Navigating Technomedia: Caught in the Web

(Paperback)

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Description

From email to video and text messaging, so much of our present social life depends on media technologies. Today it is clearer than ever that these not only play an active part in our everyday lives, but constitute our increasingly global realities. Caught in the Web argues for a new approach to media theory that allows technomedia to be studied on its own terms. Engaging in sociology, social theory, philosophy, and media studies, it provides an analysis of contemporary media technologies through the lens of various themes, including the modernity/postmodernity debate, the state of knowledge, space/time, and cultural politics in our contemporary information age. At once an introduction to concepts in media studies and a critical work, Caught in the Web attempts to situate high theory in everyday life.

Reviews

In NavigatingTechnomedia Sam Han explores the fate of being itself, when all things solid have turned into telelectronics. Here, reflexive human subjectivity mutates into a neurotic mosaic of nodal interfaces as techno-denizens of the early twenty-first century find themselves adrift in incessant waves of communication with sentient beings of all sorts, only some of which are human. Han's discerning work provokes a critical, theoretical, and physical encounter with the networked streams of media that feedback upon the energetic material flows and modulating identities of those caught in a web of global capitalist and technological transformations in power, knowledge, and the constitution of life itself. -- Stephen Pfohl, professor of sociology, Boston College, and author of Death at the Parasite Caf, Images of Deviance and Social Control and Left
[Han] attempts to create a broader theoretical footing for delving deeper into how technomedia establishes the virtual era, and what this means for everyday life and social experience. Recommended. * Choice Reviews *
Caught in the Web is a clear, exciting, and complete survey of our changing commuicative environment. One of the book's most intriguing ideas is that New Media has created a social space that is as much virtual as it is real. -- Charles Lemert, University Professor of Social Theory, Emeritus, Wesleyan University

Author Bio

Sam Han teaches at the College of Staten Island-CUNY.