This dialogue was inspired by Kevin Driscoll’s insightful book review in the L.A. Review of Books, of Finn Brunton’s superb new book, Spam: The Shadow History of the Internet. I asked Kevin if he would use a bit of his review to begin a dialogue with Finn; the conversation moved quickly to the methodological challenges […]
A Necessary Disenchantment: the Myth of Big Data
The Myth of Big Data (the myth that big data are now our primary route to knowing the social) is oriented to the social world in a particular way. It does not have as its domain a national population, or even the particular collectivities that might gather online. It builds its population, data-bit by data-bit, […]
Digital Fabrication and Hybrid Materialities
On a recent visit to Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital, an exhibition about digital fabrication at New York’s Museum of Art and Design, I was struck by the ways in which these new tools had replaced traditional materials and processes on the small, white rectangular museum labels. More specifically, in this exhibition, digital fabrication […]
Glitch Racism: Networks as Actors within Vernacular Internet Theory
Why is racism online so common? Why does it persist? If, as Gabriella Coleman said during her keynote address at the 2013 Association of Internet Researchers meeting in Denver, Anonymous is depicted by the popular press as a “Hate Machine,” this is only because it is so clear that the amount of hate on the […]
Two Culture Digitally dialogues now published in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media
Two of the dialogues that first appeared here and here at Culture Digitally are now available in their final, published form, thanks to our continued partnership with the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. (Re)read them now! Print and frame! They make excellent holiday gifts. Habitus of the New (with Zizi Papacharissi and Tom Streeter) Digital […]