Arditi and Miller wrap some excellent essays with an introduction and conclusion centering on Frankfurt School dialectical theory and the emergence of the digital disaster. The core of the book deals with the idea of a digital dialectic and its analysis in chapters on power, politics, culture, and being human. The editors have lined up a stellar group of essays that profoundly engage our digital world and the edges between questions of music, economy, ecology, memes, and related topics. The dialectical nature of the analyses provides both an entryway and unity to the essays. The book makes numerous substantive contributions to several fields and is worth a read for its scholarship and for those building a knowledge base about our contemporary digital world.
In The Dialectic of Digital Culture, Arditi and Miller have assembled a fascinating collection of essays exploring the promise and peril of contemporary digital culture. Insisting that we think about digital media dialectically—as both empowerment and capture—the authors collectively inspire readers to pierce through facile narratives of progress and to think more critically about their relationship to digital technologies. Readers will also find the rich diversity of technologies, platforms, practices, and case studies covered in this book to be engaging and enlightening. This is required reading for students and scholars of digital culture.