Abstract
The word ‘digital’ is so commonly used in media and communication studies these days that it rarely needs explicit operationalisation. Two of the books reviewed in this issue alone have the word digital in their titles. The English translation of Felix Stalder’s book Kultur der Digitalität – originally published in German – is The Digital Condition. He claims that this is a new condition because ‘it gained its dominance as computer networks became established as the key infrastructure for virtually all aspects of life’ (p. vii). Stadler traces the development of the digital condition back to the 19th century but argues that it has gained momentum since the 1960s as a result of ‘a wide-ranging and irreversible cultural transformation’ (p. 4). He identifies three key constituents of this condition: the use of existing cultural materials for one’s own production, the way in which new meaning is established as a collective endeavor, and the underlying role of algorithms and automated decision-making processes that give shape to massive volumes of data. (Blurb)
The book is split into three substantive chapters. Chapter 1, ‘Evolution’, explores the history of the processes that have led to the digital condition – from the ‘expansion of the social basis of culture’ to what Stadler labels as ‘the culturalizarion of the world’ and ‘the technologization of culture’ (p. v). Chapter 2, ‘Forms’, focuses on three key concepts – referentiality, communality and algorithmicity. In the final chapter, ‘Politics’, Stalder argues that the political space is in the process of being transformed by two competing trajectories – ‘post-democracy’ (p. 127) and ‘commons’ (p. 152). He uses Jacques Ranciere’s definition of postdemocracy as ‘the government practice and conceptual legitimization of a democracy after the demos, a democracy that has eliminated the appearance, miscount and dispute of the people’ (p. 127). ‘Commons’, on the contrary, is defined as ‘approaches for developing new and comprehensive institutions that not only directly combine participation and decision-making but also integrate economic, social, and ethical spheres – spheres that Modernity has tended to keep apart’ (p. 6). In Stalder’s view, post-democracy leads to authoritarianism, while commons leads to a renewal of democracy, and it is hard to tell ‘whether one of these developments will prevail entirely or whether and how they will coexist’ (p. 174). He remains cautiously optimistic in his conclusion but he also argues that in order for real change to take place, there need to be not just changes of personal attitudes but of social structures as well. All in all, Stadler’s thought-provoking book makes a valuable contribution to the field and would indeed be of interest to its target audience – students and scholars in media, communications and cultural studies as well as ‘a wider readership interested in the changing character of culture and politics today’ (blurb).