Transparency is the order of the day. It is a term, a slogan, that dominates public discourse about corruption and freedom of information. Considered crucial to democracy, it touches our political and economic lives as well as our private lives. Anyone can obtain information about anything. Everything--and everyone--has become transparent: unveiled or exposed by the apparatuses that exert a kind of collective control over the post-capitalist world. Yet, transparency has a dark side that, ironically, has everything to do with a lack of mystery, shadow, and nuance. Behind the apparent...

Our competitive, service-oriented societies are taking a toll on the late-modern individual. Rather than improving life, multitasking, -user-friendly- technology, and the culture of convenience are producing disorders that range from depression to attention deficit disorder to borderline personality disorder. Byung-Chul Han interprets the spreading malaise as an inability to manage negative experiences in an age characterized by excessive positivity and the universal availability of people and goods. Stress and exhaustion are not just personal experiences, but social and historical phenomena...

The days of the Other are over in this age of global over-communication, over-information and over-consumption. What used to be the Other, be it as friend, as Eros or as hell, is now indistinguishable from the self in our society's narcissistic desire to assimilate everything and everyone until there are no boundaries left.

Power is a pervasive phenomenon yet there is little consensus on what it is and how it should be understood. In this book the cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han develops a fresh and original perspective on the nature of power, shedding new light on this key feature of social and political life.

"A sharp critique of our contemporary societies in which pseudo-communication and narcissism have replaced community"--