Digital Shock: Confronting the New Reality - Hardcover

Fischer, Hervé

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0773531149 ISBN 13: 9780773531147

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006

Synopsis

Herve Fischer believes that the digital revolution is a definitive moment in human history, as important as the discovery of fire. Deceptively quiet, it is invasive, radical and affects all aspects of human activity. Fischer cautions that we need to develop a cyber-philosophy to confront this new reality. In Digital Shock, the first English translation of his critically acclaimed Le Choc du numerique: A l'aube d'une nouvelle civilization, le triomphe des cyberprimitifs, Fischer warns that we must take a critical approach to these immensely beneficial, yet potentially devastating, technologies. The challenge, argues Fischer, is to avoid falling into cyber-primitivism - into allowing new technologies to enslave us by enshrining a symbolic, virtual cyber-world and powerful techno-scientific utopia. This could lead to another Middle Ages, destroying the modern idea of a political and social utopia. From cyberspace to artificial intelligence to genetic engineering, Digital Shock exposes the relationships between human beings and digital technology and examines our response to the myths and promises of the digital revolution."

About this title

About the Author:

Hervé Fischer, a multi-media artist and philosopher, is the author of numerous critically acclaimed books, including The Hyper Planet, The Decline of the Hollywood Empire and Couleurs et sociétés. He was awarded the first Leonardo Makepeace Tsao Award by

Review:

"Should we be cautious about digital technology and techno-science or optimistic about their extraordinary possibilities? Both, affirms Hervi Fischer, who argues that they can direct us toward a new humanism." Multimidium "It is a great pleasure to read Fischer's analysis, which is both critical and astonishing, in a book at the crossroads of sociology, philosophy, art, and new technologies." L'Omniscient "For this daring thinker, the digital revolution is the beginning of another Middle Age. Fischer, the father of multimedia in Quibec, plumbs the depths of cyber culture with a nuanced formulation of the paradoxical laws that govern this extravagant civilization founded on the infinite resources of an abstract universe." La Presse (Montreal)

About this edition

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0773531149
• ISBN 13: 9780773531147
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288