Roberto Simanowski

Provocative takes on cyberbullshit, smartphone zombies, instant gratification, the traffic school of the information highway, and other philosophical concerns of the Internet age. In The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas, Roberto Simanowski wonders if we are on the brink of a society that views social, political, and ethical challenges as technological problems that can be fixed with the right algorithm, the best data, or the fastest computer. For example, the “death algorithm ” is programmed into a driverless car to decide, in an emergency, whether to plow into a group of pedestrians, a mother and child, or a brick wall. Can such life-and-death decisions no longer be left to the individual human? In these incisive essays, Simanowski asks us to consider what it means to be living in a time when the president of the United States declares the mainstream media to be an enemy of the people—while Facebook transforms the people into the enemy of mainstream media. Simanowski describes smartphone zombies (or “smombies”) who remove themselves from the physical world to the parallel universe of social media networks; calls on Adorno to help parse Trump's tweeting; considers transmedia cannibalism, as written text is transformed into a postliterate object; compares the economic and social effects of the sharing economy to a sixteen-wheeler running over a plastic bottle on the road; and explains why philosophy mat become the most important element in the automotive and technology industries.

The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas

On Facebook and fake news, selfies and self-consciousness, selling our souls to the Internet, and other aspects of the digital revolution. With these engaging and provocative essays, Roberto Simanowski considers what new media has done to us. Why is digital privacy being eroded and why does society seem not to care? Why do we escape from living and loving the present into capturing, sharing and liking it? And how did we arrive at a selfie society without self-consciousness? Simanowski, who has been studying the Internet and social media since the 1990s, goes deeper than the conventional wisdom. For example, on the question of Facebook's responsibility for the election of Donald Trump, he argues that the problem is not the “fake news” but the creation of conditions that make people susceptible to fake news. The hallmark of the Internet is its instantaneousness, but, Simanowski cautions, speed is the enemy of depth. On social media, he says, “complex arguments are jettisoned in favor of simple slogans, text in favor of images, laborious explorations at understanding the world and the self in favor of amusing banalities, deep engagement in favor of the click.” Simanowski wonders if we have sold our soul to Silicon Valley, as Faust sold his to the Devil; credits Edward Snowden for making privacy a news story; looks back at 1984, 1984, and Apple's famous sledgehammer commercial; and considers the shitstorm, mapping waves of Internet indignation—including one shitstorm that somehow held Adidas responsible for the killing of dogs in Ukraine. “Whatever gets you through the night,” sang John Lennon in 1974. Now, Simanowski says, it's Facebook that gets us through the night; and we have yet to grasp the implications of this.

A New Media Primer

Waste

How to interpret and critique digital arts, in theory and in practice.

Reading Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, Mapping Art, and Interactive Installations

Digital Art and Meaning

Data Love considers the changes big data has brought to the human condition from a philosophical standpoint. Roberto Simanowski explores our entanglements with algorithmic analysis and data mining, as we contribute to the amassing of ever more data about our lives, leading to the statistical evaluation and individual profiling of our selves.

The Seduction and Betrayal of Digital Technologies

Data Love

Wie viel Uber verträgt die Welt? Wie kosmopolitisch sind Todesalgorithmen? Welche Erinnerungen ruft eine digitale Madeleine hervor? Warum kam das Radio einst zu früh und das Internet zu spät? Wie wurden die Nerds Sieger der Geschichte? Wäre Faust, der nie im Augenblick verweilen wollte, heute auf Facebook? Rettet Zuckerberg das Projekt der Moderne durch Alternativen zu Religion und Ideologie? Dieses Buch erklärt Medien durch die Hintertür. Auf oft überraschende, bisweilen scheinbar abwegige, immer aber inspirierende Weise zeigt Roberto Simanowski die kulturellen Folgen technologischer Entwicklung auf.

Das alternative ABC der neuen Medien

Abfall

Brigitte Schultze

Horst Turk

Nationalismus, Regionalismus, Fundamentalismus

Kulturelle Grenzziehungen im Spiegel der Literaturen

Jörgen Schäfer

Peter Gendolla

»Digital media« is increasingly finding its way into the discussions of the humanities classroom. But while there is a number of grand theoretical texts about digital literature there as yet is little in the way of resources for discussing the down-to-earth practices of research, teaching, and curriculum necessary for this work to mature. This book presents contributions by scholars and teachers from different countries and academic environments who articulate their approach to the study and teaching of digital literature and thus give a broader audience an idea of the state-of-the-art of the subject matter also in international comparison.

Digital Literature in Research and Teaching. A Handbook

Reading Moving Letters

Von all diesen neuen Phänomenen berichtet das vorliegende Heft. Neben einer systematisierenden Einleitung von Roberto Simanowski, der die Phänomene digitaler Literatur vorstellt, begrifflich fasst und ihre spezifischen Eigenschaften und Probleme diskutiert, enthält das Heft Beiträge von Friedrich W. Block, Michel Chaouli, Robert Coover, Florian Cramer, Kurt Fent, Peter Gendolla, Christiane Heibach, Karin Wenz, Uwe Wirth. Eine Bibliografie sowie ein Glossarium runden das Heft ab.

Digitale Literatur

Ein Gespenst geht um in den Verlagen und Bücherstuben der abendländischen Welt, es ist das Gespenst der digitalen Literatur. Alle Kräfte des traditionellen Literatursystems haben sich zu einem heiligen Kampf gegen die Feinde der Buchkultur verschworen oder sind dabei, sich mit ihnen zu verbünden.

vom Schreiben im Netz

Interfictions

Christoph Zeller

Urs Meyer

zur Ästhetik paraliterarischer Verfahren

Transmedialität

Der digitale Wandel der Gesellschaft wird von konzeptlosen Politikern und gewinnorientierten Unternehmern diskussionslos durchgewunken und vorangetrieben. Die gelegentliche Kritik an Fake News, Filterblasen und dem Verlust der Privatsphäre trifft nur die Symptome einer viel grundsätzlicheren Gefahr für das Fortbestehen unserer Demokratie. Auch die Schulen und Universitäten entziehen sich ihrer gesellschaftlichen Verantwortung, wenn sie nur vermitteln, wie man die neuen Medien sicher nutzen und effektiv in der Forschung einsetzen kann, statt auch die kulturstiftende Funktion des Computers zu betrachten. Roberto Simanowski plädiert in seiner Streitschrift für eine neue Medienbildung, die kritisch operiert statt affirmativ. Nicht allein die Anwendungskompetenz muss im Zentrum der Bildung stehen, sondern die Frage, wie die neuen Medien unser Leben und unsere Weltwahrnehmung ändern.

Vom Verschwinden der Computer in Bildung und Gesellschaft

Stumme Medien

Facebook claims that it is building a “global community.” Whether this sounds utopian, dystopian, or simply self-promotional, there is no denying that social-media platforms have altered social interaction, political life, and outlooks on the world, even for people who do not regularly use them. In this book, Roberto Simanowski takes Facebook as a starting point to investigate our social-media society—and its insidious consequences for our concept of the self. Simanowski contends that while they are often denounced as outlets for narcissism and self-branding, social networks and the practices they cultivate in fact remake the self in their image. Sharing is the outsourcing of one’s experiences, encouraging unreflective self-narration rather than conscious self-determination. Instead of experiencing the present, we are stuck ceaselessly documenting and archiving it. We let our lives become episodic autobiographies whose real author is the algorithm lurking behind the interface. As we go about accumulating more material for the platform to arrange for us, our sense of self becomes diminished—and Facebook shapes a subject who no longer minds. Social-media companies’ relentless pursuit of personal data for advertising purposes presents users with increasingly targeted, customized information, attenuating cultural memory and fracturing collective identity. Presenting a creative, philosophically informed perspective that speaks candidly to a shared reality, Facebook Society asks us to come to terms with the networked world for our own sake and for all those with whom we share it.

Roberto Simanowski

Books

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