Facebook Society

Facebook Society arrives at the moment when the idea that 'Facebook is us' is front page news. Just in time, Roberto Simanowski gives us a theory as to how it is that Facebook produces the very subjects who cannot feel shortchanged by what it offers. But he delivers more. Here is the crucial test of the philosophy of history and Frankfurt School critical theory brought to bear on the phenomenon defining the sociality of our time. -- Jane M. Gaines, author of <i>Pink-Slipped: What Happened to Women in the Silent Film Industries?</i> Facebook Society is a wonderfully rich and deeply thought extended essay on a symptomatic social medium of our day. With his focus on autobiography, friendship, memory, and narrative Simanowski outlines ways in which digital media have the power to change human perception and social relations. A broad historical, literary, and critical perspective on social media such as Simanowskis is very much needed both in the humanities and in the social sciences. -- Andreas Huyssen, author of <i>Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia</i> Who says Facebook can only lead to a flattening of intellectual life and political discourse? In a series of intriguing readings, Simanowski offers a compelling assessment of Zuckerbergs empire without capitulating before its celebration of ceaseless connectivity and frenzied interaction. Whether it draws on Schopenhauer, Kracauer, or Nancy, Facebook Society brilliantly exemplifies why thought and theory remain essential to gauge the impact of social media on our imagination, our sense of self and community, and our ability to engage the past as a medium to shape different futures. -- Lutz Koepnick, author of <i>On Slowness: Toward an Aesthetic of the Contemporary</i> From Pascal to Butler, Goethe to Baudrillard, Facebook Society offers a rich philosophical engagement with one of the most important platforms of our time. Simanowski's skillful text demonstrates how the mundane nature of Facebook includes a long media ecology of issues which bind us to others as communities and through friendship while defining what we are as subjects. This book offers coordinates to nothing less than the transformation of this political field. -- Jussi Parikka, author of <i>Digital Contagions</i> and <i>A Geology of Media</i> Very readable book, I am sure that you will find it very captivating and absolutely informative. I just can tell you that I read it in a few hours. Highly recommended. -- Anna Maria Polidori, freelance journalist * Storie, racconti, recensioni Blog by Anna Maria Polidori * Simanowskis arguments are deeply sophisticated and thoroughly researched. Facebook Society adds some much-needed complexity to characterizations of social media as a degrading force. . . . Ultimately, Simanowski goes beyond lamenting the changes wrought by networked technologies and asks what it means to be human in the digital age. * Biography *

Roberto Simanowski (Prof. Dr.) teaches Media Studies at the University of Basel.

Preface 1. Stranger Friends 2. Automatic Autobiography 3. Digital Nation Afterword Epilogue to the English Edition Notes Bibliography Index