Waste: A New Media Primer

by Roberto Simanowski, Amanda DeMarco (Translator), Susan H. Gillespie (Translator)

On Facebook and fake news, selfies and self-consciousness, selling our souls to the Internet, and other aspects of the digital revolution.

With these engaging and provocative essays, Roberto Simanowski considers what new media has done to us. Why is digital privacy being eroded and why does society seem not to care? Why do we escape from living and loving the present into capturing, sharing and liking it? And how did we arrive at a selfie society without self-consciousness?

Simanowski, who has been studying the Internet and social media since the 1990s, goes deeper than the conventional wisdom. For example, on the question of Facebook's responsibility for the election of Donald Trump, he argues that the problem is not the “fake news” but the creation of conditions that make people susceptible to fake news. The hallmark of the Internet is its instantaneousness, but, Simanowski cautions, speed is the enemy of depth. On social media, he says, “complex arguments are jettisoned in favor of simple slogans, text in favor of images, laborious explorations at understanding the world and the self in favor of amusing banalities, deep engagement in favor of the click.” Simanowski wonders if we have sold our soul to Silicon Valley, as Faust sold his to the Devil; credits Edward Snowden for making privacy a news story; looks back at 1984, 1984, and Apple's famous sledgehammer commercial; and considers the shitstorm, mapping waves of Internet indignation—including one shitstorm that somehow held Adidas responsible for the killing of dogs in Ukraine. “Whatever gets you through the night,” sang John Lennon in 1974. Now, Simanowski says, it's Facebook that gets us through the night; and we have yet to grasp the implications of this.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

152 pages, Paperback

Published October 9, 2018

About the author

Roberto Simanowski is a German scholar of media and cultural studies and the author of Digital Art and Meaning, Data Love, Facebook Society, Waste: A New Media Primer, and The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas (the last two published by the MIT Press).

Reviews

[Ryleigh Dorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty interesting set of essays, with a wide range in quality and depth. some really only break the surface of identity in the digital age, others propose alternatives that feel incredibly out of touch (crowdfunded social campaigns?), but a select few are pretty powerful. some might say Simanowski overwrites his passages (maybe it’s the translation), but I feel like his prose successfully emphasizes the salience of digital awareness without leaning into melodrama.

Tech as our replacement for God is probably my favorite thought experiment in philosophy today, and this does a pretty good job introducing that. Pretty solid!

[Tom Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never read philosophy books—they're too dry and challenging for me. So why did I pick up this one (translated from German, no less)? I liked that it was a group of essays around the common theme of Social Media. And it's short. And a quick browse indicated it was a fairly easy read. I'm glad I did—it's not especially dry and it's even somewhat playful. Basically, Facebook (and other social media) is distorting how we interact with and relate to the world, to memory, and to each other. It (probably) wasn't necessarily deliberately built to do this, but the machine is now what it is and does what it does. So, what's the solution? Who knows, but by the end of these essays, Simanowski suggests via Pascal-to-Nietzsche-to-Vattimo that maybe Facebook is now god. At least that what I got out of it. Anyhow, a fun, thought-provoking book.

[Joe Meyers · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘It is this knowledge gap that is the source of the problem. As we give more and more data to the algorithms, we ourselves process less and less of it. The more our speaking, naming, and describing are supplanted by automatic registration and audiovisual copying, the less we ourselves are forced to reflect on and come to terms with the world and our role in it. Language is the medium with which we establish distance from the world, in order to see it and understand it more clearly. Every attempt to transcend language also risks the loss of cognition.’ - Roberto Simanowski in ‘Waste,’ his ‘new media primer’

[Charlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a fair bit of preaching to the choir here. Simanowski still has some interesting conceptual turns of phrase here and there, but I wish he dwelled a bit more in the reversals that were brought about in the New Media/Internet era, where certain intellectual truths we held to be self-evident were toppled by the persistent availability of feedback loops and various levels of anonymity. The discussion of functionalities of different social media spheres felt a bit more self-evident.

[jb · Rating 1 out of 5]

sneering, incurious, cynical, and written proudly from the outside with the energy of someone telling you they don't have a tv in their house. lacks any engagement with contemporary thought on digital media, instead receding into the comfortable familiarity of brecht and baudrillard and offering no commentary of note