Dealing with digitality is one of the most urgent challenges of the present. The increasing
importance and spread of computer technology not only challenges societies and individuals -
this development also puts pressure on the concept of digitality which tries to grasp the
totality and peculiarity of the conditions and consequences of electronic digital computing (in
all its forms). However precisely because digitality is commonplace so should be its critique
its analysis and assessment. How can an analysis do justice to both fundamental characteristics
and changing concrete forms infrastructures and practices? How do the developments of a
digitalization that programmatically encompasses forms of networking embedding and
autonomization shape media cultures and societies? How do artificial intelligence and
algorithmic government relate to each other how does the immateriality of the digital fit with
the materiality of computers? How does the changing status and scope of this technology mediate
itself? This book introduces ongoing debates and develops its own approach to the critique of
digitality asking about forms of interfaces and processes of governance. This book is a
translation of the original German 1st edition Kritik der Digitalität by Jan Distelmeyer
published by Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH part of Springer Nature in 2021. The
translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the
service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content so that
the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature
works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the
related technologies to support the authors.
