Geert Lovink, Sad by Design, On Platform Nihilism, Pluto Press, 2019.
“A scathing indictment of a technology that transforms the very notion of self into a sharing platform” Eva Illouz, author of Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation
“Lovink dissects our digital addictions with the dynamite power of critical theory. A savage journey into the heart of the digital self, and a wake-up call to break free of our own enslavement” Donatella della Ratta, author of Shooting a Revolution
“A searing criticism of platform nihilism, considered above all as a perversion of computational design” Bernard Stiegler, author of The Age of Disruption
Sadness is now a design problem. The highs and lows of melancholy are coded into social media platforms. After all the clicking, browsing, swiping and liking, all we are left with is the flat and empty aftermath of time lost to the app.
Sad by Design offers a critical analysis of the growing social media controversies such as fake news, toxic viral memes and online addiction. The failed search for a grand design has resulted in depoliticed internet studies which are unable to generate either radical critique or a search for alternatives.
The table of content:
Introduction: Society of the Social
- Overcoming the Disillusioned Internet
- Social Media as Ideology
- Distraction and its Discontents
- Sad by Design
- Media-Network-Platform: Three Architectures
- From Registration to Extermination: On Technological Violence
- Narcissus Confirmed: Technologies of the Minimal Selfie
- Mask Design as Aesthetics of the Faceless
- Memes as Strategy: European Origins and Debates
- Before Building the Avant-Garde of the Commons
Sad by Design came out in Italian late March and will also appear in Spanish and German in July/September 2019.
Book information about the English edition can be found here: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745339344/sad-by-design/.
There will be a book launch in London on May 23 2019 where Geert Lovink will have a dialogue with Athina Karatzogianni:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sad-by-design-on-platform-nihilism-w-geert-lovink-and-emily-reynolds-tickets-56883549227
An Amsterdam event is scheduled in the @droog space (Staalstraat) on June 18 at 17.00. See: www.selfdesign.nl.