Gabriele Balbi

Link: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-digital-revolution-9780198875970?cc=us&lang=en&

The book is a history of the ways in which the digital revolution has been narrated, of the rhetoric, the narratives, and the overt or implied debates that have accompanied it and continue to accompany it today. It aims to tell the story of an idea, which I define as one of the most powerful ideologies of recent decades: that digitalization constitutes a revolution, a break with the past, a radical change for the human beings who are living through it. The four chapters investigate the origins of this idea, how it evolved, which other past revolutions consciously or unconsciously inspired it, which great stories it has conveyed over time, which of its key elements have changed and which ones have persisted and have been repeated in different historical periods, , how it can be considered a quasi-religion. All these discussions, large or small, have settled and condensed into a series of media, advertising, corporate, political, and technical sources and so, in the book, readers can also find new, previously-unpublished historical sources. The main aim of the book is to deconstruct what looks like a “natural” and incontestable idea and to help rethink digital societies today.