File:Digital Neuroland. An Interview with Tony D. Sampson.pdf

Rizosfera :: Digital Neuroland. An Interview with Tony D. Sampson (Rhizonomics)

Tony D. Sampson is reader in digital media culture and communication based in East London, and deals with philosophy, digital culture and new media. His work focuses on an unconventional intersection where political analysis meets the theoretical aspects of digital media and social behaviour, shaping the world of our contemporary era. Writing on substantial components like viruses, virality in communication, contagion and behavioural imitation, the brain and neuroculture in this “rotten world” built on an accelerated bond of technology and ideology of value and profit driven mar- kets, Sampson catches, with a forward looking attitude, some “substantial issues” of the clash between control and technology, society and individual or collective freedom, shaping him not only as a brilliant new media theorist but as an essential political thinker as well. To scan his new book ‘The Assemblage Brain’ (Minnesota Press, 2017) is therefore urgent to understand the important challenge we will face in a very near future.

Tony D. Sampson is currently reader in digital media cultures and communication at the University of East London. His publications include The Spam Book, co-edited with Jussi Parikka (Hampton Press, 2009), Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), The Assemblage Brain: Sense Making in Neuroculture (University of Minnesota Press, Dec 2016) and Affect and Social Media, co-edited with Darren Ellis and Stephen Maddison (Rowman and Little eld, 2018). Tony is the organizer of the Affect and Social Media conferences, a co-founder of the public engagement initiative Club Critical Theory in Southend, Essex and Director of the Emotion UX Lab at UEL. Current research explores a wide range of digital media culture related interests, specializing in social media, virality (socio-digital contagion), marketing power, network models, pass- on-power, the convergence between experience (UX) design and marketing, assemblage and affect theory, critical human computer interaction (c-HCI), digital activism and neuroculture (e.g. neuromarketing, neuroeconomics and neuroaesthetics).