News

OPEN ACCESS BOOK LAUNCH

Deleting Dystopia: Reasserting Human Priorities in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism

The IT revolution has brought many surprises. Among them is the fact that intensive surveillance and the related abuse of personal data have fallen into the hands of powerful digital oligarchies. Accounts of the increasingly repressive uses of advanced technologies and the subsequent ‘dumbing down’ of entire populations cast dark shadows over our future prospects that are beginning to look increasingly dystopian.

Deleting Dystopia confirms that these existential threats are real. But, in place of apathy and fatalism, the author explores ways of understanding them, conceptualising solutions and identifying viable strategies. Taken seriously and widely applied, he suggests that the latter can help us avoid the worst of digital authoritarian futures in favour of those founded on humanly viable values and practices.

Read the book now: https://usq.pressbooks.pub/deletingdystopia/ 

Also listen to author, Richard Slaughter discuss his new book with Luke van der Laan in this video. A shorter version of the video is also available. Read the review here.

The artwork in the book, which was created by Samara Hoffmann, can be accessed and reused under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial ShareAlike licence.  The cover is by Tara Mann.

Please feel welcome to share these promotional flyers with your network.

The global emergency has been emerging since at least the early 1970s but most people, especially the rich and powerful, have chosen either not to see it or pretend it does not exist. Clearly, it’s a challenging subject but, at the same time, there’s no shortage of evidence to support the view t... Read More

When I began the Five Steps to Recovery series I had in mind several specific topics, three of which subsequently appeared. As time went by, however, I felt that Covid-19 had already taken us into new territory, which implied that my original concept for the series no longer seemed appropriate. Part... Read More

Deleting Dystopia: Reasserting Human Priorities in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism The IT revolution has brought many surprises. Among them is the fact that intensive surveillance and the related abuse of personal data have fallen into the hands of powerful digital olig... Read More

Part Three: Technology is Not the Answer Humanity and technology have been intertwined from the earliest times. Many will recall how this evolving relationship was brilliantly portrayed at the beginning of Kubrick’s film, 2001, when an ape-like hominid threw a weaponised bone u... Read More

Parts One and Two: The Great Acceleration / Time Frames Amongst the devastation of Covid-19 and while many people are still fighting for their lives, others are developing proposals for ‘doing things differently’ when the present threat has passed. Issues concerning health, w... Read More

The following piece by Valerie Braithwaite echoes the theme of the previous News post. It is a moving personal account of the upheaval that occurred in a small coastal town in NSW when confronted with devastating bushfires. It was written immediately afterwards and powerfully conveys something of th... Read More

1 2 3 4 6