Resisting Big Tech: The Personalized is Political

(Hardback)

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How do smartphones change our experience of walking in a city How do matching algorithms affect how we find love And how does ChatGPT alter how we think Engaging these and other questions, this open access book analyzes the transformation of everyday life in the Big Tech era.

Although movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter would not have happened in the way they did without so-called social media platforms, these platforms are not designed for emancipation, but to maximize data extraction. Inspired by the turn-of-the 70s feminist rallying cry that the personal is political, this book argues that we have to become much more conscious of how Big Techs increasingly personalized streams colonize our everyday experiencehow we associate alone and together. The book calls to set clear boundaries to companies like Google and Meta and to remain vigilant for the ways in which corporate power affects and accelerates life, burning out people and the planet.

Focusing on four domains of lifehome, city, education and lovethe book calls to de-Google and unstream the everyday, and to foster truly communal spaces, online but certainly also offline.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the European Research Council.

Author Bio

Niels Niessen is Assistant Professor of Culture Studies at Tilburg University, Netherlands.