Author: Amanda Lagerkvist
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190925566
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
Tied to the profundity of life and death, media are and have always been existential. Yet, as they are deeply embedded in the lifeworld on both individual and global scales, they currently capitalize on human existence seemingly without limit, while being mythologized as boundless harbingers of the future and as solutions to the predicaments of a world now poised on the edge. In this situation it is imperative to move beyond either the habitual or the sublime, to recognize that media are in fact of limits--situated both in the middle of our lives and at the limit they constitute the building blocks and brinks of being. In order to remedy the existential deficit in the field, in Existential Media Amanda Lagerkvist revisits existential philosophy through a reappreciation of Karl Jaspers' philosophy, and of his concept of the limit situation: those ultimate moments in life--of loss, crisis and guilt--which we are called upon to seize. Introducing the field of existential media studies in conversation with disability studies, the new materialism and the environmental humanities, the book offers a media theory of the limit situation which brings limits, in all their shapes and forms, onto the radar when we interrogate media. Lagerkvist argues that the present age of deep techno-cultural saturation, and of escalating calamitous and interrelated crises, is a digital limit situation, in which there are profound stakes which heighten existential uncertainty, vulnerability as well as potential fecundity. Placing the mourner--the coexister--at the center of media studies, by entering into the slow fields of mourning, commemorating and speaking to the dead in the online environment, she brings out that existential media ambivalently offer metric parameters, caring lifelines and transcendent experiences which ultimately display post-interactive modes of being digital in slowness, silence and waiting. The book ultimately calls forth a different ethos which powerfully challenges ideals of limitlessness, quantification and speed, and seeks out alternate intellectual and ethical coordinates for reclaiming, imagining and anticipating a responsible future with existential media.
Author: Franklin Foer
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101981121
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 • One of the best books of the year by The New York Times, LA Times, and NPR Franklin Foer reveals the existential threat posed by big tech, and in his brilliant polemic gives us the toolkit to fight their pervasive influence. Over the past few decades there has been a revolution in terms of who controls knowledge and information. This rapid change has imperiled the way we think. Without pausing to consider the cost, the world has rushed to embrace the products and services of four titanic corporations. We shop with Amazon; socialize on Facebook; turn to Apple for entertainment; and rely on Google for information. These firms sell their efficiency and purport to make the world a better place, but what they have done instead is to enable an intoxicating level of daily convenience. As these companies have expanded, marketing themselves as champions of individuality and pluralism, their algorithms have pressed us into conformity and laid waste to privacy. They have produced an unstable and narrow culture of misinformation, and put us on a path to a world without private contemplation, autonomous thought, or solitary introspection—a world without mind. In order to restore our inner lives, we must avoid being coopted by these gigantic companies, and understand the ideas that underpin their success. Elegantly tracing the intellectual history of computer science—from Descartes and the enlightenment to Alan Turing to Stewart Brand and the hippie origins of today's Silicon Valley—Foer exposes the dark underpinnings of our most idealistic dreams for technology. The corporate ambitions of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, he argues, are trampling longstanding liberal values, especially intellectual property and privacy. This is a nascent stage in the total automation and homogenization of social, political, and intellectual life. By reclaiming our private authority over how we intellectually engage with the world, we have the power to stem the tide. At stake is nothing less than who we are, and what we will become. There have been monopolists in the past but today's corporate giants have far more nefarious aims. They’re monopolists who want access to every facet of our identities and influence over every corner of our decision-making. Until now few have grasped the sheer scale of the threat. Foer explains not just the looming existential crisis but the imperative of resistance.
Author: Aron Gurwitsch
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810105926
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 479
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Book Description
The articles collected in this volume were written during a period of more than thirty years, the first having been published in 1929, the last in 1961. They are arranged in a systematic, not a chronological order, starting from a few articles mainly concerned with psychological matters and then passing on to phenomenology in the proper sense.
Author: John Calhoun Merrill
Publisher: Iowa State Press
ISBN: 9780813820675
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 136
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Book Description
This text is designed to stimulate thinking in the areas of freedom, action and responsibility. It takes the concept of journalistic freedom down to the personal level and proposes that each journalist push hard and constantly, in order to obtain maximum freedom in the mass medium.
Author: Ryan Lizardi
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793647364
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171
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Book Description
This book explores contemporary existential science fiction media, including film, television, and video games, and their influence on society’s conceptions of memory, identity, and humanity. Most poignantly, Ryan Lizardi argues, are the ways in which a recent cluster of science fiction media, including Gravity (2013), Interstellar (2014), Legion (2017-2019), Westworld (2016-present), Soma (2015), and Death Standing (2019), among others, present a vision of the future that is inextricably tied to an exploration of humanity that is more contemplative and comparative than traditional science fiction. The combination of the existential nature of this current trend in science fiction with the genre’s ability to manifest these abstract concepts in a generic environment that is historically focused on new frontiers and ideas creates a powerful set of media texts that ask audiences to contemplate what it means to exist, think, and connect as human beings. Scholars of media studies, film studies, television studies, genre studies, and philosophy will find this book particularly useful.
Author: Lisa Parks
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252054873
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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Book Description
Exploring how we make, distribute, and consume today’s media systems Media backends--the electronics, labor, and operations behind our screens--significantly influence our understanding of the sociotechnical relations, economies, and operations of media. Lisa Parks, Julia Velkova, and Sander De Ridder assemble essays that delve into the evolving politics of the media infrastructural landscape. Throughout, the contributors draw on feminist, queer, and intersectional criticism to engage with infrastructural and industrial issues. This focus reflects a concern about the systemic inequalities that emerge when tech companies and designers fail to address workplace discrimination and algorithmic violence and exclusions. Moving from smart phones to smart dust, the essayists examine topics like artificial intelligence, human-machine communication, and links between digital infrastructures and public service media alongside investigations into the algorithmic backends at Netflix and Spotify, Google’s hyperscale data centers, and video-on-demand services in India. A fascinating foray into an expanding landscape of media studies, Media Backends illuminates the behind-the-screen processes influencing our digital lives. Contributors: Mark Andrejevic, Philippe Bouquillion, Jonathan Cohn, Faithe J. Day, Sander De Ridder, Fatima Gaw, Christine Ithurbide, Anne Kaun, Amanda Lagerkvist, Alexis Logsdon, Stine Lomborg, Tim Markham, Vicki Mayer, Rahul Mukherjee, Kaarina Nikunen, Lisa Parks, Vibodh Parthasarathi, Philipp Seuferling, Ranjit Singh, Jacek Smolicki, Fredrik Stiernstedt, Matilda Tudor, Julia Velkova, and Zala Volcic
Author: Ethan Kleinberg
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801443916
Category : Existentialism
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
Kleinberg offers new insights into intellectual figures whose influence on modern French philosophy has been enormous, including some whose thought remains under-explored outside France.
Author: Amanda Lagerkvist
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351607170
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 429
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Book Description
Digital Existence: Ontology, Ethics and Transcendence in Digital Culture advances debates on digital culture and digital religion in two complementary ways. First, by focalizing the themes ‘ontology,’ ‘ethics’ and ‘transcendence,’ it builds on insights from research on digital religion in order to reframe the field and pursue an existential media analysis that further pushes beyond the mandatory focus in mainstream media studies on the social, cultural, political and economic dimensions of digitalization. Second, the collection also implies a broadening of the scope of the debate in the field of media, religion and culture – and digital religion in particular – beyond ‘religion,’ to include the wider existential dimensions of digital media. It is the first volume on our digital existence in the budding field of existential media studies.
Author: Carsten Stage
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1787694828
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 146
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Book Description
This book investigates the language created in Facebook groups that relate shared experiences of illness, dying and mourning. It develops a theoretical and analytical framework for understanding the use and rhythms of emojis, interjections and other forms of “intensive” writing in social media of this kind.
Author: Mark Coeckelbergh
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303117982X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 95
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Book Description
Our digital existence is hurried and fast. We are tied to the present, or perhaps we are not present enough: immersed in digital social media and processes by artificial intelligence, we are hardly present to ourselves and to others, and feel alienated from nature. We are also made to fear climate change and the end of humanity. How can we live a good life and give meaning to our lives under these conditions? How can and should we co-exist today? Using process philosophy, narrative theory, and the concept of technoperformances, this book analyzes how digital technologies shape our relation to time and our existence, and discusses what this means in the light of climate change and new technologies such as AI. In dialogue with contemporary philosophy of technology and media theory and asking original questions about finding common times in what it calls the “Anthropochrone”, it proposes a conceptual framework that helps us to understand how we (should) exist and relate to time today.
