Digital Contagions
Subtitle: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses (Digital Formations)
Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing; Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers; Brand: Peter Lang International Academic Publishers; Peter Lang
Published: June 2007
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 327
ISBN-13: 9780820488370
Subjects: Security - General; Interactive & Multimedia; Security - Viruses; Social Aspects - General; Computers; Computers - Computer Security; Computer networks; Computer security; Computer viruses; Security measures; Computer Books: General
Description: "Digital Contagions is the first book to offer a comprehensive and critical analysis of the culture and history of the computer virus phenomenon. The book maps the anomalies of network culture from the angles of security concerns, the biopolitics of digital systems, and the aspirations for artificial life in software. The genealogy of network culture is approached from the standpoint of accidents that are endemic to the digital media ecology. Viruses, worms, and other software objects are not, then, seen merely from the perspective of anti-virus research or practical security concerns, but as cultural and historical expressions that traverse a non-linear field from fiction to technical media, from net art to politics of software. Jussi Parikka mobilizes an extensive array of source materials and intertwines them with an inventive new materialist cultural analysis. Digital Contagions draws from the cultural theories of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Friedrick Kittler, and Paul Virilio, among others, and offers novel insights into historical media analysis."--BOOK JACKET.