Jonathan Crary's 'Scorched Earth' Critiques Digital Capitalism and Internet Complex

Visual theorist Jonathan Crary's new book 'Scorched Earth' presents a fierce indictment of digital capitalism and what he terms 'the internet complex.' Published by Verso for £12.99 in hardcover, the work argues that corporate-designed social media eliminates ethical relations to otherness while degrading human selfhood and sociability. Crary insists that any liveable future must be offline and uncoupled from 24/7 capitalism's world-destroying systems. The book critiques how the internet complex functions as an engine of addiction, loneliness, cruelty, psychosis, indebtedness, and social disintegration. Crary maintains that revolutionary subjects cannot exist on social media, advocating instead for social reciprocity and interpersonal encounter as prerequisites for radical political possibility. However, his proposed alternatives—including 'zero-growth' 'eco-socialism'—are criticized as unconvincing and romanticizing a premodern world. The review suggests Crary's vision paradoxically denounces capitalism as both all-powerful and on the verge of collapse while remaining silent about humanity's historically short, diseased lives before modernity. The book represents three decades of Crary's analysis of capitalism and technology's power over human subjects.