Political Theory of the Digital Age

by Mathias Risse

With the rise of far-reaching technological innovation, from artificial intelligence to Big Data, human life is increasingly unfolding in digital lifeworlds. While such developments have made unprecedented changes to the ways we live, our political practices have failed to evolve at pace with these profound changes. In this path-breaking work, Mathias Risse establishes a foundation for the philosophy of technology, allowing us to investigate how the digital century might alter our most basic political practices and ideas. Risse engages major concepts in political philosophy and extends them to account for problems that arise in digital lifeworlds including AI and democracy, synthetic media and surveillance capitalism and how AI might alter our thinking about the meaning of life. Proactive and profound, Political Theory of the Digital Age offers a systemic way of evaluating the effect of AI, allowing us to anticipate and understand how technological developments impact our political lives – before it's too late.

Genres: Politics

332 pages, Paperback

Published February 9, 2023

Reviews

[Geert Hofman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Due to the many repetitions and cross-referrals one gets the impression that the book is an academic course which is probably also the case. This makes it sometimes tedious reading. This doesn't take away the fact that the book touches on many topics that are extremely relevant for the digital age we are living in. The importance of reflection in the age of AI, the urgency to think how we can update the way democracy is currently functioning (not that good), the need to not only think about rights (human or not) but also about justice, are all very important topics that are elaborated in the book.

Risse doesn't give straight black and white answers on how to proceeds towards a future worth living for humans but provides tools and frameworks that might help us to see paths leading in the "right" direction. He has a firm liberal background rooted in theory of Rawls but realizes that this is not sufficient to understand our current time frame. Using Marxist theories as well as philosophers like Nietzsche, Foucault and Zuboff he tries to find important additions to the non-technological focus of Rawls.

The book certainly has many positive aspects that make it worth reading. It earns its 4 stars mainly due to the fact that a political theory of the digital age is much needed and that Risse covers many important topics pertaining to this subject. I would take away half a star (if this were possible) for the writing style (too course-like) and the fact that he sometimes shallowly (mis)uses other authors just to make an impression.