A.R.E. Taylor – författare

Once upon a time, in a golden age before the internet, social media, and smartphones, there existed an analogue world where people lived slower, simpler, and healthier lives that were more authentic, natural, and meaningful. This is the analogue idyll: a compelling narrative within contemporary culture celebrating the virtues of analogue media and offline experiences.Exploring the significance of the ‘analogue’ in our increasingly digital world, this timely contribution to studies about digital disconnection raises critical questions about the meaning of technology in our lives and societies, as public debates about the addictions, distractions, and harms of digital culture accelerate.Chapters 1 and 6 are available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

Overflowing email inboxes. Back-to-back Zoom meetings. Unending data extraction. Constant connectivity. Disruptive notification pings. Social media ‘addiction’. Binge-watching. Daily life in digital culture can be exhausting. This timely and urgent edited collection takes the theme of ‘digital exhaustion’ as a starting point for critical inquiry into the ever-expanding presence of digital technologies in our personal and professional lives. We offer ‘exhaustion’ as a broad and versatile conceptual prism for thinking through human-technology relations in the current climate of constant digital connectivity. Digital exhaustion - along with a range of other related affects and experiences, including burnout, Zoom fatigue, information overload, social media overuse, and bed rotting – have all emerged as key structures of feeling in the present. As digital technologies become increasingly entrenched in our daily lives the need to engage in sustained dialogue about digital futures and the ways that these technologies are being deployed, embraced, and opposed is of pressing importance. This edited collection is responsive to this need.