Digital Detachment How Computer Culture Undermines Democracy [Paperback]

The digital revolution is changing the world in ecologically unsustainable ways: (1) it increases the economic and political power of the elites controlling and interpreting the data; (2) it is based on the deep assumptions of market liberalism that do not recognize environmental limits; (3) it undermines face-to-face and context-specific forms of knowledge; (4) it undermines awareness of the metaphorical nature of language; (5) its promoters are driven by the myth of progress and thus ignore important cultural traditions of the cultural commons that are being lost; and (6) it both by-passes the democratic process and colonizes other cultures. This book provides an in-depth examination of these phenomena and connects them to questions of educational reform in the US and beyond.

1. Computer Globalization  2. The Cult of Data  3. Misconceptions About Language  4. Digital Colonization  5. The Digital Revolution in Muslim Cultures6. A Different Kind of Connectivity  7. Localism, the Revitalization of the Cultural Commons, and Face to Face Democracy

Honestly, I am not sure if the importance of Chet Bowers' new book on the Digital Revolution can be overestimated. I say this for two reasons. First, Chet Bowers is one of the very few original thinkers we have around; his approach and understanding is quite unlike what you can read elsewhere. Second, our infatuation with progress and in particular computer technology and the internet has totally blinded us against the threat this wholesale digital revolution is posing for our democracy and indeed our very survival. Chet Bowers is eloquently providing the much needed analysis to understand what is really going on.

-- Rolf Jucker, Director of SILVIVA, Swiss Foundation for Experiential Environmental Education

 

In the era of systems, beyond the era of tools, we are bló