Off the Network

Off the Network

Disrupting the Digital World

Ulises Ali Mejias

Critiques how the Internet, social media, and the digital network change users’ understanding of the world

224 Pages, 6 x 9 in

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Off the Network

Disrupting the Digital World

Series: Electronic Mediations

Ulises Ali Mejias

ISBN: 9780816679003

Publication date: June 1st, 2013

224 Pages

8 x 5

"Interesting and insightful."—Technical Communication

"Scholars of Internet- mediated communication and technology should read this, since it challenges the popular framework of the Internet."—International Journal of Communication



The digital world profoundly shapes how we work and consume and also how we play, socialize, create identities, and engage in politics and civic life. Indeed, we are so enmeshed in digital networks—from social media to cell phones—that it is hard to conceive of them from the outside or to imagine an alternative, let alone defy their seemingly inescapable power and logic. Yes, it is (sort of) possible to quit Facebook. But is it possible to disconnect from the digital network—and why might we want to?


Off the Network is a fresh and authoritative examination of how the hidden logic of the Internet, social media, and the digital network is changing users’ understanding of the world—and why that should worry us. Ulises Ali Mejias also suggests how we might begin to rethink the logic of the network and question its ascendancy. Touted as consensual, inclusive, and pleasurable, the digital network is also, Mejias says, monopolizing and threatening in its capacity to determine, commodify, and commercialize so many aspects of our lives. He shows how the network broadens participation yet also exacerbates disparity—and how it excludes more of society than it includes.


Uniquely, Mejias makes the case that it is not only necessary to challenge the privatized and commercialized modes of social and civic life offered by corporate-controlled spaces such as Facebook and Twitter, but that such confrontations can be mounted from both within and outside the network. The result is an uncompromising, sophisticated, and accessible critique of the digital world that increasingly dominates our lives.



Ulises Ali Mejias is assistant professor of communication studies at the State University of New York, College at Oswego.


Contents


Acknowledgments

Introduction


Part I. Thinking the Network

1. The Network as Method for Organizing the World

2. The Privatization of Social Life

3. Computers as Socializing Tools

4. Acting Inside and Outside the Network


Part II. Unthinking the Network

5. Strategies for Unmapping Networks

6. Proximity and Conflict

7. Collaboration and Freedom


Part III. Intensifying the Network

8. The Limits of Liberation Technologies

9. The Outside of Networks as Method for Acting in the World


Notes

Bibliography

Index