Books by Mike Healy

This book investigates the use of digital technologies for social organisation during the Covid-19 pandemic, interrogating the specific relationship between digital technologies and social movements. Drawing upon Marx's theory of alienation and Antonio Gramsci's concepts concerning common-sense, good sense, hegemony and praxis, the author examines the effectiveness of digital technologies in filling the social void created by the pandemic.A series of in-depth interviews across a spectrum of areas - from community activism, mental health, trade union organisation, the creative arts, and resistance movements - reveal how digital technologies flourished during the pandemic crisis, facilitating new ways to communicate. However, the interviews also throw into sharp relief the inadequacies of digital technologies. The book challenges conventional wisdom concerning the beneficial impact of digital machines on our lives. This book will have a broad appeal to anyone researching or teaching the societal, ethical and political implications of digital technologies, particularly from a qualitative perspective. It also has relevance for a wider readership concerned about the influence of social media.

This book explores the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the digital environment: technology offers all manner of promises, yet habitually fails to deliver. This failure often arises from numerous problems: the proficiency of the technology or end-user, policy failure at various levels, or a combination of these. Solutions such as better technology and more effective end-user education are often put into place to solve these failures.Mike Healy argues that such approaches are inherently faulty drawing upon qualitative research informed by Marx's theory of alienation. Using Marx's theory, he considers participants in three distinct settings: the workplace of information and communications technology (ICT) professionals; university scholars researching the ethical and societal implications of our digital environment; and a group of pensioners living in South London, UK, undertaking ICT training. By delving beneath the surface of how digital technologies are created, researched and experienced, this study illustrates the contradictory nature of our digital lives, as they directly arise from the needs of capitalism.The book also places Marx's theory in contrast to the mainstream approaches derived from Seaman and Blauner. In researching and comprehending ICT, this book reaffirms the superior explanatory power of Marx's theory of alienation.