Jussi Parikka: Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · animal, biopolitics, biopower, biotechnology, cybernetics, deterritorialization, entomology, ethology, game theory, immanence, media archeology, media ecology, ontology, perception, philosophy, posthumanism, swarm intelligence, technology
“Since the early nineteenth century, when entomologists first popularized the unique biological and behavioral characteristics of insects, technological innovators and theorists have proposed insects as templates for a wide range of technologies. In Insect Media, Jussi Parikka analyzes how insect forms of social organization—swarms, hives, webs, and distributed intelligence—have been used to structure modern media technologies and the network society, providing a radical new perspective on the interconnection of biology and technology.
Through close engagement with the pioneering work of insect ethologists, including Jakob von Uexküll and Karl von Frisch, posthumanist philosophers, media theorists, and contemporary filmmakers and artists, Parikka develops an insect theory of media, one that conceptualizes modern media as more than the products of individual human actors, social interests, or technological determinants. They are, rather, profoundly nonhuman phenomena that both draw on and mimic the alien lifeworlds of insects.
Deftly moving from the life sciences to digital technology, from popular culture to avant-garde art and architecture, and from philosophy to cybernetics and game theory, Parikka provides innovative conceptual tools for exploring the phenomena of network society and culture. Challenging anthropocentric approaches to contemporary science and culture, Insect Media reveals the possibilities that insects and other nonhuman animals offer for rethinking media, the conflation of biology and technology, and our understanding of, and interaction with, contemporary digital culture.”
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2010
Posthumanities Series 11
ISBN 0816667403, 9780816667406
320 pages
Review: Jennifer Gabrys (Mute).
PDF (updated on 2012-7-15)
Comment (0)David Easley, Jon Kleinberg: Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · game theory, graph theory, intellectual property, mathematics, networks, web 2.0
Are all film stars linked to Kevin Bacon? Why do the stock markets rise and fall sharply on the strength of a vague rumour? How does gossip spread so quickly? Are we all related through six degrees of separation? There is a growing awareness of the complex networks that pervade modern society. We see them in the rapid growth of the Internet, the ease of global communication, the swift spread of news and information, and in the way epidemics and financial crises develop with startling speed and intensity. This introductory book on the new science of networks takes an interdisciplinary approach, using economics, sociology, computing, information science and applied mathematics to address fundamental questions about the links that connect us, and the ways that our decisions can have consequences for others.
Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2010
ISBN 0521195330, 9780521195331
736 pages
McKenzie Wark: Gam3r 7h3ory, v. 1.1 (2006)
Filed under wiki book | Tags: · computer games, game studies, game theory
“Together with the Institute for the Future of the Book, I created this website as a way to think to about games. Games, as in computer games, are the subject of my next book, GAM3R 7H30RY. I am interested in two questions.
1. can we explore games as allegories for the world we live in?
2. can there be a critical theory of games?
I thought it would be interesting to share the book in its draft state to see if these questions are something other people might have ideas on or might want to pursue.” (author)
A project of the Institute for the Future of the Book.
Published under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.5