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Dominic Pettman's Infinite Distraction

795 Words4 Pages

Infinite Distraction… presents Dominic Pettman’s (Chair of Liberal Studies, New School for Social Research, and Professor of Culture and Media, Eugene Lang College) timely response to the twenty-first century’s growing concern that the overuse of social media may be affecting our mental health and having a negative impact on social life. Pettman’s tightly argued analysis of typical problems associated with online interactions offers an explanation of the ways, in which the new forms of communication affect our behavior, redefine our identity and restructure relationships with others.

Pettman’s compact and thought-provoking book makes a significant contribution to the field of philosophy, updating the traditional philosophical discourse of selfhood with a much-needed discussion of the deep structures of the human self being affected by online activities. This analysis involves the discussion of Internet-specific alienation of individuals from their authentic selves and the examination of real relationships’ mutation into simulated connections, following Dunbar. In particular, the author anticipates that ‘the acceleration of intimacy, …show more content…

Moreover, if we realize, following Steel, that instead of making us feel less alone, participation in social media interactions eventually makes us ‘feel a stronger rebound loneliness’ (p. 32), some of us may decide to stop following ‘the semi-magical “lives of others”’ (p. 57). Equally, having familiarized ourselves with Steyerl’s arguments, we may begin to resist ‘the tsunami of stock images’ (p. 128) that depict flawlessly Photoshopped individuals, which substitute real, flawed humans and overshadow our own and other people’s real

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