The Digital Condition Class and Culture in the Information Network

• Main Author: Wilkie, Rob (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Fordham University Press 2011
• Subjects: Media studies; Media and Communications; Digital commodities; information network; digital culture studies; William gibson; spectrality; digital revolution; antonio negri; culture; jacques derrida; Capitalism; Globalization; Karl Marx; Logic
• Online Access: OAPEN Library: download the publication; OAPEN Library: description of the publication

The acceleration in science, technology, communication, and production that began in the second half of the twentieth century- developments which make up the concept of the "digital"-has brought us to what might be the most contradictory moment in human history. The digital revolution has made it possible not only to imagine but to actually realize a world in which social inequality and poverty are vanquished. But instead these developments have led to an unprecedented level of accumulation of private profits. Rather than the end of social inequality we are witness to its global expansion. In The Digital Condition, Rob Wilkie advances a groundbreaking analysis of digital culture which argues that the digital geist-which has its genealogy in such concepts as the "body without organs," "spectrality," and "différance"-has obscured the implications of class difference with the phantom of a digital divide.