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"What is democracy really? What do we mean when we use the term? And can it ever truly exist? Astra Taylor, hailed as a "New Civil Rights Leader" (LA Times), provides surprising answers. There is no shortage of democracy, at least in name, and yet it is in crisis everywhere we look. From a cabal of thieving plutocrats in the White House to campaign finance and gerrymandering, it is clear that democracy--specifically the principle of government by and for the people--is not living up to its promise. In Democracy Might Not Exist, Astra Taylor shows that real democracy--fully inclusive and completely egalitarian--has in fact never existed. In a tone that is both philosophical and anecdotal, weaving together history, theory, the stories of individuals, and interviews with such leading thinkers as Cornel West, Danielle Allen, and Slavoj Zizek, Taylor invites us to reexamine the term. Is democracy a means or an end, a process or a set of desired outcomes? What if the those outcomes, whatever they may be--peace, prosperity, equality, liberty, an engaged citizenry--can be achieved by non-democratic means? Or if an election leads to a terrible outcome? If democracy means rule by the people, what does it mean to rule and who counts as the people? The inherent paradoxes are unnamed and unrecognized. By teasing them, Democracy Might not Exist offers a better understanding of what is possible, what we want, and why democracy is so hard to realize"--

From a cutting-edge cultural commentator and documentary filmmaker, this work is a bold and brilliant challenge to cherished notions of the Internet as the great democratizing force of our age. The Internet has been hailed as a place where all can be heard and everyone can participate equally. But how true is this claim? In this seminal dismantling of techno-Utopian visions, the author argues that for all that we "tweet" and "like" and "share," the Internet in fact reflects and amplifies real-world inequities at least as much as it ameliorates them. Online, just as off-line, attention and influence largely accrue to those who already have plenty of both. What we have seen so far, she says, has been not a revolution but a rearrangement. Silicon Valley tycoons now coexist with Hollywood moguls; a handful of giants like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook remain the gatekeepers. And the worst habits of the old media model, the pressure to seek easy celebrity, to be quick and sensational above all, have proliferated online, where "aggregating" the work of others is the surest way to attract eyeballs and ad revenue. When culture is "free," creative work has diminishing value and advertising fuels the system. The new order looks suspiciously like the old one. We can do better, the author insists. The online world does offer an unprecedented opportunity, but a democratic culture that supports diverse voices, work of lasting value, and equitable business practices will not appear as a consequence of technology alone. If we want the Internet to truly be a people's platform, we will have to make it so.-- Publisher information

In 1964 the enigmatic Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously declared "the medium is the message." At the same time he called media "extensions of man." Fifty years ago these assertions were provocative enough to turn McLuhan into a countercultural celebrity. Today, it all seems somewhat unremarkable: who doesn't feel their smartphone, for both better and worse, to be a part of them? The idea that media extend us—making us more connected and sociable, informed and empowered—is not just pervasive; it is essential to the promotion of the digital economy, or what theorist Jodi Dean has dubbed "communicative capitalism."

Menschen haben Rechte, allein aufgrund der Tatsache, dass sie Menschen sind - so die Allgemeine Erklärung der Menschenrechte von 1948. Dem widerspricht Hannah Arendt mit ihrem Konzept vom "Recht, Rechte zu haben": Nur als Mitglied einer politischen Gemeinschaft, eines Staates, kann eine Person Grundrechte in Anspruch nehmen, hat sie ein Recht auf Bildung, auf Arbeit, Gesundheit, Kultur etc. Arendts Befund ist die Unzulänglichkeit der Menschenrechte als kohärentes theoretisches Konzept für demokratische Politik. Die Autor_innen aus unterschiedlichen Fachbereichen - darunter Geschichte, Recht, Politik und Literaturwissenschaft - analysieren den Satz von Hannah Arendt, kontextualisieren ihn in zeitgenössische Debatten und politische Problemlagen. Arendts Aussage ist heute, in Zeiten sogenannter Flüchtlingskrisen und ausserstaatlicher Kriege von erschreckender Aktualität und zum Zentrum einer entscheidenden und lebhaften Debatte in Politik und Wissenschaft geworden. (Verlagswerbung)

The first collection to address the collective transformation happening in response to the rise of social mediaWith the rise of web 2.0 and social media platforms taking over vast tracts of territory on the internet, the media landscape has shifted drastically in the past 20 years, transforming previously stable relationships between media creators and consumers. The Social Media Reader is the first collection to address the collective transformation with pieces on social media, peer production, copyright politics, and other aspects of contemporary internet culture from all the major thinkers in the field.Culling a broad range and incorporating different styles of scholarship from foundational pieces and published articles to unpublished pieces, journalistic accounts, personal narratives from blogs, and whitepapers, The Social Media Reader promises to be an essential text, with contributions from Lawrence Lessig, Henry Jenkins, Clay Shirky, Tim O'Reilly, Chris Anderson, Yochai Benkler, danah boyd, and Fred von Loehmann, to name a few. It covers a wide-ranging topical terrain, much like the internet itself, with particular emphasis on collaboration and sharing, the politics of social media and social networking, Free Culture and copyright politics, and labor and ownership. Theorizing new models of collaboration, identity, commerce, copyright, ownership, and labor, these essays outline possibilities for cultural democracy that arise when the formerly passive audience becomes active cultural creators, while warning of the dystopian potential of new forms of surveillance and control