Posts Tagged ‘ virus

The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn and Other Anomalies From the Dark Side of Digital Culture (Parikka, S: Hampton Press

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 overload. Yet spam can also entertain and perplex us. This book is an aberration 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. The book features theorists writing on spam, porn, censorship, and viruses. The evil side of media theory is exposed to theoretical interventions and innovative case studies that touch base with new media and Internet studies and the sociology of new network culture, as well as post-representational cultural theory.

via The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn and Other Anomalies From the Dark Side of Digital Culture(Parikka, S: Hampton Press.

Thierry Bardini ‘Hypervirus: A Clinical Report’ (VX heavens)

At the beginning of the 1980s, the logistic curve of the hypervirus (the “virus” virus) passed its first critical point (i.e. second order inflexion). Materializing the cybernetic convergence of carbon and silicon, it infected computers and humans alike at unprecedented levels. From this point on, an explosive diffusion in “postmodern culture” emerged, eventually it plateaued near saturation, redefining culture as a viral ecology. Room for one more inside, Sir.

TRUE/FALSE but REMARKABLE IDENTITIES: “Virus” is a virus: virus is a reflexive name. The virus is the quintessential Kantian thing-in-itself. The hypervirus is the quintessential Dawkinsian meme. (Your clone is the idealized expression of your viral self).

The postmodern master equation: LANGUAGE = VIRUS = INFORMATIONAL PARASITE Baudrillard adds the corollary proposition: Anathematic Illimited / Transfatal Express Viral Incorporated / International Epidemics

via Thierry Bardini ‘Hypervirus: A Clinical Report’ (VX heavens).