Blurbs for James Smithies' book, Digital Modernity: Why We Need to Think Historically About the Digital Age (2026). The text of the blurbs is as follows: <blurb1> Alan Liu, Distinguished Professor of English, University of California, Santa Barbara -- A sweeping view of how our digital age unfolds from the long history of modernity with all its tensions of determinism versus contingency, and Western universalism versus global multiplicity. Smithies's astonishingly broad, detailed, and interlaced knowledge of computation, philosophy, and history undergirds a powerful guiding message. </blurb> <blurb2> Katherine Bode, Professor of Digital Literary Studies, Australian National University -- Digital Modernity is an essential guide for anyone seeking to understand not just what digital technologies do but how they are deeply entangled in modernity's contested pasts and what they mean for our collective futures. </blurb> <blurb3> Peter Beilharz, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, La Trobe University -- The great contribution of James Smithies is to learn and to bridge the digital revolution and the tradition of critical theory and sociology. This is pioneering work, full of insight and provocation, addressing both text and context, opening up the pathways of understanding. </blurb>
Blurbs (including mine) for @jamessmithies.bsky.social’s book, Digital Modernity: Why We Need to Think Historically About the Digital Age. Glad to have been able to watch this book evolve during the past few years.
