The Circle of the Snake: Nostalgia and Utopia in the Age of Big Tech Paperback – November 16, 2020

Tanner’s prose is lucid, positioned precisely at the disturbing intersection of late capitalist neoliberalism, attention economy, and technology. By leaning into art criticism, his thought is grounded in concrete cultural events while weaving in contemporary cultural theory. The book reads as a series of critical explications of different media and works, each as a unique in-road for exposing, exploring and understanding deeper structural issues at play.Though The Circle of the Snake never mentions Heidegger, the book reads—at least for me—as a post-script to the notion: “we can’t fix a technological problem through technological means.” Especially, as Tanner shows astutely, because these technological problems are circumscribed by the problems rooted in the logic of our political economy.