The Space of the World: Can Human Solidarity Survive Social Media and What If It Can’t?

Over the past thirty years, humanity has made a huge mistake. We handed over to big tech decisions that have allowed them to build what has become our ＂＂space of the world＂＂ - the highly artificial space of social media platforms where much of our social life now unfolds. This has proved reckless and has huge social consequences.

The toxic effects on social life, young people’s mental health, and political solidarity are well known, but the key factor underlying all this has been missed: the fact that humanity allowed business to construct our space of the world at all and then exploit it for profit. In the process, we ignored two millennia of political thought about the conditions under which a healthy or even a non-violent politics is possible. We endangered the one resource that is in desperately short supply in the face of catastrophic climate change: solidarity. Is human solidarity possible in a world of continuous digital connection and commercially managed platforms, and what if it isn’t?

In the first book of his trilogy, Humanising the Future, Nick Couldry offers a radical new vision of how to design our digital spaces so that they build, rather than erode, both solidarity and community. This trenchant and vividly written book stresses that we cannot afford not to care for our space of the world. We need to rebuild it together.

Nick Couldry is Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science.