Evil media [electronic resource] / Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey.

ISBN:

9780262305327

Title:

Author:

Fuller, Matthew.

Personal Author:

Fuller, Matthew.

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 235 pages)

Contents:

Intelligence -- Togetherness -- Algorithms -- Structures -- Technicalities -- Productivity -- Excellence.

Introduction. Evil ; Book ; Grayness ; Sophistication ; Stratagem -- Intelligence. Brainwashing ; Systemic ambiguity ; Objectify indeterminacy ; Leverage anxiety ; Speak the metalanguage of metabolism ; Proliferate psychological operation -- Togetherness. Social engineering ; Collective intelligence ; Be everything but available ; Economize behavior, scale signals ; Stir faith in small numbers ; Flirting tips ; Mobilize irritation -- Algorithms. Enhance queue formation ; Know your sorts ; Invoke recursion ; Abstract captures -- Structures. Structure data ; Work abstraction layers ; Multiply interfaces ; Let datasets advance ; Mine data for probabilities ; Leak early, leak often -- Technicalities. Workflow ; Express regularly, but not too regularly ; Look after your relations ; The justifiable ignorance of the exception ; Encourage error -- Productivity. Keep it personal ; All the world's an audition ; Mythologize decision making ; The occult virtue of the project plan ; Middle management -- Excellence. Metamodel, or formalize, virtue ; Lifelong learning ; Be artistic ; Role play ; Psychic ergonomics ; Optimize stupidity flow.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Added Author:

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

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Publication Date:

2012

Publication Information:

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
006.754 23	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

A philosophical manual of media power for the network age.

Evil Media develops a philosophy of media power that extends the concept of media beyond its tried and trusted use in the games of meaning, symbolism, and truth. It addresses the gray zones in which media exist as corporate work systems, algorithms and data structures, twenty-first century self-improvement manuals, and pharmaceutical techniques. Evil Media invites the reader to explore and understand the abstract infrastructure of the present day. From search engines to flirting strategies, from the value of institutional stupidity to the malicious minutiae of databases, this book shows how the devil is in the details.

The title takes the imperative "Don't be evil" and asks, what would be done any differently in contemporary computational and networked media were that maxim reversed.

Media here are about much more and much less than symbols, stories, information, or communication: media do things. They incite and provoke, twist and bend, leak and manage. In a series of provocative stratagems designed to be used, Evil Media sets its reader an ethical challenge: either remain a transparent intermediary in the networks and chains of communicative power or become oneself an active, transformative medium.

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

Evil Media addresses "gray media," those media elements commonly considered outside the realm of media studies such as computer databases and other tools for aggregating, organizing, filtering, and disseminating information. The title is not meant to assert that gray media are themselves evil; rather, it refers to anything that does not fit into expected patterns and any application of these media by those who have a different sense of their appropriate use. Fuller (Univ. of London, UK) and Goffey (Univ. of Nottingham, UK) present the arguments, playing on Schopenhauer's The Art of Always Being Right and Machiavelli's The Prince, as a series of stratagems that address how, if one were going to deliberately go about such things, one would realize the effects gray media have on contemporary social, cultural, and business patterns. Dense with wordplay and philosophical threads of which readers need at least a passing knowledge, the book is nonetheless a unique work that should be in any collection supporting focused target audiences in advanced areas of media studies and science and technology studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and researchers/faculty. P. L. Kantor formerly, Southern Vermont College