'Luddit'. For Barba-Kay is not seeking to go back to anything, but rather is helping to advance the very urgent project of finding a way forward that preserves the irreducibly human within a complex and unprecedented technological landscape. This book is timely and necessary indeed.' Justin E. H. Smith, professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Paris, author of The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is