Customer Reviews

Connected, or What It Means to Live in the Network Society

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This book covers a lot of ground in internet theory and the social aspects of it.

Personally I enjoy the flights into sci-fi, but I understand how they could miss the mark for some readers.

The best element of this book is the shear number of references it makes to writers in the field. The bibliography here is a great resource and he explains most content and concepts well enough for you to understand if you want to take it further.

Connected features a well thought out and presented vision of the world as it may become if we don't give thought to the consequences of becoming a network.

To this end, Shiviro quotes Warren Ellis, Nietzsche, Phillip K. Dick and J.W. Jeter , the author of Noir, the backbone of his argument.

Many have dismissed this text, stating that when one uses fiction, as Shiviro has to explain theory, then any point can be proven.

That is only true to a point and is in essence the point of the text. Creators of speculative fiction have been a set point for many of the technologies we benefit from today. With the ideas they introduce, they also warn us what may happen if we aren't careful. Many, however, have bought into the technology in the attempt to be 'cutting edge' without thinking about the consequences. And to an ever growing number of us, it has become an addiction.

This is the warning that Shiviro provides us. There are many ways the future can end up and it may never be as he sees it, but it is worth thinking of the future cost for today's actions.

When first openning this book, I was a bit unsettled by the lack of of Table of Contents and clearly laid out chapters. However, looking back, this would have completely hindered the text's content. Connected brings about many topics, through many references and allusions, in a continuous flow that could not easily be marked by chapter titles and divisions.

Through in-depth discussion of writings and lyrics from Phillip K. Dick to music artist Beck, Shaviro brings about both awareness and concerns in regards to the post-modern networked society. While the book is technically a series a short essays, all able to stand alone, they often reference each other, the same works, or the same topics. In this way, the text itself can be seen as a self-contained network, with each essay being a single node, working with the others, to make up the complete book.

While Shaviro doesn't necessarilly establish any strong theories or philosophies unique to this text, the way he manages to bring together analyses of various other documents not only gives the reader more insight into these specific works, but also gives us a greater awareness of the overwhelming embodiment that is the network.