Ippolita: The Dark Side of Google (2007–) [IT, FR, ES, EN]
Filed under book | Tags: · algorithm, capitalism, database, free software, google, open source, search, software, technology
In The Dark Side of Google Italian writers’ collective Ippolita provides a thorough, fresh analysis of what is behind the universe of Google and the metadata industry. In recent years Google has established itself as a major point of Internet access. We have progressively adapted to its sober, reassuring interface and its advertisements (discretely off to the side, yet always present). We have adopted its services and the habit of using it to the degree that ‘googling’ has become a form of behavior: ‘If you don’t know what it is, Google it!’
Google shows mastery in taking advantage of our need for simplicity. We sit in front of a colossus, an incredibly pervasive system of managing knowledge, comprising aggressive marketing and shrewd management of its own image, and the propagation of highly configurable interfaces that are still implacably recognizable. What is more, Google co-opts methods for developing Free Software, the use of futuristic systems for gathering and storing data. What lies behind the most consulted search engine in the world?
Italian edition
Publisher Feltrinelli, Milan, 2007
English edition
Translated by Patrice Riemens
Publisher Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2013
Theory on Demand series, Vol. 13
Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works 3.0 Netherlands License
ISBN 9789081857567
110 pages
Luci e ombre di Google (Italian, 2007, draft)
La face cachée de Google (French, trans. Maxime Rovère, 2010, draft)
El lado oscuro de Google (Castilian, trans. Pino and Maria, 2010)
The Dark Side of Google (English, trans. Patrice Riemens, 2013)
Pascal Chabot: The Philosophy of Simondon: Between Technology and Individuation (2003/2013) [FR, EN]
Filed under book | Tags: · cybernetics, individuation, marxism, philosophy, philosophy of technology, technology
“The last two decades have seen a massive increase in the scholarly interest in technology, and have provoked new lines of thought in philosophy, sociology and cultural studies. Gilbert Simondon (1924 – 1989) was one of Frances’s most influential philosophers in this field, and an important influence on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Bernard Stiegler. His work is only now being translated into English. Chabot’s introduction to Simondon’s work was published in French in 2002 and is now available in English for the first time. It is the most accessible guide to Simondon’s important but often opaque work. Chabot provides an excellent introduction to Simondon, positioning him as a philosopher of technology, and he describes his theory of individuation including his crystalline ontology. He goes on to offer a bridge between these two concerns, exploring how they are related.”
French edition
Publisher Vrin, 2003
ISBN 9782711616008
160 pages
English edition
Translated by Aliza Krefetz with the participation of Graeme Kirkpatrick
Publisher Bloomsbury Academic, 2013
ISBN 1780930976, 9781780930978
156 pages
via thuihux
Review: Aud Sissel Hoel (Phil & Technology, EN)
La philosophie de Simondon (French, no OCR)
The Philosophy of Simondon (English)
Alain Badiou: Cinema (2010–)
Filed under book | Tags: · cinema, film, philosophy
“For Alain Badiou, films think, and it is the task of the philosopher to transcribe that thinking. What is the subject to which the film gives expressive form? This is the question that lies at the heart of Badiou’s account of cinema.
He contends that cinema is an art form that bears witness to the Other and renders human presence visible, thus testifying to the universal value of human existence and human freedom. Through the experience of viewing, the movement of thought that constitutes the film is passed on to the viewer, who thereby encounters an aspect of the world and its exaltation and vitality as well as its difficulty and complexity. Cinema is an impure art cannibalizing its times, the other arts, and people – a major art precisely because it is the locus of the indiscernibility between art and non-art. It is this, argues Badiou, that makes cinema the social and political art par excellence, the best indicator of our civilization, in the way that Greek tragedy, the coming-of-age novel and the operetta were in their respective eras.”
First published in French as Cinéma, Nova Editions, 2010
Texts selected and introduced by Antoine de Baecque
Translated by Susan Spitzer
Publisher Polity, 2013
ISBN 10074565567X, 9780745655673
269 pages
PDF (updated on 2020-7-5)
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