Alexander Bard, Jan Söderqvist: The Futurica Trilogy (2012)
Filed under book | Tags: · body without organs, capitalism, empire, event, globalisation, internet, machine, memetics, networks, philosophy, politics, schizoanalysis, sex, society, technology
“In the late 1990’s, Swedish social theorists Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist started working on a radical new theory, since referred to as The Netocracy Hypothesis. At this early stage Bard & Söderqvist foresaw that the control of the internet would be the subject of the main power struggle for the next century; an outright war between a brand new rising elite (the netocrats) and an established but rapidly declining elite (the bourgeoisie). They made predictions against the tide in the early years of the new millennium (and cleverly foresaw both the dot com crash and September 11), and have since then been proven right in virtually every aspect and even in the most minute of details. Not only did Bard & Söderqvist foresee revolutionary innovations such as Google, Facebook, Al-Qaida and Wikileaks, they also went deeper and looked beyond where any other observer has been or managed to go, into the very power struggle of the on-going revolution. Now, for the first time, all three of Bard & Söderqvist’s groundbreaking works have been collected and released as one compact set, under the title The Futurica Trilogy. The first book is The Netocrats (explaining how the internet creates a new global upper class which fights and destroys the old stuggling power structure); the second book is The Global Empire (dealing with the worldview of the netocrats and how it radically differs from any previous ideology in history); and the third book is The Body Machines (discussing how the idea of what it means to be human in an interactive world radically differs from any previous concept of human existence).”
Originally published in Swedish in 3 volumes: Nätokraterna (2000), Det globala imperiet (2002), and Kroppsmaskinerna (2009).
Translated by Neil Smith
Publisher Stockholm Text, 2012
ISBN 9789187173035
740 pages
video interview with the authors (2008)
Comment (0)Inside the Cave: Obama’s Digital Campaign (2012)
Filed under report | Tags: · 2012, facebook, internet, politics, social media, technology, twitter, united states
Inside the Cave is an in-depth look at the digital, technology, and analytics operations of the President Obama’s re-election campaign. Engage Research compiled insights, data, and anecdotes from hundreds of news stories, blog posts, conference presentations, and conversations into a single presentation.
Publisher Engage Research, December 2012
93 pages
via pht
commentary (Mashable.com)
When the Nerds Go Marching In (Alexis Madrigal, The Atlantic)
Curwen Best: The Politics of Caribbean Cyberculture (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · caribbean, cyberculture, internet, literature, music, music video, reggae, technology, television, video games
This book covers significant new ground, examining the impact and imprint of new leading technology on a range of popular expressions. This technology includes the internet, the computer, the cell phone, television, and radio, among others. Some of the specific expressions and phenomena treated include: tourism, big budget films, sports, video games, entertainment culture, religious and gospel culture, mobile culture, popular music, writing and technology, and porn. The work shows acute awareness of the wider global contexts–social, cultural, political, and spiritual–that form the backdrop for Caribbean cultural reconfiguration. Curwen Best argues that Caribbean culture has gone wireless, virtual, and simulated in the age of the machines.
Publisher Palgrave Macmillan, 2008
ISBN 0230603769, 9780230603769
260 pages