Vinyl won’t save us: reframing disconnection as engagement

Disconnection has recently come to the forefront of public discussions as an antidote to an increasing saturation with digital technologies. Yet experiences with disconnection are often reduced to a form of disengagement that diminishes their political impact. Disconnective practices focused on health and well-being are easily appropriated by big tech corporations, defusing their transformative potential into the very dynamics of digital capitalism. In contrast, a long tradition of critical thought, from Joseph Weizenbaum to Jaron Lanier passing through hacktivism, demonstrates that engagement with digital technologies is instrumental to develop critique and resistance against the paradoxes of digital societies. Drawing from this tradition, this article proposes the concept of “Disconnection-through-Engagement” to illuminate situated practices that mobilize disconnection in order to improve critical engagement with digital technologies and platforms. Hybridity, anonymity, and hacking are examined as three forms of Disconnection-through-Engagement, and a call to decommodify disconnection and recast it as a source of collective critique to digital capitalism is put forward

Vinyl won't save us: reframing disconnection as engagement

Disconnection has recently come to the forefront of public discussions as an antidote to an increasing saturation with digital technologies. Yet, experiences with disconnection are often reduced to a form of disengagement that diminishes their political impact. Disconnective practices focused on health and well-being are easily appropriated by big tech corporations, defusing their transformative potential into the very dynamics of digital capitalism. In contrast, a long tradition of critical thought, from Joseph Weizenbaum to Jaron Lanier passing through hacktivism, demonstrates that engagement with digital technologies is instrumental to develop critique and resistance against the paradoxes of digital societies. Drawing from this tradition, this article proposes the concept of ‘Disconnection-through-Engagement’ to illuminate situated practices that mobilize disconnection in order to improve critical engagement with digital technologies and platforms. Hybridity, anonymity and hacking are examined as three forms of Disconnection-through-Engagement, and a call to decommodify disconnection and recast it as a source of collective critique to digital capitalism is put forward

Advancing digital disconnection research: Introduction to the special issue

Over the past decade, scholarly interest in “digital disconnection” and related concepts has grown in media and communication studies, and in related disciplines. The idea of digital disconnection explicitly references digitalization as a key societal development, creating conditions of intensified and embedded media involvement across social life. The notion of digital disconnection thereby represents a critical response to mediated conditions that characterize our societies and permeate our everyday lives. In this special issue, we take stock of the contributions, challenges, and promises of digital disconnection research. We showcase how digital disconnection scholarship intersects with other developments in media and communication research, and is part of debates and empirical analysis in related disciplines from tourism studies to psychology. We argue that one of the key strengths of the emergent work is the variety of social domains and conceptual debates that are included and explored in digital disconnection research. On the other hand, we also point to the need for further methodological development, conceptual consolidation, and empirical diversity, particularly in the face of global inequalities and ongoing crises.publishedVersio

A Classification of Organizational Interventions to Enable Detachment from Work

Negative effects of extensive connectivity to work through excessive use of technology have yielded discussions about the right to disconnect for employees. Organizations are beginning to introduce interventions that aim at enabling their employees to detach from work (i.e., refrain from work-related thoughts and activities during non-work hours). However, there is limited academic research on how organizations should introduce interventions that lead to a successful disconnection of their employees. Based on an interdisciplinary literature review and reports on companies’ best practices, this study proposes a classification of organizational interventions based on the level, target, and mechanism of the intervention. I include the theory of psychological detachment to propose a measurement of the success of an intervention. The classification provides researchers and practitioners with a common framework to develop and evaluate interventions aimed at fostering employees’ disconnection from work

Rejection of learning how to code and the problem of ‘non-use’ in the history of computer cultures

This paper investigates how a host of social actors, such as computer science experts and educators, discursively constructed both positively valued ‘user-programmers’ and negatively valued ‚non-programmers,‘ that is computer users who reject the practice of writing programs on their computers. I argue that the central theme of such a strategy was user agency and the question of having control over the technology that one is using in everyday life. Firstly, I investigate two key themes of the discursive construction of non-programmers in the era of the microcomputer of the 1980s, the discourses towards economies and social development related to computer literacy programs, and next, the key role of programming as a developmental tool for children’s education. Later, I compare that historical era with the contemporary ‘learn to code’ movement and investigate how it outlines the disadvantages of the neglect of learning programming

Electronic Literature in the Database & The Database in Electronic Literature. Towards a Digital-Hermeneutics Approach

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A little less autonomy? The future of working time flexibility and its limits

The European Court of Justice has recently issued rulings on the interpretation of the European Working Time Directive 2003/88, which appear to restrict flexible working time arrangements(especially Matzak C-518/15,Syndicat C-254/18 and CCOOC-55/18). Only a few months prior tothe latter ruling of the CJEU, the Austrian legislator amended the Working Time Act in orderto make it more flexible. The article argues that the measures taken by the Austrian legislator toenable more flexibility and autonomy can still be regarded as compatible with Union law. In general,the article tackles the question of possible further legislative developments in order to strike abalance between autonomy and the need for security of both parties to the employment relationship. Among other suggestions, the article introduces the concept of molecularisation ofworking time and examines whether work intensity should be introduced as a qualitativedimension to the concept of working time, thus deviating from the current European WorkingTime Directive. Finally, the article suggests security measures – often referring to Austria as a bestpractice example – in order to safeguard workers in view of working time flexibility

Media & Jornalismo: 20 anos

UIDB/05021/2020 UIDP/05021/2020publishersversionpublishe