A rebooted formalism might be able to provide resources for responding to the civilizational problems of the Anthropocene Era. The study of form, however, is complicated by the ubiquity of forms: the term is primitive and empty while referring to spoons, skeletons, galaxies, equations, nursery rhymes, and just about everything else. As a provisional solution to this problem, I focus on formal objects: familiar, distinctive things that are widely reproduced and valued because of their shape, resonance, or other aesthetic quality. By examining the formal object of the silhouette, some features of formal appeal and response become evident. Formal objects also can allay characteristic problems in formalism, as when the silhouette provides resources for political advocacy.

Digital technology is being developed with little or no awareness of the underlying operating system: corporate capitalism. New technologies are developed purely for their ability to extract value from people and places, instead of providing human beings with the capabilities they need to create and exchange value for themselves. As a result, we now live in a media environment where technologies use people more than people use technology.  One of the greatest promises of new media technologies was to unlock closed-ended narratives, and offer people the opportunity to participate, actively, in the creation of a new human story.

In this talk, media theorist and author Douglas Rushkoff will use the lens of critical economic analysis to explain how this potential renaissance for human connection and flourishing was leveraged instead to amplify the most predictable, extractive and dehumanizing aspects of the market - as well as what we can do to reclaim agency in the digital media environment.