A Web of Our Own Making
The Nature of Digital Formation

Digital technology is a 'natural technology'-a technology so intuitive as to conceal how and how far it transforms the world.

Antón Barba-Kay (Author)

9781009324793, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 May 2023

306 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.4 cm, 0.6 kg

'I particularly appreciated the thoroughness with which Barba-Kay considers digital technology's implications on what we value in life. Numerous thoughts brought me up short and had me considering technology from fresh angles …' Duncan Hollands, The Global Anglican

There no longer seems any point to criticizing the internet. We indulge in the latest doom-mongering about the evils of social media-on social media. We scroll through routine complaints about the deterioration of our attention spans. We resign ourselves to hating the internet even as we spend much of our waking lives with it. Yet our unthinking surrender to its effects-to the ways it recasts our aims and desires-is itself digital technology's most powerful achievement. A Web of Our Own Making examines how online practices are reshaping our lives outside our notice. Barba-Kay argues that digital technology is a 'natural technology'-a technology so intuitive as to conceal the extent to which it transforms our attention. He shows how and why this technology is reconfiguring knowledge, culture, politics, aesthetics, and theology. The digital revolution is primarily taking place not in Silicon Valley but within each of us.

1. Left to our own devices
2. Led by our own lights
3. The sound of our own voice
4. Realities of our own contrivance
5. From my inbox.

Subject Areas: Political science & theory [JPA]