Roberto Simanowski's Books

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A New Media Primer

By: Roberto Simanowski

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Waste

A New Media Primer

By: Roberto Simanowski

On Facebook and fake news, selfies and self-consciousness, selling our souls to the Internet, and other aspects of the digital revolution. With these engaging and provocative essays, Roberto Simanowski considers what new media has done to us. Why is digital privacy being eroded and why does society seem not to care? Why do we escape from living and loving the present into capturing, sharing and liking it? And how did we arrive at a selfie society without self-consciousness? Simanowski, who has been studying the Internet and social media since the 1990s, goes deeper than the conventional wisdom. For example, on the question of Facebook's responsibility for the election of Donald Trump, he argues that the problem is not the “fake news” but the creation of conditions that make people susceptible to fake news. The hallmark of the Internet is its instantaneousness, but, Simanowski cautions, speed is the enemy of depth. On social media, he says, “complex arguments are jettisoned in favor of simple slogans, text in favor of images, laborious explorations at understanding the world and the self in favor of amusing banalities, deep engagement in favor of the click.” Simanowski wonders if we have sold our soul to Silicon Valley, as Faust sold his to the Devil; credits Edward Snowden for making privacy a news story; looks back at 1984, 1984, and Apple's famous sledgehammer commercial; and considers the shitstorm, mapping waves of Internet indignation—including one shitstorm that somehow held Adidas responsible for the killing of dogs in Ukraine. “Whatever gets you through the night,” sang John Lennon in 1974. Now, Simanowski says, it's Facebook that gets us through the night; and we have yet to grasp the implications of this.

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Page Count

154

Publisher

MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0262536277

ISBN 13

9780262536271

Data Love

The Seduction and Betrayal of Digital Technologies

By: Roberto Simanowski

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Data Love

The Seduction and Betrayal of Digital Technologies

By: Roberto Simanowski

Intelligence services, government administrations, businesses, and a growing majority of the population are hooked on the idea that big data can reveal patterns and correlations in everyday life. Initiated by software engineers and carried out through algorithms, the mining of big data has sparked a silent revolution. But algorithmic analysis and data mining are not simply byproducts of media development or the logical consequences of computation. They are the radicalization of the Enlightenment's quest for knowledge and progress. Data Love argues that the "cold civil war" of big data is taking place not among citizens or between the citizen and government but within each of us. Roberto Simanowski elaborates on the changes data love has brought to the human condition while exploring the entanglements of those who—out of stinginess, convenience, ignorance, narcissism, or passion—contribute to the amassing of ever more data about their lives, leading to the statistical evaluation and individual profiling of their selves. Writing from a philosophical standpoint, Simanowski illustrates the social implications of technological development and retrieves the concepts, events, and cultural artifacts of past centuries to help decode the programming of our present.

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Page Count

208

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0231542429

ISBN 13

9780231542425

The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas

By: Roberto Simanowski

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The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas

By: Roberto Simanowski

Provocative takes on cyberbullshit, smartphone zombies, instant gratification, the traffic school of the information highway, and other philosophical concerns of the Internet age. In The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas, Roberto Simanowski wonders if we are on the brink of a society that views social, political, and ethical challenges as technological problems that can be fixed with the right algorithm, the best data, or the fastest computer. For example, the “death algorithm ” is programmed into a driverless car to decide, in an emergency, whether to plow into a group of pedestrians, a mother and child, or a brick wall. Can such life-and-death decisions no longer be left to the individual human? In these incisive essays, Simanowski asks us to consider what it means to be living in a time when the president of the United States declares the mainstream media to be an enemy of the people—while Facebook transforms the people into the enemy of mainstream media. Simanowski describes smartphone zombies (or “smombies”) who remove themselves from the physical world to the parallel universe of social media networks; calls on Adorno to help parse Trump's tweeting; considers transmedia cannibalism, as written text is transformed into a postliterate object; compares the economic and social effects of the sharing economy to a sixteen-wheeler running over a plastic bottle on the road; and explains why philosophy mat become the most important element in the automotive and technology industries.

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Page Count

210

Publisher

MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

026235067X

ISBN 13

9780262350679

Waste

A New Media Primer

By: Roberto Simanowski

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Waste

A New Media Primer

By: Roberto Simanowski

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Page Count

154

Publisher

MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0262350319

ISBN 13

9780262350310

Data Love

The Seduction and Betrayal of Digital Technologies

By: Roberto Simanowski

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Data Love

The Seduction and Betrayal of Digital Technologies

By: Roberto Simanowski

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208

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0231542429

ISBN 13

9780231542425

Facebook Society

Losing Ourselves in Sharing Ourselves

By: Roberto Simanowski

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Facebook Society

Losing Ourselves in Sharing Ourselves

By: Roberto Simanowski

Facebook claims that it is building a “global community.” Whether this sounds utopian, dystopian, or simply self-promotional, there is no denying that social-media platforms have altered social interaction, political life, and outlooks on the world, even for people who do not regularly use them. In this book, Roberto Simanowski takes Facebook as a starting point to investigate our social-media society—and its insidious consequences for our concept of the self. Simanowski contends that while they are often denounced as outlets for narcissism and self-branding, social networks and the practices they cultivate in fact remake the self in their image. Sharing is the outsourcing of one’s experiences, encouraging unreflective self-narration rather than conscious self-determination. Instead of experiencing the present, we are stuck ceaselessly documenting and archiving it. We let our lives become episodic autobiographies whose real author is the algorithm lurking behind the interface. As we go about accumulating more material for the platform to arrange for us, our sense of self becomes diminished—and Facebook shapes a subject who no longer minds. Social-media companies’ relentless pursuit of personal data for advertising purposes presents users with increasingly targeted, customized information, attenuating cultural memory and fracturing collective identity. Presenting a creative, philosophically informed perspective that speaks candidly to a shared reality, Facebook Society asks us to come to terms with the networked world for our own sake and for all those with whom we share it.

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Page Count

205

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0231544340

ISBN 13

9780231544344

The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas

By: Roberto Simanowski

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The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas

By: Roberto Simanowski

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Page Count

210

Publisher

MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0262536374

ISBN 13

9780262536370

Digital Art and Meaning

Reading Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, Mapping Art, and Interactive Installations

By: Roberto Simanowski

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Digital Art and Meaning

Reading Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, Mapping Art, and Interactive Installations

By: Roberto Simanowski

How to interpret and critique digital arts, in theory and in practice.

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Page Count

309

Publisher

U of Minnesota Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0816667373

ISBN 13

9780816667376

Digital Art and Meaning

Reading Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, Mapping Art, and Interactive Installations

By: Roberto Simanowski

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Digital Art and Meaning

Reading Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, Mapping Art, and Interactive Installations

By: Roberto Simanowski

How to interpret and critique digital arts, in theory and in practice.

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Page Count

309

Publisher

U of Minnesota Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0816667373

ISBN 13

9780816667376

Facebook Society

Losing Ourselves in Sharing Ourselves

By: Roberto Simanowski

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Facebook Society

Losing Ourselves in Sharing Ourselves

By: Roberto Simanowski

Preface -- Stranger friends -- Automatic autobiography -- Digital nation -- Afterword -- Epilogue to the English edition -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

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Page Count

269

Published Date

ISBN 10

0231182724

ISBN 13

9780231182720

Book's by Roberto Simanowski

Waste

Waste

Data Love

Data Love

The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas

The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas

Waste

Waste

Data Love

Data Love

Facebook Society

Facebook Society

The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas

The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas

Digital Art and Meaning

Digital Art and Meaning

Digital Art and Meaning

Digital Art and Meaning

Facebook Society

Facebook Society

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