Review of Douglas Kellner (2021). Technology and Democracy: Toward a Critical Theory of Digital Technologies, Technopolitics, and Technocapitalism: Wiesbaden: Springer VS. 305 pp. ISBN 9783658317898 (Hardcover)

Historically, any rapid advancement in technology that is concerned with the dissemination of information has been accompanied by social unrest and anxiety about information overload—take the emergence of the printing press, radio, and television for example. The central claim of Technology and Democracy (Kellner 2021) is that society needs to respond to the challenges of the technological revolution by rethinking its basic tenets and restructuring key institutions. Rapid advances in technology have radically changed how we spend our time in public spaces of work, political participation, and leisure, not to mention private spaces in the home—amplified by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Joining these discrete social arenas is the communication of information and media and the distribution of disinformation and misinformation as a consequence of the technological revolution; what Kellner (2021) refers to as the information society in his exploration of technology, democracy, politics, and capitalism.