Tony D. Sampson: Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks (2012)

“In this thought-provoking work, Tony D. Sampson presents a contagion theory fit for the age of networks. Unlike memes and microbial contagions, Virality does not restrict itself to biological analogies and medical metaphors. It instead points toward a theory of contagious assemblages, events, and affects. For Sampson, contagion is not necessarily a positive or negative force of encounter; it is how society comes together and relates.

Sampson argues that a biological knowledge of contagion has been universally distributed by way of the rhetoric of fear in the antivirus industry and other popular discourses surrounding network culture. This awareness is also detectable in concerns over too much connectivity, such as problems of global financial crisis and terrorism. Sampson’s “virality” is as established as that of the biological meme and microbe but is not understood through representational thinking expressed in metaphors and analogies. Rather, Sampson interprets contagion theory through the social relationalities first established in Gabriel Tarde’s microsociology and subsequently recognized in Gilles Deleuze’s ontological worldview.

According to Sampson, the reliance on representational thinking to explain the social behavior of networking—including that engaged in by nonhumans such as computers—allows language to overcategorize and limit analysis by imposing identities, oppositions, and resemblances on contagious phenomena. It is the power of these categories that impinges on social and cultural domains. Assemblage theory, on the other hand, is all about relationality and encounter, helping us to understand the viral as a positively sociological event, building from the molecular outward, long before it becomes biological.”

Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2012
ISBN 0816670056, 9780816670055
235 pages

Review: Jussi Parikka (Theory, Culture & Society)
Book video (University of Amsterdam students)

Author’s research blog
Publisher

PDF, PDF (updated on 2017-9-29)

Vito Campanelli: Web Aesthetics: How Digital Media Affect Culture and Society (2010)

“We live in a world of rapidly evolving digital networks, but within the domain of media theory, which studies the influence of these cultural forms, the implications of aesthetical philosophy have been sorely neglected. Vito Campanelli explores network forms through the prism of aesthetics and thus presents an open invitation to transcend the inherent limitations of the current debate about digital culture.

The web is the medium that stands between the new media and society and, more than any other, is stimulating the worldwide dissemination of ideas and behaviour, framing aesthetic forms and moulding contemporary culture and society.

Campanelli observes a few important phenomena of today, such as social networks, peer-to-peer networks and ‘remix culture’, and reduces them to their historical premises, thus laying the foundations for an organic aesthetic theory of digital media.”

Publisher NAi Publishers, Rotterdam; in association with the Institute of Network Cultures at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam, University of Applied Sciences, October 2010
Studies in Network Cultures series
ISBN 9056627708, 9789056627706
276 pages

Reviews: Greg J Smith (Rhizome, 2011), Alessandro Ludovico (Neural, 2011), Regine Debatty (We Make Money Not Art, 2011).

Book website
Interview with the author (Geert Lovink)
Interview with the author (Pasquale Napolitano, Digicult)

Publisher
Co-publisher

PDF, PDF (25 MB, updated on 2019-3-24)

Jussi Parikka, Tony D. Sampson (eds.): The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn, and Other Anomalies from the Dark Side of Digital Culture (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 overlaod. Yet spam can also enterain and perplex us. This book is an aberation 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.

Contributions by John Johnston, Tony D. Sampson, Luciana Parisi, Roberta Buiani, Jussi Parikka, Steve Goodman, Matthew Fuller & Andrew Goffey, Susanna Paasonen, Katrien Jacobs, Dougal Phillips, Greg Elmer, Richard Rogers, Alexander R. Galloway & Eugene Thacker.

Publisher Hampton Press, 2009
Communication series: Communication alternatives
ISBN 1572739150, 9781572739154
320 pages

review (Gary Genosko, Leonardo)

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-7-15)