Off the network : disrupting the digital world / Ulises Ali Mejias.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mejias, Ulises Ali

Series:

Electronic mediations ; v. 41.

Electronic mediations ; v. 41

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Online social networks.

Social networks.

Organization.

Physical Description:

xvii, 193 pages ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2013]

Summary:

Off the Network is a fresh and authoritative examination of how the hidden logic of the Internet, social media, and the digital network is changing users' understanding of the world-and why that should worry us. Ulises Ali Mejias also suggests how we might begin to rethink the logic of the network and question its ascendancy. He argues that the digital network, touted as consensual, inclusive, and pleasurable, is also monopolizing and threatening in its capacity to determine, commodify, and commercialize so many aspects of our lives. Mejias shows how the network broadens participation yet also exacerbates disparity-and how it excludes more of society than it includes. The result is an uncompromising, sophisticated, and accessible critique of the digital world that increasingly dominates our lives. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction

Thinking the network. The network as method for organizing the world

The privatization of social life

Computers as socializing tools

Acting inside and outside the network

Unthinking the network. Strategies for disrupting networks

Proximity and conflict

Collaboration and freedom

Intensifying the network. The limits of liberation technologies

The outside of networks as a method for acting in the world.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780816678990

0816678995

9780816679003

0816679002

OCLC:

816563790