Overview

The culture we consume is increasingly delivered to us via various digital on-demand platforms. The last decade has seen platforms like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, Google and the like become massive players in shaping cultural consumption. But how can we understand culture once it moves on to big tech platforms? How can we make sense of the changes this brings to our lives? These platforms have the power to shape our cultural landscape and to use data, algorithms and other technological means to shape our experiences, from what we remember through to what we know and even the speed and accessibility of culture. This book asks how can we understand the chaos and messiness of on-demand culture? Beer suggests that we focus on the quirks and use these as openings to see inside patterns and dynamics of these new cultural formations. By exploring the strange quirks that typify our new on-demand culture, this book seeks to answer these questions. The Quirks of Digital Culture is a guide to understanding the complex and unsettling cultural present, whilst also casting an eye on how our consumption and cultural experiences may unfold in what seems like an unpredictable future.

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9781787699168

Table of Contents

Reviews

'One of Britain's sharpest observers of the internet' -- Peter Pomerantsev, Senior Fellow, LSE and the Author of 'Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, Adventures in Modern Russia' By revealing the intricacies and complexities of contemporary culture, this book opens up new ways to understand and interpret everyday experiences and does so in a way that is accessible even in today's attention-poor environment. In a nutshell, this is a highly recommended book. -- LSE Review of Books

By revealing the intricacies and complexities of contemporary culture, this book opens up new ways to understand and interpret everyday experiences and does so in a way that is accessible even in today's attention-poor environment. In a nutshell, this is a highly recommended book. -- LSE Review of Books 'One of Britain's sharpest observers of the internet' -- Peter Pomerantsev, Senior Fellow, LSE and the Author of 'Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, Adventures in Modern Russia'

'One of Britain's sharpest observers of the internet' -- Peter Pomerantsev, Senior Fellow, LSE and the Author of 'Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, Adventures in Modern Russia'

Author Information

David Beer is Professor of Sociology at the University of York, UK. He is the author of Georg Simmel’s Concluding Thoughts (2019), The Data Gaze (2018), Metric Power (2016), Punk Sociology (2014), Popular Culture and New Media: The Politics of Circulation (2013) and New Media: The Key Concepts (2008, with Nicholas Gane) and is the editor of The Social Power of Algorithms (2018).

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