The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas

Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-0-262-53637-0
Verlag: Penguin Random House LLC

Buch, Englisch, Band 14, 208 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 111 mm x 175 mm, Gewicht: 187 g

Reihe: Untimely Meditations

Provocative takes on cyberbullshit, smartphone zombies, instant gratification, the traffic school of the information highway, and other philosophical concerns of the Internet age.In The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas, Roberto Simanowski wonders if we are on the brink of a society that views social, political, and ethical challenges as technological problems that can be fixed with the right algorithm, the best data, or the fastest computer. For example, the “death algorithm ” is programmed into a driverless car to decide, in an emergency, whether to plow into a group of pedestrians, a mother and child, or a brick wall. Can such life-and-death decisions no longer be left to the individual human? In these incisive essays, Simanowski asks us to consider what it means to be living in a time when the president of the United States declares the mainstream media to be an enemy of the people—while Facebook transforms the people into the enemy of mainstream media. Simanowski describes smartphone zombies (or “smombies”) who remove themselves from the physical world to the parallel universe of social media networks; calls on Adorno to help parse Trump's tweeting; considers transmedia cannibalism, as written text is transformed into a postliterate object; compares the economic and social effects of the sharing economy to a sixteen-wheeler running over a plastic bottle on the road; and explains why philosophy mat become the most important element in the automotive and technology industries.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Simanowski, Roberto

Weitere Mitwirkende

Chase, Jefferson

Fachgebiete

• Technische Wissenschaften Technik Allgemein Philosophie der Technik
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophie der Technik
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophie: Allgemeines, Methoden
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Kommunikationswissenschaften Digitale Medien, Internet, Telekommunikation
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie

Über Autor(innen)

Simanowski, Roberto
Roberto Simanowski is a scholar of media and cultural studies and the author of Digital Art and Meaning, Data Love, Facebook Society, Waste: A New Media Primer, andThe Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas (the last two published by the MIT Press).