Contemporary Art and the Digitization of Everyday Life

Digitization is the animating force of everyday life. Rather than defining it as a technology or a medium, Contemporary Art and the Digitization of Everyday Life argues that digitization is a socio-historical process that is contributing to the erosion of democracy and an increase in political inequality, specifically along racial, ethnic, and gender lines. Taking a historical approach, Janet Kraynak finds that the seeds of these developments are paradoxically related to the ideology of digital utopianism that emerged in the late 1960s with the rise of a social model of computing, a set of beliefs furthered by the neo-liberal tech ideology in the 1990s, and the popularization of networked computing. The result of this ongoing cultural worldview, which dovetails with the principles of progressive artistic strategies of the past, is a critical blindness in art historical discourse that ultimately compromises art’s historically important role in furthering radical democratic aims.

Digitalizarea este forta animatoare a vietii de zi cu zi. In loc sa o defineasca ca o tehnologie sau un mediu, arta contemporana si digitalizarea vietii de zi cu zi sustine ca digitalizarea este un proces socio-istoric care contribuie la eroziunea democratiei si la cresterea inegalitatii politice, in special pe parcurs rasial, etnic si liniile de gen.