How is human embodiment transformed in an age of algorithms? How do post-cinematic media technologies such as AI, VR, and robotics target and re-shape our bodies? Post-Cinematic Bodies grapples with these questions by attending both to mundane devices-such as smartphones, networked exercise machines, and smart watches and other wearables equipped with heartrate sensors-as well as to new media artworks that rework such equipment to reveal to us the ways that our fleshly existences are increasingly up for grabs. Through an equally philosophical and interpretive analysis, the book aims to develop a new aesthetics of embodied experience that is attuned to a new age of predictive technology and metabolic capitalism
The Citizen Lobby intends to illustrate a more powerful democratic model that organizes the efforts of the electorate in a way that both generates those reasoned arguments and delivers them to the elected politicians in a manner they can neither refuse nor ignore. The Internet holds endless opportunities for exchange and dialogue and the promise of developing a better democratic model. Day-to-day politics are largely driven by economic lobbies in the interest of what Habermas calls their "generalised particularism," the threat to take jobs and tax revenues elsewhere. Citizens' influence over politicians is twofold: they are asked for their input in elections, referenda, online consultations and surveys, and citizens can initiate issues where they see political action needed. Yet these "participative forces," including NGOs, street rallies and charities, regularly fail to reach the ears of elected politicians as effectively as those of well-funded corporate lobbies. Also, this type of voluntary engagement often falls short of presenting the kind of reasoned challenges to the incumbents—by the electorate—that Habermas' communicative action aimed at. A more powerful model would therefore organise the efforts of the electorate in a way that both generates those reasoned arguments, which, as Habermas quite correctly pointed out differ from mere opinions, and delivers them to the elected politicians in a manner they can neither refuse nor ignore. This is what the Citizen Lobby intends to do.
Klappentext: Mitte der 1960er Jahre hat Michel Foucault die Methode der "Diskursanalyse" in die Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften eingeführt. Über ein halbes Jahrhundert später ist in Informatik und Digital Humanities ein zunehmendes Interesse an eben dieser Methode zu verzeichnen, auch wenn Foucault dabei zumeist keine Rolle spielt. Umso wichtiger erscheint es, die Archäologie des Wissens unter digitalen Bedingungen neu zu lesen. Dass Foucault mit diesem Buch auf die damaligen Herausforderungen der Computerkultur antwortete, ist bislang kaum gesehen worden. Heute gilt es, die Aktualität der Foucaultschen Archäologie deshalb neu zu entdecken - in der Informatik ebenso wie in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften.
