Institut Ramon LLull

Our author strikes a dialogue between classic and contemporary authors (La Boétie, McLuhan, Mauss, Simmel, Marcuse, Kracauer, Deleuze, Guattari, Bifo Bifardi or Mark fisher, to name but a few) revealing an exhaustive bibliographical knowledge as well as an understanding of the ills of our times, one in which digital spaces condition our access to the world and saturate our attention. An ambitious work that provides a two-part analysis exploring the shadows of this global panopticon we live under.

In the first part, Guardiola centres her work on questions affecting the public sphere: the politics and sociology of these digital capitalisms (exploitation of intimacy or the voluntary datafication of our lives; manufacturing social consent; the creation of political exceptionalism; bureaucratic protocols’ stranglehold; technology in service to social control; the relationship between AI and work.) Secondly, she studies how techno-capitalism has created a psychosphere, affecting our perception (our five senses) and experience (cognitive functions) for citizens: the instrumentalization of our brains to the system’s benefit; effects on our affective and social behaviour; changes in our relationship in terms of desire and pleasure; changes in communal values. Without question, here is an impactful and vital work in understanding the very nature of the power whose grasp holds us in place.