Masters of Media

Book review: Adrian Mackenzie – Wirelessness

A development towards the wireless is in full effect. Take for instance video game consoles like the Nintendo Wii or PlayStation 3, which make use of wireless controllers. Add the Wi-Fi for internet connectivity and the gamer is set...

By Bree Tahapary on 09/26/11 Comments Off

Book Review: opaque presence: manual of latent invisibilities ed. Andreas Broeckmann and knowbotic research

opaque presence instructs toward a mythology of suspended origin. Such a creation myth is necessarily one of destruction. Fully actualized, opaque presence could deposit the naked and the clothed in the Garden of Eden as a garden, an unbroken...

By Kendall Grady on 09/25/11 Comments Off

Possible Consequences of Critical Wikipedia users

This week I made a new (dutch) Wikipedia page about ‘Source Festival’, this is a music festival which has two editions a year, one in July and one in February . Wikipedia Source Festival Because this festival has had...

By Anne Laurine Stadermann on 09/25/11 Comments Off

Book review: Moving Circles: Mobile media and playful identities

When I visited Jakarta a couple of years ago I was astound by the number of mobile phones that everybody used. My aunt actually owns five different phones that all are used on a daily basis. My family has...

By Wouter Timmermans on 09/22/11 1

Book Review: The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry) by Siva Vaidhyanathan

I’m a so-called Google poweruser. Not only do I use the world’s biggest search engine for my daily queries like millions of ‘normal’ mortals do, I also use Google for my pictures (Picasa), my agenda (Google Agenda), video’s (YouTube),...

By Floris Spronk on 09/22/11 Comments Off

Book Review: Managing Media Work by Mark Deuze

Mark Deuze starts, in the introduction of his book, to argue that most students that follow studies like; journalism, advertising, games, film and television have lack of knowledge on managing their media work and industry. They know, for instance,...

By Daan Fliervoet on 09/22/11 1

Book review: Television as Digital Media, edited by James Benett and Niki Strange

Have you ever wondered how remote controls have influences television viewers’ patterns across the years, or how the original Star Trek series has forever changed production patterns within the industry? If you have, then the 2011 Television as Digital Media...

By Laura Burlacu on 09/22/11 1

Book Review: The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov

In his book ‘The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World’ Belarusian-born writer Evgeny Morozov finely describes and critiques a delusion he calls cyber-utopianism: the believe that online communication technologies have the power to liberate, democratize. Many people...

By Sebastiaan Smink on 09/22/11 2

Book Review: Alternative and Activist New Media by Leah Lievrouw

Drawing on the works of David Bolter and Richard Grusin and their seminal work – “Remediation: Understanding New Media”, Leah Lievrouw analyses in ‘Alternative and Activist New Media’ (Polity Press, 2011) a series of new media activism practices. Offering...

By Andrei Florian on 09/22/11 Comments Off

Book review: ‘Wikileaks, Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy’

Wikileaks has become, in the last years, the symbol of transparency in the 21st Century. The efforts of the organization founded by Julian Assange to offer public access to relevant information about politicians, bankers and rulers of the world...

By Jacobo Corujeira on 09/22/11 1

What cultural policy in the era of globalization and electronic media?

Cultural revolution has already taken place. What has changed is not only participation in culture, but cultural environment itself, characterized by such slogans as “culture 2.0” or “culture of participation”. Changes in forms of participation in culture (following the...

By Natalia Miszczak on 09/21/11 1

Book review: Enfoldment and Infinity by Laura U. Marks

What are the parallels and relations between Islamic art and New Media art? That is the main question Laura U. Marks poses in her book ‘Enfoldment and Infinity. An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art’. The title of her...

By Stijnie Thuijs on 09/21/11 1

Book Review: ‘Cyber War’ by Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake

Richard A. Clarke has worked for the U.S. government for 30 years. In the White House he served Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W.H. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Under Clinton and W. Bush, he worked as National...

By Maarten Jansen on 09/21/11 Comments Off

Book review: Tactical Media by Rita Raley

In december 2004, an alleged spokesmen of Dow Chemical named ‘Jude Finisterra’ appeared on television to apologize for the Bhopal disaster, a 1984 industrial disaster in India that resulted in thousands of deaths. Two hours (an a lot of...

By Yeun Au on 09/21/11 1

Book Review: KINGPIN by Kevin Poulsen

If you like police stories with persecution, infiltration and investigation KINGPIN may be just the right book for you. Written by Kevin Poulsen, it is an exciting story of the rise of one hacker to the control of the...

By Mario Gesteira on 09/21/11 1

Book Review ‘Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other’ by Sherry Turkle (Part 1)

About 30 percent of the Dutch are unhappy about the social support they get from their fellow citizens. A third of those wish they would get more visitors, for the occasional small talk, and 28 percent wish they would...

By Roos van Tongerloo on 09/21/11 1

Book review: Precarious Rhapsody. Semiocapitalism and the pathologies of the post-alpha generation by Franco “Bifo” Berardi

An infinite series of bifurcations, forking paths, choices (to be) made. Every choice made rules out other possibilities. But do we make these choices, or are they made for us? Is there a real choice? In Precarious Rhapsody, Franco...

By Martijn Dorresteijn on 09/20/11 1

Book review: In the Plex by Steven Levy

"I wanted to write a book that got the reader inside Google and learned about its thought process, the way it planned and built products, its visions for the future, and the way it struggled with issues like China,...

By Demet Dagdelen on 09/20/11 Comments Off

Book Review: The Cultural Logic of Computation, by David Golumbia

How does new media influence the cultural development of the society and which influence do they have on the identity of a society? Which possibilities of knowledge to they open up and which risks are involved? The Cultural Logic...

By Jesse Oyegbesan on 09/20/11 Comments Off

Book review:Taking Care of Youth and the Generations by Bernard Stiegler

Marketing technologies pose great threat to the future generations – this is the main thesis of French philosopher, Bernard Stiegler‘s book Taking Care of Youth and the Generations. In a work published in English language in 2010, Stiegler begins...

By Mzia Kupunia on 09/20/11 1

Book review: Cory Doctorow’s “For the win – organize to survive!”

Cory Doctorow’s novel could be described as a thriller for the MMORPG generation. The author / co-editor of Boing Boing, describes a near future scenario, in which professional gamers in developing countries stage revolts, first in-game, and later, in real...

By Daniel Luiz dos Santos on 09/20/11 1

Book Review: ‘Voice: Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media’ by Norie Neumark, Ross Gibson and Theo van Leeuwen (Editors)

I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now. I am trying to find my voice. (Maybe I should just steal it). “Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.” (Polonius’ advice Laertes...

By Liam Voice on 09/20/11 Comments Off

Book Review: From Image to Interaction by Arjen Mulder

“Every form of contemporary art contains a kernel of life, a possibility for growth or development, even if a few decades later we may scarcely be able to sense it, thanks to the canonization of the once-contemporary – whether...

By Duohuai Zhang on 09/19/11 Comments Off

REVIEW: PressPausePlay

PressPausePlay discusses how digital technology has affected the creative industries including music, film art and even literature.

By Janice Wong on 09/19/11 Comments Off