The Circle of the Snake: Nostalgia and Utopia in the Age of Big Tech (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781789040227)

Shocked by 9/11, the Great Recession, digital anxiety, and ecological collapse, the West suffers from nostalgia. People everywhere yearn for a utopian version of the past that never existed. Desperate for relief, many long to escape from the present. Some will stop at nothing to achieve it. In his essential new book, Grafton Tanner, author of Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts, argues that our nostalgia today is partly a consequence of the attention economy. At a time when historical literacy is crucial, and old prejudices are percolating into the present, Big Tech's predictive algorithms are locking us into nostalgic feedback loops. The result is a precarious society with its gaze fixed on the good old days. Spanning from the ancient Sophists to Black Mirror, The Circle of the Snake is at once a reckoning with the myth of digital utopia and an incisive analysis of nostalgia as a weapon to spread fascism.

Author: Grafton Tanner
ISBN-10: 1789040221
ISBN-13: 9781789040227
Publisher: Zero Books
Language: English
Published: 11/16/2020
Pages: 176
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.40d