Culture and Technology Book Club: The Metropolis and Mental Life

The Culture and Technology Book club brings readers together once a month to discuss new and classic texts that raise important questions about the way technology transforms our cultural and political lives. The group will read on relevant topics related to social media, innovation, surveillance and infrastructure.

This month we read: Chapter 1 of “The Metropolis and Mental Life” by Georg Simmel (1903)

German sociologist Georg Simmel wrote The Metropolis and Mental Life in response to city life in 1901 Berlin, however many insights can still be gleaned from Simmel nearly a century and a quarter later. In chapter 1, Simmel connects the structure of the modern city to the hyper individualistic modern psyche.