Description
Book SynopsisBehind the omnipresent screens of our laptops and smartphones, a digitally networked public has quickly grown larger than the population of any nation on Earth. On the flipside, in front of the ubiquitous recording devices that saturate our lives, individuals are hyper-exposed through a worldwide online broadcast that encourages the public to watch, judge, rate, and rank people’s lives. The interplay of these two forces - the invisibility of the anonymous crowd and the exposure of the individual before that crowd - is a central focus of this book. Informed by critiques of conformity and mass media by some of the greatest philosophers of the past two centuries, as well as by a wide range of historical and empirical studies, Weissman helps shed light on what may happen when our lives are increasingly broadcast online for everyone all the time, to be judged by the global community.
Trade ReviewJeremy Weissman’s chilling account of a future in which digital technology is fully enmeshed in the fabric of society and our human selves is no science fantasy. It is lucidly argued with enormous clarity and imagination. Warnings of this gripping book are informed by classical parables and centuries of philosophical thinking about human aspirations and ethical values combined with a unique grasp of on-the-ground realities of digital life.
-- Helen Nissenbaum, professor of information science, Cornell Tech
To avoid dystopias you need to know what it takes to create them—how to engineer people to conform to harmful norms and participate in practices that erode freedom and perpetuate injustice. Hyper-Exposure: Conformity and Control on Social Media presents a powerful philosophical warning for resisting the detrimental programmed behavior encouraged on social media and afforded by so-called smart devices.
-Evan Selinger, Prof. Philosophy Rochester Institute of Technology
-- Evan Selinger
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Part I: Conformity
1. The Human Animal in Civilized Society
2. Social Media as an Escape from Freedom
3. Meaninglessness in the Present Age
Part II: Control
4. The Spectacular Power of the Public
5. 'P2P' Surveillance and Control
6. The Net of Noramlization
Part III: Resistance
7. Freedom from the Public Eye
8. Strategies of Resistance
Bibliography
Index
