It's time to see social media beyond being "good" or "bad". It's time to think of its limits.

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Synopsis:

This book is a vibrant investigation on a deeply human subconscious desire: the desire for omnipresence, or in a nutshell, the desire to be here, there, and everywhere at the same time. After all, why is it not enough just to be in the offline ordinariness of the here and now? To answer this question, Camila Mozzini-Alister does the crossing of two seemingly distant universes: mediation and meditation. Throughout a vigorous archaeology of the relationship between screen and mind allied with an engaging first-person narrative, the author raises awareness of the risks of becoming addicted to social media and obsessed by meditation. This brings forth a vital question: what are the limits for the desire to be more than a body?

'The Social Dilemma’ somaesthetics meets the 21st-century body electric. Camila Mozzini-Alister’s "Does Social Media Have Limits?" is a deeply reflected and profoundly inspiring tale of traversing the distance between our rabbit holes of social media and the black holes of seeking a self in the universe of technical images. An indispensable experience for those looking to find the singularity or just looking to regain consciousness.

Anke Finger

Professor of German Studies, Media Studies, and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Connecticut, USA.

“Does Social Media Have Limits?" is a living testimony of an artist who gave her own life and body to her work. It is difficult to categorize Camila Mozzini-Alister’s work since it is, at once a work of philosophy, biography, performing arts, media archaeology, science fiction, as well as an innovative way of bringing together mind and screen through the practices of mediation in social media and spiritual meditation. One of the most interesting aspects of this book is how the author uses her own voice and experience to relate to any other voice in the same quest to become more than just a body. Grounded in a rigorous phenomenological exercise, she calls attention to our deep subconscious 'desire for omnipresence' and brings forth a crucial question for humanity: after all, what are the limits of our ‘progress?'

Josepa López Poquet

Professor of Fine Arts, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain

"The book by Camila Mozzini-Alister is original from any perspective we approach it. The originality is revealed by the relationship that the author establishes between mediation and meditation, leading her to propose the term 'medi(t)ation.' However, the striking originality of the essay does not imply, as the most ingrained traditionalists might think, any loss of quality. When the author sees, for example, 'in the act of continually touching screens the search for a common desire in meditation practices: the desire for limitlessness, or enlightenment,' she literally enlightens our reading, helping us to understand our everyday life gestures, in front of the screens that surround us, as part of the search for transcendence. This is a rare work, worthy of being read and reread again and again."

Gustavo Bernardo Krause

Professor of Literary Theory, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

"What is the common morphology between the yogic-body and the smartphone-body? Between mediation and meditation lies the enigma of how we become humans by means of multiple anthropotechnologies that give shape to our yearnings of expansion toward limitlessness. Now the convergence of mind and screens are about to realize that everlasting but also precarious dream. A profoundly serious examination of the post-human condition in the age of social media, this work is as moving as it is insightful. Mozzini-Alister’s incisive questioning is relevant for the fields of humanities, social media and technology studies as well as indispensable for a new understanding of the meaning and value of meditation."

Fabián Ludueña Romandini

Professor of Philosophy, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

"Camila Mozzini-Alister’s book is an honest work about our societies’ addiction to communication devices and social networks. The author focuses on the mediation between screens – or technical images after Vilém Flusser – and our minds, which is described from a media philosophical/archaeological perspective. However, Mozzini-Alister’s work is not only a theoretical investigation but it also shows a spiritual and philosophical way out of being trapped in black-box-like apparatuses. She finds arguments for changing these habits in meditation and joyfully plays with the relationship between the terms ‘mediation’ and ‘meditation’. Hereby a new aspect of Vilém Flusser’s thought is also introduced to the reader: how Indian philosophical influences can be traced back in his media philosophy."

Anita Jóri

Research Associate at the Vilém Flusser Archive, Berlin University of the Arts, Germany

“Does Social Media Have Limits?" is a scholarly piece with first-person reflections. Mozzini-Alister critically analyses the current obsession with social media technologies: acknowledging our daily struggles to constantly check our ‘screens’ in a desire to be omnipresent, to be superhuman. This book is easy to read and will appeal to scholars of social media, particularly those who study social media addiction.”

Pavica Sheldon

Chair of Communication Arts at the University of Alabama in Huntsville

“Does Social Media Have Limits" is a work of creative and confronting scholarship in which the profound parallels between mediation and meditation are explored. Consciousness and subjectivity will never be the same!"

Marcus Bussey

Professor of Futures Studies, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia

"Camila Mozzini-Alister’s work is a daring combination of traditional scholarship and personal experience. Her approach to digital life highlights the non-evident spiritual components and possibilities of our technological existence."

Erick Felinto

Professor of Media Studies, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

In this fascinating book, I am reminded of the brilliant works of William Irwin Thompson, and his classic, "The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light." However, while Camila Mozzini-Alister is equally poetic and dazzles us with her stories—painful and liberating—she is here for a different reason. She is here to warn us that our fascination with the techno-utopianism of the Facebook screen will not lead to liberation but to cycles of anguish, of a body-politic in fissure. Instead, her story—both personal and scholarly—asks us to enter a different body of light, not of the screen, but one of the soul accessible through the depths of meditation—of greater inner and outer connection and community. We can panic or we can levitate. Where will we go? Bodies of Light helps us find the way.

Sohail Inayatullah

Inaugural UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies, Tamkang University

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Does Social Media Have Limits? Bodies of Light & the Desire for Omnipresence