<nettime> New open access book „On the Way to Cyberpolis“

Hi nettimers,

here’s a new open access book for you (unfortunately only in German):

Auf dem Weg zur Cyberpolis. Neue Formen von Gemeinschaft, Selbst und Bildung

Martin Donner & Heidrun Allert 2022, 496p

Some subchapters build on extensive interviews with Carlo.

Field study about digital nomads included.

The book deals with the question how cybernetic knowledge connected with specific economic contextualizations shaped new visions of society, self and education via digital media – especially the internet – and how we might deal with that.

The social, cultural, and political process of digitization is giving rise to new forms of community, society, self and education which are deeply ambivalent. Historical landmarks for this development are three sceneries which are worth to be remembered in current debates to oversee historical tendencies but also alternative options and opportunities to draw on:

1) The cyber-hippie-artists of the 60s

…being crucial for the emergence of silicon valley culture and the development of the PC in the 70s as a first device to program oneself on the basis of a new cybernetic conception of the human being.

2) The society-wide spreading of the internet technologies in the 90s

…connected with strong visions to reprogram society in a completely neoliberal way (but quite differently adopted in German/European and US tech subculture).

3) The escalation of this nowadays

…which seems to go far beyond neoliberalism as some researchers call it neofeudalism and the like – specifically because it’s not only about big tech and platform capitalism but also about new lifestyles and ways of thinking which already deeply infiltrate the middle of society as the movement of the digital nomads shows (field study included).

One claim of the book is that the cybernetic visions and backgrounds de facto undermined the pre-cybernetic foundations and understandings of modern politics (as a new cybernetic anthropology emerged). In this regard it led to the emergence of three different cybernetic concepts of the self we should be aware of as some aspects of them might be more and some might be less adequate to build on if we have a fair and just and ecologically sustainable society in mind.

In the light of some currently discussed social problems connected with the contemporary internet infrastructure and its dominant culture the last chapter suggests alternative design ideas

a) for the technological infrastructure and

b) for a just and sustainable digital „cyber“-society and education.

Download the book here:

https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-5878-1/auf-dem-weg-zur-cyberpolis/?number=978-3-8394-5878-5&c=313000107

respectively here:

https://www.transcript-verlag.de/media/pdf/c3/28/cf/oa9783839458785.pdf

Best,

Martin