[ecrea] NEW BOOK on digital technology, ideology, and the new capitalism

>NEW BOOK from Palgrave:
>
><http://www.amazon.com/Media-New-Capitalism-Digital-Age/dp/0230616070>Media 
>and New Capitalism in the Digital Age: The 
>Spirit of Networks / Eran Fisher (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
>
>This book explores the new terrain of network 
>capitalism through the transformations of the 
>discourse on technology. Rather than viewing 
>such discourse as either a true or false 
>reflection of reality, Fisher evaluates the 
>ideological role that technology discourse plays 
>in the legitimation of a new form of capitalism. 
>Based on an extensive empirical analysis, the 
>book argues that contemporary technology 
>discourse at one and the same time promises more 
>personal empowerment through network technology 
>and legitimates a more privatized, flexible, and 
>precarious economic constellations. Contrary to 
>the prevailing assumption that sees network 
>technology as liberating from the rigidity and 
>pitfalls of a stifling, Fordist capitalism, the 
>book offers a theoretical framework which sees 
>contemporary technology discourse as an ideology 
>that legitimates the economic, social, and 
>political arrangements of the new capitalism.
>
>Praise
>Fishers brilliant book provides cogent reasons 
>why we should be skeptical about laptop 
>capitalism and its fluidity and instantaneity of 
>communication&Fisher helps us understand the age 
>of digitality as, above all, capitalist.
>--Ben Agger, Professor of Sociology and 
>Humanities, University of Texas at Arlington
>
>This carefully researched and skillfully 
>written guide to the networked world doesnt 
>just demolish the dreamy visions of Utopia 2.0. 
>It provides precisely the comprehensive analysis 
>we need to understand their power and persistence.
>--Vincent Mosco, Canada Research Chair in 
>Communication and Society, Queens University, Canada
>
>This is an audacious systematic 
>ideology-critique of digital capitalism&It 
>should be placed on your shelf with Castells's 
>book on informational capitalism, with 
>Dyer-Witheford's on cyber-Marxism or with Mosco's on the digital sublime.
>--Uri Ram, Professor of Sociology and 
>Anthropology, Ben Gurion University, Israel
>
>Table of contents
>Introduction     Technology discourse and capitalist legitimation
>PART I
>        Ch. 1       Capitalism, technology, and the digital discourse
>        Ch. 2       Contemporary technology discourse
>PART II
>        Ch. 3       Network market
>        Ch. 4       Network work
>        Ch. 5       Network production
>        Ch. 6       Network human
>PART III
>        Ch. 7       Network cosmology and the exhaustion of critique
>        Ch. 8       Networks as the techno-political culture of post-Fordism
>
>About the author
>Eran Fisher is Lecturer at the College of 
>Management  Academic Studies, and at the 
>Interdisciplinary Center in Israel. He completed 
>his PhD in the Department of Sociology at the 
>New School for Social Research in New York in 
>2008. He writes on Critical Social Theory, 
>technology, and capitalism, and the intersection 
>of capitalism and network technology in such 
>publications as the European Journal of Social 
>Theory, Fast Capitalism, and Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society.
>
><http://www.amazon.com/Media-New-Capitalism-Digital-Age/dp/0230616070>Media 
>and New Capitalism in the Digital Age: The Spirit of Networks

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Nico Carpentier (Phd)
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.56
F: ++ 32 (0)2-629.36.84
Office: 5B.401a
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European Communication Research and Education Association
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E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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