Resisting Big Tech

The Personalized is Political

Niels Niessen (Tilburg University, Netherlands), Anthony Mandal, Jenny Kidd (Cardiff University UK)

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Hardback

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English

Bloomsbury Academic
18 September 2025

Communication studies; Media studies; Impact of science & technology on society; Digital lifestyle

Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Digital Cultures

How does Google Maps reorient our city travels? How do matching algorithms affect how we seek love? And how does artificial “intelligence” prompt how we think? Engaging these and similar questions, this open access book critiques Big Tech’s colonization of everyday life.

Although #MeToo and Black Lives Matter would not have happened the way they did without so-called “social” media, these platforms are not designed for emancipation but to maximize data extraction. Inspired by the feminist rallying cry that “the personal is political,” Resisting Big Tech calls for a collective consciousness of how Big Tech’s increasingly personalized streams colonize our associations (how we wander in our bodyminds and how we cohere as groups). Articulating a degrowth perspective on Big Tech, the book argues the need to be much more vigilant for how the transhumanist ideology that drives corporations like Google, Meta, and OpenAI accelerates life, burning out people and the planet.

Focusing on four domains of life—home, city, learning, love— Niels Niessen advocates for the de-Googling of life and the need to foster truly communal spaces, online but especially offline.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the European Research Council.

By: Niels Niessen (Tilburg University Netherlands)
Edited by: Anthony Mandal, Jenny Kidd (Cardiff University UK)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 218mm, Width: 144mm, Spine: 22mm
Weight: 560g
ISBN: 9781350504103
ISBN 10: 1350504106
Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Digital Cultures
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 18 September 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Niels Niessen is Assistant Professor of Culture Studies at Tilburg University, Netherlands. He is the author of Miraculous Realism: The French-Walloon Cinéma du Nord and the essay series California Dreamin’ 1960-2020 (with essays on David Lynch, Mad Men, Apple, and Black Panther).

Reviews for Resisting Big Tech: The Personalized is Political

Niessen urges readers to look beyond the seductions of seamless connectivity and workflow productivity offered by corporate tech, to reflect on how personalised technologies are radically reshaping what it means to be human today. A timely and urgent account that draws on a wide range of ideas from politics, philosophy, urban geography and feminist studies, advancing a new politics of resistance that recalls technology’s emancipatory potentials. -- Sarah Barns, Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia This ground-breaking book offers a truly much-needed vocabulary to understand and navigate these strange, technocolonial times. I was stunned and alarmed learning more about how smartphones, algorithms and AI are embedded into our lives in unimaginable ways, but also invigorated by the thoughtful, beautifully written and conscientious writing. Niessen integrates feminist values into the book's insightful explorations, and offers a powerful call to resist and to rethink how we live in the digital age. -- Minna Salami, Author of Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone