The digital world in the post-Snowden age: we know that we are under surveillance, but we keep on going as if it had no meaning at all. Although businesses like Facebook, Google and Amazon increasingly infiltrate our private sphere, the use of social media remains uninterrupted – supported by ever-smaller devices which have almost irrevocably embedded themselves in our everyday lives. We are thrown to and fro between a fear of dependence and concealed obsession. With this fifth part of his ongoing investigations into critical internet culture, the Dutch media theorist Geert Lovink delves into the paradoxical world of the new digital normality: where is art, culture and critique headed, if the digital is increasingly inserting itself into the background of our everyday lives? This volume deals with topics such as selfie culture, the internet fixation of the American writer Jonathan Franzen, the internet in Uganda, the aesthetics of Anonymous and the anatomy of the bitcoin religion: will the creation of money through cyber-currency and crowdfunding contribute to a new sharing of wealth, or will the cleft between rich and poor actually get bigger? In this age of free access, what will become the income model of the 99%? Geert Lovink does not just draw a striking image of the vacuous reality of 24/7 communication, he also shows radical alternatives to it.
