Douglas Rushkoff: Program Or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age (2010)

The debate over whether the Net is good or bad for us fills the airwaves and the blogosphere. But for all the heat of claim and counter-claim, the argument is essentially beside the point: it’s here; it’s everywhere. The real question is, do we direct technology, or do we let ourselves be directed by it and those who have mastered it? “Choose the former,” writes Rushkoff, “and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make.” In ten chapters, composed of ten “commands” accompanied by original illustrations from comic artist Leland Purvis, Rushkoff provides cyberenthusiasts and technophobes alike with the guidelines to navigate this new universe.

In this spirited, accessible poetics of new media, Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping readers come to recognize programming as the new literacy of the digital age––and as a template through which to see beyond social conventions and power structures that have vexed us for centuries. This is a friendly little book with a big and actionable message.

Publisher OR Books, 2010
ISBN 1935928155, 9781935928157
149 pages

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Geert Lovink, Pit Schultz: Jugendjahre der Netzkritik. Essays zu Web 1.0 (1995 – 1997) (2010) [German]

“Dieses PDF / Print-on-Demand-Heft bringt eine Auswahl der Texte zusammen, in denen die Medientheoretiker und nettime-Gründer Pit Schultz und Geert Lovink zwischen 1995 und 1997 gemeinsam die Grundzüge des Konzepts der Netzkritik formulierten. Damals auf deutsch in verstreuten Publikationen erschienen und zwischenzeitlich weitgehend in Vergessenheit geraten, werden sie nun erstmals gesammelt veröffentlicht. Sie eröffnen einen Blick auf die frühe Phase der Entwicklung des Internets und die beginnende kritische Debatte, die durch eine besondere Diskussions- und Spekulationsfreude geprägt war. Das Internet stellte noch keine allgegenwärtige Realität dar, aber sein zukünftiges Potential war schon absehbar. Im Zentrum dieser Texte steht die Kritik der damaligen Cyberutopien, die die Grundlage für die spätere Dotcom-Manie schafften. Weitere Schwerpunkte sind die Kunstpraxis (net.art), die Deutsche Medientheorie und Gegenöffentlichkeit (taktischen Medien).”

Editorial support: Andreas Kallfelzslation
Publisher Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2010
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 Netherlands License
Theory on Demand series, 2
ISBN 9789081602143

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Catherine Malabou, Jacques Derrida: Counterpath: Traveling with Jacques Derrida (1999/2004)

“Counterpath is a collaborative work by Catherine Malabou and Jacques Derrida that answers to the gamble inherent in the idea of “travelling with” the philosopher of deconstruction. Malabou’s readerly text of quotations and commentary demonstrates how Derrida’s work, while appearing to be anything but a travelogue, is nevertheless replete with references to geographical and topographical locations, and functions as a kind of counter-Odyssey through meaning, theorizing, and thematizing notions of arrival, drifting, derivation, and catastrophe. In fact, by going straight to the heart of the Derridean idea of “spacing,” she finally makes it seem as though Derrida has never written about anything but travel.

Malabou’s text is punctuated by a series of postcards received by Derrida from destinations such as Istanbul and Porto, Laguna Beach and Athens, which are inspired by his reading of her evolving discussion. Writing in a familiar and unguarded manner, as if he were “on vacation” from his own writing, Derrida still remains totally faithful to that work and invites the reader to reflect on much of what haunts his texts as well as his daily life, questions of distance and death, the relation to the other, and exile..”

First published as La Contre-allee, 1999.

Translated by David Wills
Publisher Stanford University Press, 2004
Cultural Memory in the Present series
ISBN 0804740410, 9780804740418
330 pages

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