Announcing a new book on the dark side of network culture:
THE SPAM BOOK
On Viruses, Porn, and Other Anomalies From the Dark Side of Digital Culture
edited by Jussi Parikka and Tony D. Sampson
With Foreword by Sadie Plant
Hampton Press, 2009
For those of us increasingly reliant on email
networks in our everyday social interactions,
spam can be a pain; it can annoy; it can
deceive; it can overload. Yet spam can also
entertain and perplex us. This book is an
aberration into the dark side of network
culture. Instead of regurgitating stories of
technological progress or over celebrating
creative social media on the Internet, it
filters contemporary culture through its
anomalies. The book features theorists writing
on spam, porn, censorship, and viruses. The evil
side of media theory is exposed to theoretical
interventions and innovative case studies that
touch base with new media and Internet studies
and the sociology of new network culture, as
well as post-representational cultural analysis.
?Parikka and Sampson present the latest insights
from the humanities into software
studies. This compendium is for all you digital
Freudians. Electronic deviances
no longer originate in Californian cyber fringes
but are hardwired into planetary normalcy.
Bugs breed inside our mobile devices. The virtual mainstream turns out to
be rotten. The Spam book is for anyone interested in new media theory.?
Geert Lovink, Dutch/Australian media theorist
?What if all those things we most hate about the
Internetthe spam, the viruses,
the phishing sites, the flame wars, the latency
and lag and interruptions of service,
and the glitches that crash our computerswhat
if all these are not bugs, but features?
What if they constitute, in fact, the way the system functions? The Spam
Book explores this disquieting possibility.?
Steven Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English, Wayne State University
Contents:
Foreword, Sadie Plant.
On Anomalous Objects of Digital Culture: An
Introduction, Jussi Parikka and Tony D. Sampson.
CONTAGIONS
Mutant and Viral: Artificial Evolution and Software Ecology, John Johnston.
How Networks Become Viral: Three
Questions Concerning Universal Contagion, Tony D. Sampson.
Extensive Abstraction in Digital Architecture, Luciana Parisi.
Unpredictable Legacies: Viral Games in the Networked World, Roberta Buiani.
BAD OBJECTS.
Archives of SoftwareMalicious Codes and the
Aesthesis of Media Accidents, Jussi Parikka.
Contagious Noise: From Digital Glitches to Audio Viruses, Steve Goodman.
Toward an Evil Media Studies, Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey.
PORNOGRAPHY.
Irregular Fantasies, Anomalous Uses: Pornography
Spam as Boundary Work, Susanna Paasonen.
Make Porn, Not War: How to Wear the Network?s Underpants, Katrien
Jacobs.
Can Desire Go On Without a Body?: Pornographic
Exchange as Orbital Anomaly, Dougal Phillips.
CENSORED.
Robots.txt: The Politics of Search Engine Exclusion, Greg Elmer.
The Internet Treats Censorship as a Malfunction
and Routes Around It?: A New Media
Approach to the Study of State Internet Censorship, Richard Rogers.
CODA
On Narcolepsy, Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker.
Orders from Hampton Press:
<http://tiny.cc/3qniv>http://tiny.cc/3qniv
as well as bookstores and online sellers.
Launch event:
Goldsmiths College, London:
Friday, September 25th, 6-8pm (prompt)
Room 3/4
Ben Pimlott Building, (silver building with
squiggle) Goldsmiths, Lewisham Way New Cross
Contributors to the book will make short interventions based on their texts:
Matthew Fuller
Andrew Goffey
Steve Goodman
Jussi Parikka
Luciana Parisi
Sadie Plant
Tony Sampson
Editors:
Dr Jussi Parikka is Reader in Media Theory and
History at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge.
He has a PhD in Cultural History from University
of Turku, Finland and is now the co-director of
the Anglia Research Centre in Digital Culture.
He is the author of Digital Contagions ? A Media
Archaeology of Computer Viruses (2007). More
info:
<http://www.jussiparikka.com>http://www.jussiparikka.com
,
<mailto:(Jussi.parikka /at/ anglia.ac.uk)>(Jussi.parikka /at/ anglia.ac.uk),
mobile: + 44 (0)7846 476 425.
Dr Tony D. Sampson is a Senior Lecturer and
Researcher in New Media at The University of
East London. He has a PhD in Sociology from the
University of Essex. More info:
<http://homepages.uel.ac.uk/T.D.Sampson/research.htm>http://homepages.uel.ac.uk/T.D.Sampson/research.htm,
email: <mailto:(t.d.sampson /at/ uel.ac.uk)>(t.d.sampson /at/ uel.ac.uk)
EMERGING EXCELLENCE: In the Research Assessment
Exercise (RAE) 2008, more than 30% of our
submissions were rated as 'Internationally Excellent' or 'World-leading'.
Among the academic disciplines now rated
'World-leading' are Allied Health Professions
Art English Language Geography & Environmental
Studies; History; Music; Psychology; and Social
Work & Social Policy & Administration.
Visit www.anglia.ac.uk/rae for more information.
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