Connected: Or What It Means To Live In The Network Society: 9 (Electronic Mediations) - Softcover

Shaviro, Steven

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816643636 ISBN 13: 9780816643639

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2003

Synopsis

In the twenty-first century, a network society is emerging. Fragmented, visually saturated, characterized by rapid technological change and constant social upheavals, it is dizzying, excessive, and sometimes surreal. In this breathtaking work, Steven Shaviro investigates popular culture, new technologies, political change, and community disruption and concludes that science fiction and social reality have become virtually indistinguishable. 

Connected is made up of a series of mini-essays-on cyberpunk, hip-hop, film noir, Web surfing, greed, electronic surveillance, pervasive multimedia, psychedelic drugs, artificial intelligence, evolutionary psychology, and the architecture of Frank Gehry, among other topics. Shaviro argues that our strange new world is increasingly being transformed in ways, and by devices, that seem to come out of the pages of science fiction, even while the world itself is becoming a futuristic landscape. The result is that science fiction provides the most useful social theory, the only form that manages to be as radical as reality itself. 

Connected looks at how our networked environment has manifested itself in the work of J. G. Ballard, William S. Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, K. W. Jeter, and others. Shaviro focuses on science fiction not only as a form of cultural commentary but also as a prescient forum in which to explore the forces that are morphing our world into a sort of virtual reality game. Original and compelling, Connected shows how the continual experimentation of science fiction, like science and technology themselves, conjures the invisible social and economic forces that surround us.

About this title

About the Author

Steven Shaviro teaches cinema studies and English at the University of Washington.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816643636
• ISBN 13: 9780816643639
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312