The Circle of the Snake
Nostalgia and Utopia in the Age of Big Tech
Published on 11. December 2020
176 pages
978-1-78904-023-4 (ISBN)
Description
Shocked by 9/11, the Great Recession, digital anxiety, and ecological collapse, the West suffers from nostalgia. People everywhere yearn for a utopian version of the past that never existed. Desperate for relief, many long to escape from the present. Some will stop at nothing to achieve it. In his essential new book, Grafton Tanner, author of Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts, argues that our nostalgia today is partly a consequence of the attention economy. At a time when historical literacy is crucial, and old prejudices are percolating into the present, Big Tech's predictive algorithms are locking us into nostalgic feedback loops. The result is a precarious society with its gaze fixed on the good old days. Spanning from the ancient Sophists to Black Mirror, The Circle of the Snake is at once a reckoning with the myth of digital utopia and an incisive analysis of nostalgia as a weapon to spread fascism.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Collective Ink
File size
0,71 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-78904-023-4 (9781789040234)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
12/2020
Zero Books
€16.50
Shipment within 3-4 weeks
Person
Grafton Tanner is a writer and musician from Athens, Georgia. He is the author of Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts, and his work has appeared in The Nation, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and other locations. He writes and performs with his band Superpuppet.
Content
- Intro
- Introduction: The Myth of Digital Utopia
- Chapter 1. To Manage the Universe: On the Sublime Power of Digital Technology
- Chapter 2. The Race to the Bottom of the Brain Stem, or How Persuasive is Persuasive Technology?
- Chapter 3. No More Futures: Pre-Recession Nostalgia in the West
- Chapter 4. In the Mirror Maze: Regression, Recursion, and Canonization
- Chapter 5. Mending Broken Windows: Virtual Reality and the Dream of Control
- Conclusion: Carrying the Flame
- About the Author
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
