New Media M.A. Research Blog | Media Studies, University of Amsterdam

Book Review – De Digitale Kunstkammer

Book Review – De Digitale Kunstkammer Cultureel Erfgoed & Crossmedia Harry van Vliet In the City of Utrecht Archive a film is shown of last century’s street life. All visitors of the archive are scanned by entering and projected...

By Fenneke Mink on 09/20/10 1

Book Review: “Engineering Play – A Cultural History of Children’s Software” – By Mizuko Ito

Ito weaves a compelling tale of the dynamic and rapidly changing face of the children’s software industry from the pioneering days of the early 1980s to the late 1990s when she completed her case studies.

By Isobel Gorman on 09/19/10 Comments Off

‘A Collection of Many Problems’ by Garnet Hertz – A Review

Alternative post title: The Good, the Bad & the Downright Crazy. Mail-by-rocket, cat pianos, astrolabes, Inca quipu knots and musical fingers. Seems like a fairly random collection of things, doesn’t it? They do have one thing in common, though. They’re...

By Laurent Hubeek on 09/18/10 Comments Off

We don’t need to read your blog to review it. And you don’t need to write it.

It all started by doing what every active internet user does once in a while: egosurfing (or something like that, I wasn’t looking for my own blog – this one here – but for the one I work for)....

By Nicola Bozzi on 10/04/09 1

Review of Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet

Lisa Nakamura’s book Digitizing Race and Culture: Visual Cultures of the Internet covers a range of issues involving race and gender on the internet. Nakamura is an associate professor in the Institute of Communication Research with a joint appointment...

By Sarah Moore on 09/17/09 Comments Off

Book review of “Against The Machine – Being Human In The Age Of The Electronic Mob” by Lee Siegel

Lee Siegel was born in New York in 1957 and has Bachelor, Master and Master of Philosophy degrees from Columbia University. While working as a staff writer at The New Republic, an American magazine on politics and the arts,...

By Maarten Hoogvliet on 09/17/09 Comments Off

Review of The Digital Campfire – An Ethnography of Online Social Networking

Ever felt guilty about spending so much time online, browsing through your friends Facebook pages and leaving them massages on their walls? No need for that anymore, this is what we’ve been doing for centuries and it can actually...

By Gwen Keupe on 09/17/09 1

The Multilingual Internet, or Where the Green Ants Dream

In one of the last scenes of Werner Herzog‘s Where the Green Ants Dream (1984) an Aborigine stands up in a court room to speak up against some mineral excavations happening in a sacred tribal ground. The judge asks...

By Nicola Bozzi on 09/14/09 Comments Off

Book Review of: (In)visible – Learning to Act in the Metaverse

In his book: (In)visible: Learning to Act in the Metaverse, the author, Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss, deals with the challenges and difficulties of the global data culture. By exploring the constituents of today’s network culture, he tries to map out new...

By Niels de Hoog on 09/13/09 Comments Off

A Review of: Self-Organisation/Counter Economic Strategies – Superflex

This book is an initiative by the Danish artists group: Superflex. Superflex has been working on a series of projects related to economic forces, democratic production conditions and Self-organisation since 1993. Most of their initiatives seem to question the...

By Rutger van den Berg on 09/13/09 Comments Off

Book Review: “Software Studies: a Lexicon”

In June this year MIT Press released ‘Software Studies: a lexicon’, edited by Matthew Fuller and consisting of 38 contributors (couting by texts) ranging from ‘computer scientists, artists, designers, cultural theorists, programmers, and others from a range of disciplines...

By Marijn de Vries Hoogerwerff on 09/15/08 1

Review: Beter Internet… Yeah Right!!

This is a critical review on the book "Beter Internet" which is the fourth in a series of books on the social changes that the internet brings about. This relatively small book contains four interviews on the theme Web...

By Kai Henriquez on 09/15/08 1

Comparing dirt

One of the most popular blog-phenomena can be found in the celebrity gossip corner. In contrast to the paper tabloids these weblogs can be way faster with the latest gossip and are generally more sarcastic. I will bring forth...

By Maarten van Sprang on 11/06/07 Comments Off

Review: From Counterculture to Cyberculture

What follows is a summary and review of Fred Turner’s book, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Nerd Politics? A recent Ask Slashdot piece appeared...

By Michael Stevenson on 09/15/07 1

Reviews of Galloway’s Protocol

I found these reviews of Alexander Galloway’s book very helpfull. Hopefully there of some use for y’all as well! http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=290 http://www.villagevoice.com/arts/0415,halter,52589,12.html http://rccs.usfca.edu/bookinfo.asp?ReviewID=307&BookID=260 http://www.dyske.com/index.php?view_id=857&search_wp=galloway

By Tom Roes on 12/01/06 Comments Off

MyCreativity, Fifth Session (Creative Labour and Precarious Creativity) Part Two

Creative labour as the basis for a critique of creative industries policy- David Hesmondhalgh At this presentation Hesmondhalgh would to like think about how an analysis of creative labour might contribute to critique. Therefore he suggests three critical approaches...

By Heleen on 11/19/06 Comments Off

Browserwar entering the next phase? Internet Explorer 7 versus Firefox 2

And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For...

By Anne Helmond on 10/25/06 5

Web 2.0 review: Carbonmade

http://mastersofmedia.carbonmade.com/ Introduction Carbonmade is a Web application which allows you to create and host an online portfolio. Creating a portfolio can be a lot of work and take up all your time. Carbonmade offers a service which allows you...

By Anne Helmond on 09/22/06 7