\u003cp\u003eWall Street and Silicon Valley - the two worlds this book examines - promote the illusion that scarcity can and should be eliminated in the age of seamless \u0026ldquo;flow.\u0026rdquo; Instead, Appadurai and Alexander propose a theory of habitual and strategic failure by exploring debt, crisis, digital divides, and (dis)connectivity. Moving between the planned obsolescence and deliberate precariousness of digital technologies and the \u0026ldquo;too big to fail\u0026rdquo; logic of the Great Recession, they argue that the sense of failure is real in that it produces disappointment and pain. Yet, failure is not a self-evident quality of projects, institutions, technologies, or lives. It requires a new and urgent understanding of the conditions under which repeated breakdowns and collapses are quickly forgotten. \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBy looking at such moments of forgetfulness, this highly original book offers a multilayered account of failure and a general theory of denial, memory, and nascent systems of control.\u003c/p\u003e
nl
en