The Digitalisation of (Inter)Subjectivity: A Psy-critique of the Digital Death Drive

Description

This book explores the responsibility of psychological and neuropsychological perspectives in relation to the digitalisation of inter-subjectivity. It examines how integral their theories and models have been to the development of digital technologies, and by combining theoretical and critical work of leading thinkers, it is a new and highly original perspective on (inter)subjectivity in the digital era. The book engages with artificial intelligence and cybernetics and the work of Alan Turing, Norbert Wiener, Marvin Minsky, Gregory Bateson, and Warren McCulloch to demonstrate how their use of neuropsy-theories persists in contemporary digital culture. The author aims to trace a trajectory from psychologisation to neurologisation, and finally, to digitalisation, to make us question the digital future of humankind in relation to the idea of subjectivity, and the threat of the ‘death-drive’ inherent to digitality itself. This volume is fascinating reading for students and researchers in the fields of critical psychology, neuroscience, education studies, philosophy, media studies, and other related areas. Contents Acknowledgments Part 1: Introduction 1 The digital death drive Part 2: Learning machines: digitalisation and its psy-antecedents 2 Alan Turing, artificial intelligence, and its psy-fantasies 3 Cybernetics and the war of the psychologies 4 Towards a psy-critique of the digitalisation of intersubjectivity: two case-studies Part 3: Educating the people: digital deadlocks 5 Digitalising education and parenting: the end of interpellation? 6 The digital (no)future of education 7 Digital mass effects Part 4: Conclusions 8 What digitality should not think. A guide to imagine the end of the world Index