New Flesh, The
by Adam C. Jones

Communication has taken on an accelerated viral character, and life is rendered ever more profitable as a simulation of itself.

From social media to so-called ‘AI’, from cyberpunk society to automated apartheid, The New Flesh asks and answers the same questions: What does it mean to live in an increasingly online world and what is it doing to us? The thesis is this: Data production has permeated everyday life, on platforms that addict the bored and enslave the dispossessed. Communication has taken on an accelerated viral character, life is rendered ever more as a profitable simulation of itself, and new fascisms arise to disseminate themselves through cyberspace and develop their imperial weaponry. The platform is a factory for producing content, and security technologies are increasingly being trained by human beings displaced and enclosed within digitalized plantations. When we can understand the interconnections between the internet and the empire, we can fight back. By fusing Marx and Engels with William Burroughs, Mark Fisher, and contemporary Queer Theory, Adam C. Jones takes cybernetic philosophy beyond hype and hyperbole, presenting a materialist politics of the psychological and economic relations that permeate cyberspace today.

Reviews:
What have we become in the age of the algorithm? We are always already hybrid, plugged in, and inescapably logged on. With scrupulous philosophical rigor, Adam Jones sets a new standard for cybernetic philosophy, moving past the tired nostalgia of cyberpunk and the pathetic fetishizing of contemporary techno-capital. At last we have here modern techno-philosophy with blood in it — an examination of the new flesh we all share and a guide to the postmodern mediation of technology that structures sociality. An essential read and a superb example of what philosophy could and should be as the contradictions of contemporary internet culture continue to accelerate. ~ Jon Greenaway, author of Capitalism: A Horror Story

In a world where the lines between flesh and data are increasingly blurred, The New Flesh stands as a crucial text for both organizers and researchers. It dissects the morbid loop of digital consumption that now defines our existence, conditioning and confining the potentialities of our emancipatory movements. This book is essential reading for anyone struggling with the relentless consumption of online violence, where we witness endless images of death without understanding why we remain passive, trapped in cycles of self — and collective — replication that dominate both our online and offline lives. ~ Islam al Khatib, researcher in the relationship between technology and fascism

A much-needed book on the convergence between the body and the automaton. I found it enormously interesting. ~ Franco 'Bifo' Berardi

Far more has been grafted onto our libidinal skin since David Cronenberg inserted a VHS tape into an abdomen in 1983. In The New Flesh, Adam Jones expertly maps out the endocrine updates of a 21st-century cybernetics, the pleasures of our new communicative organs, and the necessity of a new politics capable of short-circuiting their illusory freedoms. As we start to more closely resemble the automatons that science-fiction long dreamt about, it is not an AI jailbreak we should be worried about, but our acquisition of a new autonomy that is worthy of the name. Let Jones be your guide to a future escape. ~ Mattie Colquhoun, author of 'Narcissus in Bloom'