Book Review: Media Life by Mark Deuze
“media are to us as water is to fish.” By Seah KIM and Mihaela Naftanaila This is the way Mark Deuze starts his new book Media Life, which he presented last Thursday evening at...
Interview with Elias Aboujaoude MD, author of ‘Virtually You’
‘Virtually You‘ is the book I reviewed some time back. It talks about the dangerous effects life online can have on our personalities and lives. I managed to get hold of the author of the book, Elias Aboujaoude MD,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
Book Review: The new rules of the game
Note: this is a review on a Dutch book called De nieuwe regels van het spel. This book is not available in English. Visit the RMO website for more information. In this advisory report, the Dutch Counsil for Social...
Book review: ‘Designing Culture: the technological imagination at work’ by Anne Balsamo
In this book, ‘Designing culture: the technological imagination at work’, Anne Balsamo, Professor of interactive media at the University of Southern California, calls for a new approach to technological innovation arguing that culture must be taken into account when...
Review on Jason Fried: Rework
I would like to start off this review by mentioning that Rework is not your average new media literature. In fact, from the perspective of the authors it can be considered as business book. However, if we read between...
Book Review: The Book of Ice, by Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky)
In December 2007, composer and artist and writer Paul D. Miller a.ka. DJ Spooky a.k.a That Subliminal Kid boarded a decommissioned naval ship and traveled to Antarctica. The book that resulted from this journey is The Book of Ice,...
Book Review on Sherry Turkle: Alone Together
Book Review on Sherry Turkle: Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other Sherry Turkle is a MIT technology and society specialist who is interested in the influence of technology at human life and...
Book Review: Crowdsourcing, How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe.
What do YouTube, Wikipedia, IMDB, Tripadvisor, Linux, iStockphoto and Firefox all have in common? They exist through the collective efforts of millions of ordinary users like you and me. The strategy behind the success of these websites is crowdsourcing:...
Book Review : Vu a la web-cam (essai sur la web-intimité) by Nicolas Thély
Nicolas Thély published in 2002 his PhD thesis on web intimacy. As he started doing research on webcams, Nicolas Thély was surprised to find so few (if any) specialized literature on the subject of webcams. The book presents and...
Book Review: Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky
As a follow up of his first book, Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky now present to us the concept of Cognitive Surplus. In previous years of this so called “new world”, criticizing the Television became a common thing. The...
Book review: Peter Olsthoorn – De macht van Google
What does Google know from us? Since search engines are able to track the user’s search queries, personal information can be gathered in order to improve the engine’s accuracy and provide better results. In De macht van Google (The...
Review of Nancy Baym’s Personal Connections in the Digital Age
It is often the narcissistic tendencies of academics which alienates a much wider potential readership of their work. A use of language and content that predicates a certain level of cultural capital renders many articles inaccessible to a number...
Book review: Virtually You by Elias Aboujaoude, MD
The humankind is moving online. Our work, relationships, communications, banking and even shopping can be done online today, and where possible we’ll happily take the easy ‘one click away’ shortcut, because it’s faster, more efficient and more convenient. For...