Critical Technology

Critical Technology
Title Critical Technology PDF eBook
Author Graeme Kirkpatrick
Publisher Routledge
Pages 237
Release 2017-11-28
Genre Social Science
ISBN 1351160621

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Have we resigned ourselves to a cyber-future that has been decided behind our backs? Why is technology - and our understanding of it - central to the concerns of critical social theory? In developing the PC technologists have borrowed ideas from the human sciences about what people are like, about the nature of meaning and the desirability of some experiences over others. Yet, to date, the academic disciplines most concerned with these ideas have offered neither resistance nor debate. In this book, Graeme Kirkpatrick shows why it is crucial that we initiate that debate. Offering a revealing critique of PC design and the social assumptions that underlie it, Kirkpatrick argues that it relies on a particular conception of a capitalistic society that expects its technology to come pre-packaged, mass-marketed and "user-friendly". Anyone who is critical of such a society and its commodification of human achievement should, he suggests, be suspicious. Kirkpatrick argues that the computer is a contested space within which major social conflicts are played out. On the one hand, there is a narrative of flexibility and human empowerment, and on the other a sense of a "system" that controls our lives, leaving us in thrall to the computer corporations, and at constant risk from phishers and hackers. The outcomes of these conflicts are extremely important as they will shape our future experience of technology, society and politics. Critical Technology is a lively, provocative and often radical book, which forces us to reflect on the meaning of an artefact that is central to our daily lives, yet that we too often take for granted.




Book Review: Critical Technology: A Social Theory of Personal Computing

Book Review: Critical Technology: A Social Theory of Personal Computing
Title Book Review: Critical Technology: A Social Theory of Personal Computing PDF eBook
Author Neil Selwyn
Publisher
Pages
Release 2006
Genre
ISBN

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Critical Theory of Technology

Critical Theory of Technology
Title Critical Theory of Technology PDF eBook
Author Andrew Feenberg
Publisher Oxford University Press, USA
Pages 264
Release 1991
Genre Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN

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This pathbreaking book argues that the roots of the degradation of labor, education, and the environment lie not in technology per se but in the cultural values embodied in its design.




Computer Games and the Social Imaginary

Computer Games and the Social Imaginary
Title Computer Games and the Social Imaginary PDF eBook
Author Graeme Kirkpatrick
Publisher Polity
Pages 229
Release 2013-10-07
Genre Games & Activities
ISBN 0745641113

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In this compelling book, Graeme Kirkpatrick argues that computer games have fundamentally altered the relation of self and society in the digital age. Tracing the origins of gaming to the revival of play in the 1960s counter culture, Computer Games and the Social Imaginary describes how the energies of that movement transformed computer technology from something ugly and machine-like into a world of colour and ‘fun’. In the process, play with computers became computer gaming – a new cultural practice with its own values. From the late 1980s gaming became a resource for people to draw upon as they faced the challenges of life in a new, globalizing digital economy. Gamer identity furnishes a revivified capitalism with compliant and ‘streamlined’ workers, but at times gaming culture also challenges the corporations that control game production. Analysing topics such as the links between technology and power, the formation of gaming culture and the subjective impact of play with computer games, this insightful text will be of great interest to students and scholars of digital media, games studies and the information society.




Studying Mobile Media

Studying Mobile Media
Title Studying Mobile Media PDF eBook
Author Larissa Hjorth
Publisher Routledge
Pages 233
Release 2012-04-23
Genre Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN 1136464328

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The iPhone represents an important moment in both the short history of mobile media and the long history of cultural technologies. Like the Walkman of the 1980s, it marks a juncture in which notions about identity, individualism, lifestyle and sociality require rearticulation. this book explores not only the iPhone’s particular characteristics, uses and "affects," but also how the "iPhone moment" functions as a barometer for broader patterns of change. In the iPhone moment, this study considers the convergent trajectories in the evolution of digital and mobile culture, and their implications for future scholarship. Through the lens of the iPhone—as a symbol, culture and a set of material practices around contemporary convergent mobile media—the essays collected here explore the most productive theoretical and methodological approaches for grasping media practice, consumer culture and networked communication in the twenty-first century.




Video Gamers

Video Gamers
Title Video Gamers PDF eBook
Author Garry Crawford
Publisher Routledge
Pages 211
Release 2011-08-04
Genre Social Science
ISBN 1135178860

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Video gaming is economically, educationally, culturally, socially and theoretically important, and has, in a relatively short period of time, firmly cemented its place within contemporary life. It is fair to say, however, that the majority of research to date has focused most specifically on either the video games themselves, or the direct engagement of gamers with a specific piece of game technology. In contrast, Video Gamers is the first book to explicitly and comprehensively address how digital games are engaged with and experienced in the everyday lives, social networks and consumer patterns of those who play them. In doing so, the book provides a key introduction to the study of gamers and the games they play, whilst also reflecting on the current debates and literatures surrounding gaming practices.




Digital Playgrounds

Digital Playgrounds
Title Digital Playgrounds PDF eBook
Author Sara M. Grimes
Publisher University of Toronto Press
Pages 367
Release 2021
Genre Computers
ISBN 1442615567

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Digital Playgrounds makes the argument that online games play a uniquely meaningful role in children's lives, with profound implications for children's culture, agency, and rights in the digital era.