Roberto Simanowski – författare

On Facebook and fake news, selfies and self-consciousness, selling our souls to the Internet, and other aspects of the digital revolution.

With these engaging and provocative essays, Roberto Simanowski considers what new media has done to us. Why is digital privacy being eroded and why does society seem not to care? Why do we escape from living and loving the present into capturing, sharing and liking it? And how did we arrive at a selfie society without self-consciousness?

Simanowski, who has been studying the Internet and social media since the 1990s, goes deeper than the conventional wisdom. For example, on the question of Facebook''s responsibility for the election of Donald Trump, he argues that the problem is not the “fake news” but the creation of conditions that make people susceptible to fake news. The hallmark of the Internet is its instantaneousness, but, Simanowski cautions, speed is the enemy of depth. On social media, he says, “complex arguments are jettisoned in favor of simple slogans, text in favor of images, laborious explorations at understanding the world and the self in favor of amusing banalities, deep engagement in favor of the click.” Simanowski wonders if we have sold our soul to Silicon Valley, as Faust sold his to the Devil; credits Edward Snowden for making privacy a news story; looks back at 1984, 1984, and Apple''s famous sledgehammer commercial; and considers the shitstorm, mapping waves of Internet indignation—including one shitstorm that somehow held Adidas responsible for the killing of dogs in Ukraine. “Whatever gets you through the night,” sang John Lennon in 1974. Now, Simanowski says, it''s Facebook that gets us through the night; and we have yet to grasp the implications of this.

Provocative takes on cyberbullshit, smartphone zombies, instant gratification, the traffic school of the information highway, and other philosophical concerns of the Internet age.

In The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas, Roberto Simanowski wonders if we are on the brink of a society that views social, political, and ethical challenges as technological problems that can be fixed with the right algorithm, the best data, or the fastest computer. For example, the “death algorithm ” is programmed into a driverless car to decide, in an emergency, whether to plow into a group of pedestrians, a mother and child, or a brick wall. Can such life-and-death decisions no longer be left to the individual human?

In these incisive essays, Simanowski asks us to consider what it means to be living in a time when the president of the United States declares the mainstream media to be an enemy of the people—while Facebook transforms the people into the enemy of mainstream media. Simanowski describes smartphone zombies (or “smombies”) who remove themselves from the physical world to the parallel universe of social media networks; calls on Adorno to help parse Trump''s tweeting; considers transmedia cannibalism, as written text is transformed into a postliterate object; compares the economic and social effects of the sharing economy to a sixteen-wheeler running over a plastic bottle on the road; and explains why philosophy mat become the most important element in the automotive and technology industries.

Kunst in digitalen Medien führt vielfach Experimente der klassischen Avantgarde weiter und schafft faszinierende ästhetische Phänomene. Wie begegnen Publikum und Kritik diesen neuen Erscheinungen? Soll man sich auf die Effekte der Programmierung konzentrieren, auf die Materialität der Zeichen und die Intensität des Erlebens, wie es Lyotards »Ästhetik des Ereignens« oder Gumbrechts »Kultur der Präsenz« vorgeben? Soll man, im Modus einer »Kultur des Sinns«, das Erlebte der Deutung unterziehen mit dem Ziel reflexiver Verunsicherung, die einst Adorno als Funktion von Kunst festschrieb? Wie nah steht die Ereigniskunst dem Spektakel und die Interaktivität der Kulturindustrie?Das Buch behandelt aktuelle ästhetische Fragen am Beispiel digitaler Kunst und anhand ausführlicher Fallstudien zu interaktiven Installationen, kinetisch-konkreter Poesie und computergenerierten Texten.

»Digital media« is increasingly finding its way into the discussions of the humanities classroom. But while there is a number of grand theoretical texts about digital literature there as yet is little in the way of resources for discussing the down-to-earth practices of research, teaching, and curriculum necessary for this work to mature. This book presents contributions by scholars and teachers from different countries and academic environments who articulate their approach to the study and teaching of digital literature and thus give a broader audience an idea of the state-of-the-art of the subject matter also in international comparison.