Inhuman networks : social media and the archaeology of connection /
Grant Bollmer.
- 1 online resource (xiii, 275 pages) : illustrations
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction: connectivity, flow, citizenship, archaeology -- 1. Biology: vital technologies, anatomical networks -- 2. Society: railroads, red scares, and racism -- 3. Economy: banking on a networked society -- 4. Death: living forever on social media -- 5. Labor: giving life to data -- 6. Truth: the politics of performing the total self -- 7. Contagion: the inevitable failure of connectivity -- 8. (Political) theory: how to disempower friends and pathologize people.
"Social media's connectivity is often thought to be a manifestation of human nature buried until now, revealed only through the diverse technologies of the participatory internet. Rather than embrace this view, Inhuman Networks: Social Media and the Archaeology of Connection argues that the human nature revealed by social media imagines network technology and data as models for behavior online. Covering a wide range of historical and interdisciplinary subjects, Grant Bollmer examines the emergence of "the network" as a model for relation in the 1700s and 1800s and follows it through marginal, often forgotten articulations of technology, biology, economics, and the social. From this history, Bollmer examines contemporary controversies surrounding social media, extending out to the influence of network models on issues of critical theory, politics, popular science, and neoliberalism. By moving through the past and present of network media, Inhuman Networks demonstrates how contemporary network culture unintentionally repeats debates over the limits of Western modernity to provide an idealized future where "the human" is interchangeable with abstract, flowing data connected through well-managed, distributed networks."-- "Examines how "the human" is produced in relation to technological changes, foregrounding the necessity of theoretical and archaeological perspectives for understanding contemporary media culture"--
Mass media and culture. Mass media and technology. Social media. Cultural studies. Media, information & communication industries. Media studies. SOCIAL SCIENCE--Media Studies. TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING--General. SOCIAL SCIENCE--Anthropology--Cultural. PSYCHOLOGY--Social Psychology. Mass media and culture. Mass media and technology. Social media.