[Air-L] New Book: Digital Modernity: Why We Need to Think Historically About the Digital Age

[James Smithies]

I'm pleased to announce the publication of my monograph Digital Modernity: Why We Need to Think Historically About the Digital Age (Routledge, 2026), available for purchase and open access download via the links below.

The book offers the first systematic theorization of digital modernity, arguing that the digital age cannot be understood apart from the long historical arc of modernity. It bridges digital humanities, critical theory, sociology, philosophy, and global history to demonstrate that contemporary digital systems are continuations rather than ruptures of the modern project — and develops a conceptual framework for examining how technological infrastructures intersect with democracy, governance, colonial legacies, and the public sphere.

Across nine chapters, the book moves from conceptual foundations to future-facing proposals, engaging topics including the cultural logic of Silicon Valley, digital colonialism, digital infrastructure, and the epistemic crisis of the digital public sphere. It also addresses philosophical questions about emergence, historicism, and artificial intelligence. Drawing on applied digital humanities, the book rejects technological determinism while offering accessible accounts of computing's technical and political histories.

Alan Liu (UC Santa Barbara) describes the book as bringing "astonishingly broad, detailed, and interlaced knowledge of computation, philosophy, and history" to bear on digital modernity's core tensions. Katherine Bode (ANU) calls it "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." Peter Beilharz (La Trobe) characterises it as "pioneering work" bridging the digital revolution with the tradition of critical theory and sociology.

The open access version is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International license.

Opportunities to contribute to ongoing development of the critical theory of digital modernity will be publicised in the coming months.

Open Access: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003684398/digital-modernity-james-smithies

Physical: https://www.routledge.com/Digital-Modernity-Why-We-Need-to-Think-Historically-About-the-Digital-Age/Smithies/p/book/9781041164012

Kind regards,
James Smithies

Professor & Director, HASS Digital Research Hub
The Australian National University

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