Against the Machine: How the Web Is Reshaping Culture and Commerce--And Why It Matters Book

From the author hailed by the New York Times Book Review for his â??drive-by brillianceâ? and dubbed by the New York Times Magazine as â??one of the countryâ??s most eloquent and acid-tongued criticsâ? comes a ruthless challenge to the conventional wisdom about the most consequential cultural development of our time: the Internet. Of course the Internet is not one thing or another; if anything, its boosters claim, the Web is everything at once. Itâ??s become not only our primary medium for communication and information but also the place we go to shop, to play, to debate, to find love. Lee Siegel argues that our ever-deepening immersion in life online doesnâ??t just reshape the ordinary rhythms of our days; it also reshapes our minds and culture, in ways with which we havenâ??t yet reckoned. The web and its cultural correlatives and by-productsâ??such as the dominance of reality television and the rise of the â??bourgeois bohemianâ?â??have turned privacy into performance, play into commerce, and confused â??self-expressionâ? with art. And even as technology gurus ply their trade using the language of freedom and democracy, we cede more and more control of our freedom and individuality to the needs of the machineâ??that confluence of business and technology whose boundaries now stretch to encompass almost all human activity. Siegelâ??s argument isnâ??t a Luddite intervention against the Internet itself but rather a bracing appeal for us to contend with how it is transforming us all. Dazzlingly erudite, full of startlingly original insights, and buoyed by sharp wit, Against the Machine will force you to see our cultureâ??for better and worseâ??in an entirely new way.Read More