Table Of ContentDigitized Lives
In chapters examining a broad range of issues—including sexuality, politics,
education, race, gender relations, the environment and social protest movements
—Digitized Lives argues that making sense of digitized culture means looking
past the glossy surface of techno gear to ask deeper questions about how we can
utilize technology to create a more socially, politically and economically just
world. This second edition includes important updates on mobile and social
media, examining how new platforms and devices have altered how we interact
with digital technologies in an allegedly ‘post-truth’ era.
A companion website (www.culturalpolitics.net/digital_cultures) includes links
to online articles and useful websites, as well as a bibliography of offline
resources, and more.
T. V. Reed is Buchanan Distinguished Professor Emeritus of American Studies
and English at Washington State University. He is the author of The Art of
Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Present.
Digitized Lives
Culture, Power and Social Change in the Internet Era
Second Edition
T. V. Reed
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface: Why Buy this Book?
Outline of Chapters
Companion Website
Acknowledgments
1 How Do We Make Sense of Digitizing Cultures? Some Ways of Thinking
Through the Culture–Technology Matrix
Does Technology Make Us More than We Make Technology? Technological
Determinism vs. Technocultural Analysis
Components of Digital Culture Analysis
Terminal Confusion?
What’s in a Name? New Media/Cyber/Digital Culture/Etc. Studies
2 How Is the Digital World Made? The Designer/Worker/User Production
Cycle
The Internet’s Weird History
From Dream to Reality to Dream: Producing Digital Stuff
Maker Culture Production: The Open Source Do-It-Yourself Digital World
Clean Rooms or “Dark Satanic Mills”? Toxic Production E-Waste and
Environmental Justice
3 What’s New about Digitized Identities? Mobile Bodies, Online Disguise,
Cyberbullying and Virtual Communities
Is There a Virtual World/Real World Divide?
Is Life Online a Mobile Masquerade?
Anonymity, Disinhibition and Cyberbullying
Are Virtual Communities for Real?
How Much Online Life Is Good for Us?
4 Has Digital Culture Killed Privacy? Social Media, Governments and
Digitized Surveillance
What Rights Are Being Lost if Privacy Is Lost?
Social Media as Surveillance Mechanism
Government Surveillance
What Can We Do to Protect Our Data and Privacy?
5 Is Everybody Equal Online? Digitizing Gender, Ethnicity, Dis/Ability
and Sexual Orientation
The Default Subject Position?
Is the Internet a Guy? Engendering Cyberspaces
Is the Internet Colorblind? E-Racializations
Who Is Dis/Abled by Cyberspaces? Enabling and Disabling Technologies
How Queer Are Cyberspaces? Alternative Sexualities in Cyberspaces
Cultural Imperialism, Hegemony and/or Digital Diversity?
6 Sexploration and/or Sexploitation? Digitizing Desire
Real Virtual Sex Education
Digital Diddling: Varieties of Cybersex
The “Mainstreaming” of Porn
Digitized Sex Trafficking
7 Tools for Democracy or Authoritarianism? Digitized Politics and the
Post-Truth Era
Electronic Electoral Politics: The Trump Campaign, Brexit and the
Weaponization of Digital Data
Fake News, Real Impact: Digitizing a Post-Truth Era
Can Social Media Overthrow Governments?
Electronic Civil Disobedience, Hacktivism and Digital Organizing
Cyberterrorism
Digitizing the Arts of Protest
How to Avoid Fake News and Intentionally Inflammatory Politics
8 Are Digital Games Making Us Violent, or Will They Save the World?
Virtual Play, Real Impact
What’s in a Game? Playing Theories
What Do Games Teach?
Do Video Games Make Players Violent?
Digitized “Militainment”?
Gender Games, Race Games
Can Video Games Save the World?
9 Are Students Getting Dumber as Their Phones Get Smarter? E-Learning,
Edutainment and the Future of Knowledge Sharing
“Is Our Children Learning” Digitally?
What Is Technology Doing in the Classroom?
Is Knowledge a Commodity or a Human Right? Higher Education vs.
Information Feudalism
End of the World (as We Knew It): Digital Humanities and Digitized Arts
The Future of Knowledge Sharing: Education for Whom and for What?
10 Who in the World Is Online? Digital Inclusions and Exclusions
The World Wide Web Isn’t
Who Needs the Internet?
From Digital Divides to Technologies for Social Inclusion
Should Everyone and Everything Be Online?
Why Digitizing Matters to All of Us
11 Conclusion: Will Robots and AIs Take Over the World? Hope, Hype and
Possible Digitized Futures
Robots, Cyborgs, Artificial Intelligence and the Singularity
Bibliography
Glossary
Index
Illustrations
Figures
2.1 High tech, handmade (Courtesy of shutterstock.com)
2.2 A pile of circuit boards for recycling (Courtesy of shutterstock.com)
3.1 A bit of the material Internet (Courtesy of shutterstock.com)
7.1 Chinese police officer wearing facial recognition glasses (Courtesy of
People’s Images (China))
7.2 Pride day protest for Bradley/Chelsea Manning (Courtesy: Koby
Dagan/Shutterstock.com)
7.3 Police kettle in London protest, 2011 (Courtesy: 1000
Words/Shutterstock.com)
8.1 Evolution of Lara Croft, 1996–2013 (Courtesy of Creative Commons)
9.1 Best practices of teaching with technology (© Aditi Rao, Teachbytes)
10.1 Technology for social inclusion (© Mark Warschauer, reprinted with
permission)
11.1 Captain Picard as Borg (Courtesy of Getty Images)
Table
4.1 “The Social Network Constitution.” © from Lori Andrews I Know Who You
Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy (Free
Press, 2013).
Preface
Why Buy This Book?
Have you been tweeted, blogged, YouTubed, Snapchatted, Instagrammed,
Kindled, interacted, texted, sexted, crowdsourced and socially networked to the
edge of your sanity? Are you tired of being told that digital technology will solve
all the world’s problems, or that it is bringing an end to civilization? Do you
want to make common sense of all this digital stuff without the hype, the
paranoia or the jargon? Then maybe this book is for you.
There are many books that promise to tell all about the Internet and new
communication technologies. Most fall into one of three categories. The most
common type is the “how to” book that provides step-by-step ways to use the
technology. While these tend to go out of date quickly, they can be useful, even
when they call their readers “dummies.” The second type is written in a form
close to a rant by people either so enamored of or so afraid of new technologies
that they profoundly exaggerate their positive or negative impact. The third type
of book is written by experts who generally tell way more than most of us want
to know about a small aspect of these new media technologies in a language that
seems to have come from another planet (the planet Geek, to be precise, a planet I
love and visit frequently, but do not live on). Only this third category is relevant
to my aims in this book. Many of these works by experts are very important, and
this book would not exist without them. But they are not for everybody. They are
aimed at a fairly exclusive community of scholars and advanced communication
students, not the rest of us.
This book is different. What I hope to do is provide a framework for readers to
think about questions such as: Why use these technologies at all? If we do use
them, how much use is good for us? And within those broad questions, more
pointed ones, such as what are “new media” doing to our brains, to our sex lives,
