Contemporary culture offer contradictory views of the internet and new media technologies, painting them in extremes of optimistic enthusiasm and pessimistic concern. This book explores such representations, uncovering the roots of our cultural responses to the internet, centred upon a profoundly ambivalent reaction to technological modernity.

Majid Yar is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hull, UK. He has researched and published widely in the areas of crime & deviance studies, media & popular culture, and social & criminological theory.