A Bounded Web: Platforms and the Crisis of Social Life

Name: A Bounded Web: Platforms and the Crisis of Social Life
Brand: Cambridge University Press
SKU: 9781009838078
Price: 286.00 HKD
Availability: PreOrder
Author: Mathis L. Bitton; Jack Sadler
ISBN: 9781009838078

Edited by Mathis L. Bitton · Jack Sadler

Coming Soon Cambridge University Press Available October 2026

Specifications

ISBN-13: 9781009838078
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication: October 2026
Format: Paperback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Countri(es) for reference only

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The internet once promised to strengthen our associational life. Instead, A Bounded Web shows that digital technology has replaced bounded institutions, where members gather to make decisions together, with porous social networks that platforms administer behind the scenes. In response, scholars and policymakers tend to reduce the pathologies of digital life to technical challenges that demand technocratic solutions. Against this trend, this book offers a new approach to technology policy that emphasizes the need to rebuild diverse and robust associations both online and offline. It defends proposals ranging from smartphone bans in schools to encouraging the creation of 'middleware' and even pursuing 'digital Sabbath' policies to reshape our collective management of technology. Rigorously argued, A Bounded Web asks us to recognize what we've lost and imagine what we might build in its place.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The infrastructure of associational life

2. Untangling the digital threat

3. The origins of the managerial approach

4. The managerial approach today

5. Recovering associational life?

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