[SIGCIS-Members] BOOK TALK THIS MONDAY - new book about tech, truth, and Trump 2.0

[Morten Bay]

Dear fellow SIGCIS'ers!

My new book, Mediating Plureality, comes out on February 15, and though it is mostly about media and technology in society, there's actually also a chapter in it that you might find interesting.

The chapter discusses the materiality of computing with a grounding in its history. I make a Kittler-esque argument that for ethical reasons, we should begin understanding computing more as the result of physical processes than symbolic, harking back to the 1937-38 period and Stibitz, Atanasoff, and Zuse experimenting with relays. And yes, there are a lot of citations containing the names "Haigh" and "Randell" :-)

I am presenting the book at a book talk at USC Annenberg<https://annenberg.usc.edu/events/annenberg-research-seminar/mediating-plureality-technology-perception-and-ethics-divided> on Monday the 10th  at 12 noon PST. It will also be streamed live here:

Zoom: https://usc.zoom.us/my/mortenbay
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mortenbay

I hope you will join us!

Morten

ABOUT THE BOOK
Mediating Plureality: Technology, Perception and Ethics in a Divided Democracy is one of the first books of the second Trump administration to deal with affective polarization and truth.
Author Morten Bay asks what role media and tech have played in the current democratic decline and finds provocative answers. In the book, he claims that:


  *   Contrary to popular belief, social media content is not to blame.

  *   The problem began with the shift to a high-choice media environment in the early 1990s, including talk radio and the early Web.

  *   Around this time, to stave off online competition, news media began insisting that they owned The Truth.

  *   Simultaneously, the tech industry's faith in data and prediction fostered a new epistemic overconfidence.

  *   This led to widespread epistemic arrogance becoming morally acceptable.

  *   Which, in turn, led to increased self-sorting and the rise of affective polarization.

  *   Even scholars began ignoring centuries of basic epistemology despite of new, neuroscientific advances supporting a constructivist approach to reality perception.


Drawing on political theorists who argue that these are perfect conditions for authoritarianism, Bay contends that democratic decline from epistemic arrogance must be met with epistemic humility.

He calls for a cultural shift toward greater acceptance of other people’s reality perceptions and proposes an ethics of pluralist realities – a plureality. It begins with those who control the media platforms as well as media users committing to a more ethical media conduct.

Mediating Plureality: Technology, Perception and Ethics in a Divided Democracy at Lexington Books.<https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781666945201/Mediating-Plureality-Technology-Perception-and-Ethics-in-a-Divided-Democracy>

"By fostering a more empathetic, less normative analysis, Bay delivers a kind of palliative clarion call to advocate for more pluralistic democratic society."
- David Craig, Associate Professor at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and author of Apocalypse Television

"Bay has hit the nail upon the proverbial head: We need to rethink media before we can rethink democracy."
- Aram Sinnreich, Professor at American University and author of The Secret Life of Data: Navigating Hype and Uncertainty in the Age of Algorithmic Surveillance

Morten Bay teaches courses on media, technology, and society at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. He holds a PhD from UCLA and has covered the media and technology industries as a journalist for two decades. Previously, he worked as a digital media consultant for Fortune 50 companies as well as small startups and has advised US and EU lawmakers on media and tech regulatory policy. Mediating Plureality is his fourth book on how media technologies influence human life and the first written solely for an academic audience.

Morten Bay, Ph.D.
Lecturer
Research fellow, Center for the Digital Future
Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
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