The Digital Culture – An Exciting Essay by Felix Stalder on Post-Democracy and Commons

50 years ago, Marshall Mc Luhan called out the end of modernity. Since then, cultural opportunities have multiplied enormously. Today, this change produces a culture of the digital. The internet is a medium with specific forms of culture and exchange.

Three of them are characteristic:

  • Referentiality – the use of existing material for the production of cultural objects;
  • Communality – resources are made accessible and meanings are stabilized through a collective frame;
  • The principle of algorithms – automated decision-making reduces information overload.

The aim of Stalder’s essay is to identify and describe two political tendencies in the digital culture: Post-democracy and commons. Digitality points to historically new possibilities for linking human and non-human actors. Find here a summary of the very interesting book of Felix Stalder.

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Guido Koller

Senior Historian, Swiss Federal Archives, CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland

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