Where many laud the World Wide Web and CNN as media of personal freedom and enhanced, albeit electronic, democracy, I contend that these are false forms of community and democracy. People shop for commodities and selfhood along the information superhighway, having abandoned politics and society to elites. For many, inwardness is an escape from the cynicism and hopelessness of politics and social movements. None of these pursuits is inherently harmful. People forsake politics, social change, helping others.
Community is sacrificed to subjectivity.
Where McLuhan argued that communication, especially the electronic sort, is a form of association, I maintain that today communication is the main or only form of association, given the collapse of the public sphere of civic discourse in what I characterize as an age of instantaneity. In a better society, we would no longer clearly distinguish between everyday life and larger, enveloping social structures because these larger structures would no longer appear alien and remote. The book addresses major issues in sociology that inform virtually all of student's course work. At the same time, the book advances an argument about our stage of civilization, joining dialogue with critical thinkers and theorists who bemoan the loss of community and civic discourse. These perspectives from critical theory and postmodernism can be introduced in readable, digestible ways, especially where discussion of them is linked to standard sociological concerns such as the relationship between self and society.