A Web of Our Own Making
A Web of Our Own Making
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.
- Is written in engaging, non-specialized prose-the book is both rigorous and for a trans-disciplinary audience making it accessible to a wide audience in different disciplines
- Ambitious and far-reaching, it deals both with digital technology (narrowly) and with technology as such encouraging discussion well beyond its scope
- Presents a comprehensive account of what makes digital technology compelling that could serve as a general introduction to the philosophy of technology for both advanced undergraduates and educated laypeople
Reviews & endorsements
‘There have been plenty of books written about the digital age, but Antón 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, Antón 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
‘I particularly appreciated the thoroughness with which Barba-Kay considers digital technology’s implications on what we value in life. Numerous thoughts brought me up short and had me considering technology from fresh angles …’ Duncan Hollands, The Global Anglican
Product details
May 2023Paperback
9781009324779
275 pages
228 × 151 × 18 mm
0.46kg
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Left to our own devices
- 2. Led by our own lights
- 3. The sound of our own voice
- 4. Realities of our own contrivance
- 5. From my inbox.
