The Culture of Digitality

The 'Culture of Digitality’ considers the cultural manifestations of digitality stemming from its roots in the convergence of the Californian Ideology with neoliberal political economy. It does this through a reflection on the works of two theorists, Lev Manovich and Bernard Stiegler, who have sought to express the specific effects of the digital upon cultural production and consumption. A critique of these approaches is underpinned with an analysis of the major theorisations of culture within the context of late-capitalism, from Adorno and Horkheimer, Guy Debord, Raymond Williams, Zygmunt Bauman and Jean Baudrillard. These important perspectives no longer suffice as critique of the production of culture today as they were conceived in a pre-digital time, and with analogue-dependent theories guiding their logic. Consumer culture is central to digitality and digitality and its logic of automation have alienated humans not only from commodities for exchange, but also from the analogue technology that made humans who and what they are. It alienates us from a natural environment and a physical world that disappears as we enter the virtual and leads to the cultural condition of this double-alienation fully sketched in the final chapter.