The New Flesh: Life and Death in the Data Economy

by Adam C. Jones

From social media to so-called ‘AI’, from cyberpunk society to automated apartheid, The New Flesh asks and answers the same What does it mean to live in an increasingly online world and what is it doing to us? The thesis is Data production has permeated everyday life, on platforms that addict the bored and enslave the dispossessed. Communication has taken on an accelerated viral character, life is rendered ever more as a profitable simulation of itself, and new fascisms arise to disseminate themselves through cyberspace and develop their imperial weaponry. The platform is a factory for producing content, and security technologies are increasingly being trained by human beings displaced and enclosed within digitalized plantations. When we can understand the interconnections between the internet and the empire, we can fight back. By fusing Marx and Engels with William Burroughs, Mark Fisher, and contemporary Queer Theory, Adam C. Jones takes cybernetic philosophy beyond hype and hyperbole, presenting a materialist politics of the psychological and economic relations that permeate cyberspace today.

Genres: Nonfiction, Technology, Politics, Philosophy

112 pages, Paperback

Published November 26, 2024

Reviews

[npc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic analysis of physical agents continually captured within a cybernetic ecology. Jones provides fascinating insights into a datafied world by comparing the exchange of images and information to virology, positing our digital subjectivity as “New Flesh” in which the politicization thereof only swells in complexity when compared to bodies in Foucault’s disciplinary society or Deleuze’s control society. Drawing from thinkers like Hegel to Burroughs to Fisher to DG, it’s an important book by someone thinking at the razor’s edge of our current moment. For all my theory nerds out there—read this book!

[Kholan ᎪᎳᏄ · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good. I highly recommend as a relatively quick read. It helps to know about cybernetics, but honestly solidified my understanding of it. I have an urge to look back at Cyborg Manifesto, but I'm probably going to dive more into Jodi Byrd (I CAN'T WAIT for Indiginomicon!) and Bataille, with a mind to read more Ortega and Leanne Simpson {Clive Barker as my pulpy inclusion}.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are a couple of good ideas here.

I liked the idea of computers, the internet and social media as an extension of our bodies that become a part of us and feed back into who we are in a symbiotic spiral. So social media becomes the New Flesh. We are a part of it, and it is a part of us. The same phenomenon has been happening with tools since the first ape picked up a stick to dig termites out of a rotten log. All of us who drive know how our cars become extensions of ourselves so that as we turn, accelerate and brake, it is like movement of our limbs, and then beyond that our cars become reflections of our personalities and habits. But when the same thing happens with an addictive form of depersonalized interaction with a massive user base of other depersonalized addicts mediated by monopolistic social media platforms that will do anything to drive our addiction to sell more ads and gather our data, the universe of New Flesh as an extension of who we are becomes scary and has a lot of crazy implications for where we are going as a society.

I also liked the idea of the internet and social media as a bag of cultural memes fed into the maw of social media by an army of users lacking in free will. It's thousands of little viral bits poured into the soup and stirred about. What did we expect to get? It's more likely to be Mulligan Stew made with an old boot than prize winning chili. And yes Mr. Jones is right in seeing something viral about the whole thing.

Maybe there are a couple of other good ideas buried here somewhere, but I'll be damned if I could find them because 95% of this book is endless bloviating about nothing written in language that tries so hard to be smart that if fails to disguise that it is actually dumb. Mr. Jones looks for connections that aren't there. He takes post structuralist and Marxist jargon words and mixes them together with other words from other contexts that sound the same to draw conclusions that don't hold water. I kept hoping to find the deeper meaning but came to the conclusion halfway through that it just wasn't there in this book, and there was not enough amusement value for me to enjoy going along on an absurdist ride.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much meandering without making clear points

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this now. Brilliant and urgent analysis of this moment; acutely exploring how our digital "connection" impinges on our self-conception.

Jones introduces many useful frames that feel integral to really understanding how we live today. I am now convinced that there is no use talking "mindfulness" without talking about control.