Digital transformation and the renewal of social theory: Unpacking the new fraudulent myths and misplaced metaphors

Publication date: September 2019Source: Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Volume 146Author(s): Marinus OssewaardeAbstractIn this article, it is argued that social theory must be renewed to comprehend the new power constellations and new challenges to aesthetic and intellectual ways of life that are being shaped by digital transformation. However, while social theory has to renew its tools in order to grasp previously unknown realities, it also runs the risk of being assimilated into the very process that it seeks to understand, or to assimilate so much of the dominant belief system that it loses its critical and creative potential. The aim of this article is to propose a particular, renewed social theory that consists in a recasting some social theoretic insights to be able to preserve aesthetic and intellectual potentials of critique and negation. Through the lens of this renewed social theory, digital transformation is understood as a form of economic domination, which, as this article shows, is sustained by un-enlightenment, that is, by fraudulent myths and misplaced metaphors.

Source: Technological Forecasting and Social Change - May 24, 2019 Category: Science Source Type: research