[ecrea] New Book: Inhuman Networks: Social Media and the Archaeology of Connection

Inhuman Networks: Social Media and the Archaeology of Connection
Grant Bollmer

Hardback | 304 pp | August 2016 | ISBN: 9781501316159

Social media's connectivity is often thought to be a manifestation of 
human nature buried until now, revealed only through the diverse 
technologies of the participatory internet. Rather than embrace this 
view, Inhuman Networks: Social Media and the Archaeology of Connection 
argues that the human nature revealed by social media imagines network 
technology and data as models for behavior online. Covering a wide range 
of historical and interdisciplinary subjects, Grant Bollmer examines the 
emergence of “the network” as a model for relation in the 1700s and 
1800s and follows it through marginal, often forgotten articulations of 
technology, biology, economics, and the social. From this history, 
Bollmer examines contemporary controversies surrounding social media, 
extending out to the influence of network models on issues of critical 
theory, politics, popular science, and neoliberalism. By moving through 
the past and present of network media, Inhuman Networks demonstrates how 
contemporary network culture unintentionally repeats debates over the 
limits of Western modernity to provide an idealized future where “the 
human” is interchangeable with abstract, flowing data connected through 
well-managed, distributed networks.

“Part an archaeology of connectivity, part critical analysis of 
contemporary culture, Inhuman Networks offers an inspiring take for 
media studies. Grant Bollmer's rich, multi-layered book shows that 
social media does not just mediate but performs a subtle yet effective 
moral code: the networks prescribe senses of the self, community, value 
and direction. The so-called human exists only if it routes.” –  Jussi 
Parikka, Winchester School of Art, UK author of Digital Contagions 
(2007) and Insect Media (2010)

“Bollmer's Inhuman Networks represents the best of the cultural studies 
tradition of taking the object seriously, learning everything one can 
about it, putting it into historical and cultural contexts, and then 
rigorously critiquing it. Combining media archaeology and genealogy, 
Bollmer crafts critiques of the admonition to connect or be considered 
inhuman. However, he also challenges misguided calls for total refusal 
of connection, instead insisting we humans re-engage with practices of 
collectivity and commonality.” –  Robert W. Gehl, Associate Professor of 
Communication, University of Utah, USA, and author of Reverse 
Engineering Social Media

“Bollmer's Inhuman Networks issues a bold and welcome critique of social 
media's culture of connectivity. This accessible, provocative analysis 
of the “network” concept is shaped by network theorists predating the 
network society: anatomists deciphering the flow of bodily fluids, 
railroad conglomerates arguing about rail gauge, defenders of branch 
banking, and conspiracy theorists. Bollmer deftly shows how the 
conjunction of these early modern discourses of the network combine with 
contemporary digital technologies to forge “nodal citizenship,” a 
reduction of the human to an information node in a broader technological 
network. A must-read for anyone interested in communication, media 
studies, cultural theory, and political economy.” –  Damien Smith 
Pfister, Department of Communication, University of Maryland, USA and 
author of Networked Media, Networked Rhetorics

“Inhuman Networks masterfully exposes the stunted understandings and 
logical fallacies undergirding widespread economic and cultural 
assertions that unless we are connected through social media we are less 
than human. Bollmer convincingly argues that enlightenment 
understandings of “human nature” are being supplanted by neoliberal and 
normative narratives of networked communications as the way to finally 
achieve full humanity. Yet this is a disempowered form of “humanity” 
constituted through capital and data alone and ultimately less important 
than the inhuman(e) routers through which individuals “connect” in 
empowered and irrelevant ways.” –  Ken Hillis, Professor of Media and 
Technology Studies University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill USA

“As social media becomes more pervasive in many people's lives globally, 
the complex entanglement of the human and inhuman across practices, 
cultures, flows and networks are yet to being fully understood. Grant 
Bollmer's Inhuman Networks: Social Media and the Archaeology of 
Connection offers a thorough and thought-provoking discussion of how we 
might re-imagine social media beyond a human-centric model bolstered by 
problematic metaphors around connection. From metaphors such as 
“networks” to “contagion”, Bollmer takes us on a fascinating journey in 
and around the messy relationality between technology, desire and 
humans. This book puts the complex human and beyond-human dimensions of 
social media in context historically and conceptually in ways that are 
both poetic and inspiring.” –  Larissa Hjorth, RMIT Distinguished 
Professor School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Australia

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