The Digital Condition: Class and Culture in the Information Network

Robert Wilkie

Open Access Published by Fordham University Press 2011

The Digital Condition

Class and Culture in the Information Network

Robert Wilkie

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823241521

Overview
Contents

About this book

Each generation of scholars produces a book that remaps the state of knowledge. Rob Wilkie's The Digital Condition: Class and Culture in the Information Network is the book of a new generation of cultural theorists who grew up under digital conditions and now is redrawing the boundaries of digital cultural analysis. In a wide ranging study of cultural texts and situations—from William Gibson's novels and the iPad, to the writings of Antonio Negri, Jacques Derrida, Manuel Castells, Donna Haraway, and Bruno Latour—Wilkie argues that machines are not technological, but social. They are the extension of social relations which means that the "digital condition" is ultimately the class condition.

Author / Editor information

Wilkie Robert :

Rob Wilkie is Assistant Professor of Cultural and Digital Studies at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. His essays have appeared in such journals as JAC, Nature,Society and Thought, Textual Practice, and Postmodern Culture. This is his first book.

Reviews

Touching on the production of knowledge in the digital age, literature, and cinema—and weaving Marx, Heidegger, Derrida, Lyotard, et al. throughout—this book is a clarion call for cultural theory: having promoted digital culture, cultural theory must return to focus on the struggle of labor and how technological development can best serve the interests of all. Highly recommended.

—Steven Wexler:

“Outstanding scholarship that is at once comprehensive, relevant,
provocative, and necessary.”

The Digital Condition advances a groundbreaking analysis of digital culture and argues that the digital environment has obscured the implications of class difference, changing digital reality and perception. Underlying digital culture are social and historical relations that require class analysis to explain why new realities are determined by global class inequalities. The result is a powerful guide perfect for any college-level computer issues or cultural history holding.

—Peter McLaren:

“Through a dense and layered study which seamlessly connects sustained
philosophical readings of Plato, Kant, Heidegger, Derrida, Jameson,
and Negri with a critical analysis of some of the changes resulting from technological innovation and globalization, and incisive interpretations of some of the icons of digital culture, including the iPod, post-cyber/nano-punk and films like The Matrix, Wilkie offers in his book a cutting-edge theorization of digital culture that will instantly establish him as one of the most exciting new voices working in critical and cultural theory today."

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Open Access Download PDF	1
one. The Spirit Technological Open Access Download PDF	9
two. Global Networks and the Materiality of Immaterial Labor Open Access Download PDF	50
three. Reading and Writing in the Digital Age Open Access Download PDF	122
four. The Ideology of the Digital Me Open Access Download PDF	167
notes Open Access Download PDF	197
works cited Open Access Download PDF	223
index Open Access Download PDF	237

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Pages
- Main content: 260
Keywords: Sociology; Cinema & Media Studies; Philosophy & Theory

eBook

Published: October 3, 2011
ISBN: 9780823241521