Digital Schizophrenia

From the dawn of computing and cybernetics in the late 1950s to the smartphones and internet-connected devices that characterize our contemporary society, digital technologies have now every aspect of life. We have yet to take full measure of this upheaval. 

While transhumanist discourses swear by the progress of “intelligent machines” or “virtual reality,” countless scientific studies now describe the harmfulness of screens and the dangers of social networks. Digital devices enabling massive data collection and the relentless capture of users’ attention have since given rise to all kinds of psychopathologies that seem to threaten thinking faculties. What if the myth of artificial intelligence brought about by the digital revolution simply served to conceal its disastrous consequences? How can we get out of this digital schizophrenia?

In her first English monograph, Anne Alombert argues that while we urgently need to abandon the transhumanist metaphysics that identifies the brain with the computer and equates the mind with data processing, we must not fall back into the classic opposition between human and machine. Deftly translated by Daniel Ross, Digital Schizophrenia & Other Essays will introduce English readers to one of France’s most fierce and formidable philosophers. 

This book is part of Pensées soignées, K. Verlag's new series of works-in-translation dedicated to relaying how intellectuals and activists in the non-Anglophone world are thinking about care and caring about thought. By proliferating new concepts, models, and tools, the series aims to address the tragedies of our diminished and imperiled historical moment. Digital Schizophrenia & Other Essays is forthcoming in Spring 2025  and is currently available for pre-order.

Anne Alombert is an associate professor of philosophy, a teacher-researcher in contemporary philosophy at the University of Paris 8, and a member of the National Digital Council. Her research focuses on relationships between knowledge and technology in the history of philosophy, particularly in the works of Gilbert Simondon, Jacques Derrida, and Bernard Stiegler, as well as on the anthropological, epistemic, and political issues of contemporary technological transformations.

Daniel Ross obtained his doctorate from Monash University. He is the author of Violent Democracy (2004) and Psychopolitical Anaphylaxis (2021), and has translated many books by Bernard Stiegler into English. He is also the co-director of the prize-winning film The Ister (2004).