Stuck on the Platform: Reclaiming the Internet

By Geert Lovink However often you delete apps from your phone, the seduction of the platform draws you back. There is a rising disaffection with “platform” culture—with megacorporations such as Google and Facebook that provide the foundational software for others to use, and to which we are almost all addicted. What can be done against it? Doom scrolling is the new normal of a 24/7 online life. What happens when your home office starts to feel like a call center and you’re too fried to log out of Facebook? We’re addicted to large-scale platforms, unable to return to the frivolous age of decentralized networks. How do we make sense of the rising disaffection with the platform condition? Zoom fatigue, cancel culture, crypto art, NFTs and psychic regression comprise core elements of a general theory of contemporary existence. In Stuck on the Platform , Dutch media theorist Geert Lovink—whose work has been championed by Jodi Dean, Bernard Stiegler and Eva Illouz, among others—diagnoses this condition and suggests exit strategies, arguing that we reclaim the internet on our own terms. Stuck on the Platform is a relapse-resistant story about the rise of platform alternatives, built on a deep understanding of the digital slump. Designed by Irene Stracuzzi Published by Valiz, 2022 Softcover, 240 pages, 6 × 9.5 inches ISBN: 978-9-49-324608-9