Joss Hands – författare

How have politics and activism been transformed by digital media, including digital television, online social networking and mobile computing?Since the emergence of new technologies, new modes of cooperation, deliberation and representation have risen to the fore, @ is for Activism maps out how political relationships have been reconfigured and new have emerged through the use of new technologies. A host of critical thinkers populate the study, from Martin Heidegger and Herbert Marcuse criticism of technology's close relation to capitalism, to media networks' actualising the Habermasian ideal of collective communicative action, Hands delineates the potentials and the pitfalls of a technologised politics. From anti-war activism, to global justice movements, peer production and 'Twitter' activism, we see how politics is being shaped by the new technological environment.

What impact does our relentless fixation on gadgets have on the struggle for new kinds of solidarity, political articulation and intelligence? In this groundbreaking study, Joss Hands explores the new political and social forces that are emerging in the age of social media.Gadget Consciousness examines the transformation of our consciousness as a historical political force in two senses: as individual consciousness - in terms of sentience and will - and also as class consciousness. Exploring a range of manifestations in the digital commons, he investigates what forms digital solidarity can take, and asks whether we can learn from the communisms of the past and how might solidarity be manifested in the future?Today, the ubiquity of networked gadgets offers exciting new opportunities for social and political change, but also significant dangers of alienation and stupefaction.

What impact does our relentless fixation on gadgets have on the struggle for new kinds of solidarity, political articulation and intelligence? In this groundbreaking study, Joss Hands explores the new political and social forces that are emerging in the age of social media.Gadget Consciousness examines the transformation of our consciousness as a historical political force in two senses: as individual consciousness - in terms of sentience and will - and also as class consciousness. Exploring a range of manifestations in the digital commons, he investigates what forms digital solidarity can take, and asks whether we can learn from the communisms of the past and how might solidarity be manifested in the future?Today, the ubiquity of networked gadgets offers exciting new opportunities for social and political change, but also significant dangers of alienation and stupefaction.

Joss Hands connects the historic understanding of the brain with the history and politics and the democracy to address the current concerns about social media, democratic collapse and technological control. The Public Brain explores the way in which politics and the public sphere are understood in different societies and eras are explored in light of the dominant understanding of the brain in each era, in particular the use of the brain’s capacities and character, to justify the dominant political ideology of the time. Moving from the birth of democracy through to the age of reason and revolution and on to the current social media era of ‘nudge’ politics and new forms of political extremism - the book traces the triangulation of brain, public and media. This includes and exploration of the role of social media platforms and their contribution to confusion and obfuscation in the current era. It proposes different formulations of the public brain over those eras to conclude by advocating for a democratic public brain. The book explores what has been largely overlooked in this field, unpicks this history in order to offer valuable insights into the debates over the contemporary condition across a range of issues such as neoliberalism, self-help and wellbeing as forms of ideology and control, the shift to extremist proto-fascist politics and of post-truth. The book unpacks arguments about affect and cognitive overload to make a positive case for the continuing power of reason and its emancipatory potential. In that way the book provides a valuable insight into how we have come to view the brain as we have, how that view is often misused, and offers suggestions of ways to marshal an enriched democratic concept of the public brain for positive social change.