[ecrea] New Book: The Value System: The Internet and Radical Change in a Time of Crisis

Commlist members might be interested in my latest book, *The Value 
System: The Internet and Radical Change in a Time of Crisis*, published 
open access via the Creative Commons.

The complete text of The Value System is freely available as a PDF:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8-LXoAP8Kn0Vnp6Z3I5Y0lyNzQ

and in print via Amazon, and as an ebook on Kindle.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1775098508

The abstract and table of contents are below.

____________________________

Contents

Introduction

1. Thinking About Change

2. Capitalism’s Value System

3. The Central Problem with the Central Value System

4. Radical Change in the Wrong Direction

5. From Twitter to China: Radical Change in Authoritarian Environments

6. The Radicalization of Popular Culture

7. Radical Economic Change

8. A Theory of Mediated Radical Change

Conclusion

Bibliography

__________________________

Abstract

The audience is not the same as it once was in the 1900s. Our global 
context has also dramatically changed. Climate change is creating 
conditions of impending civilizational collapse, and hundreds of 
millions of Internet-enabled citizens have greatly expanded 
communicative freedoms and productive, distributive, and collective 
capabilities. How will these forces interact in a world defined by 
authoritarian governments, ineffective democracies, and crisis-ridden 
economies? In /The Value System/ Michael Strangelove explores phenomena 
as diverse as Ikea, global consumer culture, the Chinese Internet, 
environmental policy, biodiversity, amateur creativity, digital piracy, 
subversion, and resistance – all set in a context of a global value 
system that presents humanity with the options of unconstrained growth, 
mass extinction, or radical change.

Strangelove offers a critique of pessimistic Marxist theory and argues 
that our expanded communicative capabilities remain a significant 
countervailing force to dominant institutions and elite privilege. China 
and Twitter provide insight into how Internet audiences exist 
simultaneously within domains of high and low control. Through online 
conversation, subversive cultural production, and street-level activism, 
Chinese citizens demonstrate the limits to totalitarian control.

The ecological impact of the Internet is brought into the centre of 
media theory and social analysis. Climate change provides a global and 
authoritative measurement of capitalism’s value system and its 
consequences. Strangelove argues that the worst consequences of climate 
change can be resolved only if we correct the toxic character of 
capitalism’s value system and build new value systems out of the raw 
cultural material of cyberspace. The Internet moves amateur cultural 
production, unconstrained speech, and heretical values into the centre 
of history.

Beginning with the argument that capitalism aligns individual thought 
and action to its needs, /The Value System/ concludes with a theory of 
how the Internet mediates radical change across social, political, and 
economic areas of action. Human behaviour strongly suggests that there 
is something that drives us to use the Internet, an instinct for 
freedom. Contrary to conventional wisdom, cyberspace may yet remain the 
paragon of freedom in a world driven mad with authoritarian states and 
markets.

_________________________

Also by Michael Strangelove

The Empire of Mind: Digital Piracy and the Anti-Capitalist Movement.
University of Toronto Press, 2005.

Watching YouTube: Extraordinary Videos by Ordinary People.
University of Toronto Press, 2010.

Post-TV: Piracy, Cord-Cutting, and the Future of Television.
University of Toronto Press, 2015.


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