Abstract
As the title of Adi Kunstman and Esperanza Miyake's book suggests, they focus on the paradoxes of the so-called digital disengagement defined as ‘a term that simultaneously unravels the assumption that social engagement is always necessarily digital and challenges the forced incorporation—engagement—of livelihoods, experiences, relations, services, economies and freedoms into compulsory digitality and connectivity’ (pp. 3–4). Examples that they provide of such paradoxes include legal attempts to make algorithmic decisions more transparent and accountable, which actually ‘cement’ the use of algorithms in decision-making processes or ‘endless online discussions decrying the dangers of digital communication and displaying unplugging pledges’ that actually ‘operate as invaluable content generators that support the very digital economy users are trying to criticise’ (p. xii). The book explores four key questions: What are the personal, social, political and environmental costs of compulsory digitality? What are the relations between compulsory digitality and social injustice? What are the legal, technical, cultural and political barriers to opting out of digital sociality? And finally, can we imagine otherwise—can we imagine our present and future free from digital coercion? (p. xii).
The authors focuses on the West and the neoliberal context of digital communication. Kuntsman and Miyake explain that digital disengagement is multi-directional, ambiguous, technological, structural and political. The book is split into Introduction, six substantial chapters and Conclusion. The substantial chapters are organised in two main parts. Part I, ‘Where is the Opt-Out’, consists of three chapters on digital health, digital citizenship and education. Part II, ‘Digital Disengagement between Co-Optation and Resistance’, includes three chapters on the high cost of opting out, the labour of digital disengagement, and digital disengagement and the environment. All in all, this is an interesting and thought-provoking book on issues that we can all relate to even if we do necessarily study them in depth.