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

Book Review Volume: Destination Library

Book review Volume: Destination Library This edition of Volume is all about the future of libraries. Guided by editors Rem Koolhaas, Mark Wigley and Arjen Oosterman the nice thing about this book-magazine is that the subject is adressed from so many different fields...

By Dorris de Heij on 09/13/08 2

Notes on Paul Virilio’s War and Cinema

This is a summary of Virilio's book, War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. I read this for a class on German Media Theory - alongside Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power, Klaus Theweleit's Male...

By Michael Stevenson on 03/10/08 5

Book Review: Six Degrees: The science of a connected age

Six Degrees: The science of a connected age Duncan J. Watts, Norton, 2003 Duncan J. Watts (1971-) is a professor of sociology at Columbia University, head of the CDG Collective Dynamics Group and in 2003 he wrote the book...

By Daphne Ben Shachar on 09/24/07 Comments Off on Book Review: Six Degrees: The science of a connected age

review: “Emergence” by Steven Johnson

“Emergence – the connected lives of ants, brains, cities and software” Steven Johnson New York: Scribner, 2001 Are you familiar with the situation in which you’re having a talk over the hedge with that neighbor that emerges from behind...

By Minke Kampman on 09/24/07 Comments Off on review: “Emergence” by Steven Johnson

Review: Albert-László Barabási’s ‘Linked’

In 2002 Albert-László Barabási wrote: ‘Linked - how everything is connected to everything else and what it means for business, science, and everyday life’. In numerous links (chapters) Barabási lists all sorts of networks, such as biology, physics,...

By Bas Bisseling on 09/19/07 Comments Off on Review: Albert-László Barabási’s ‘Linked’

Review: Blog! How the newest media revolution is changing politics, business, and culture – David Kline and Dan Burstein

David Kline and Dan Burstein points out that the blogosphere will transform many areas of politics, business, media and culture. In their book ‘Blog! How the newest media revolution is changing politics, business, and culture’ they have interviewed...

By Bram Nijhof on 09/17/07 11

Review: Blogosphere The New Political Arena by Michael Keren

Blogosphere can be seen as a new and important element of the new public sphere. On a blog people are able to not only comment on public affairs or read about what they find interesting. On a blog they...

By Rikus Wegman on 09/17/07 Comments Off on Review: Blogosphere The New Political Arena by Michael Keren

Review: The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

This book is a bundle of theories and case studies which Surowiecki uses to convince the reader that a diverse crowd can come up with better answers and solutions than a single group of experts. The cases he brings...

By Maarten van Sprang on 09/17/07 1

Salam Pax’ The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi.

This summer I was part of the Digital Methods Initiative, a summer school program that aims to contribute to doing research into the “natively digital”. One of the projects I participated in was: Diagnosing the Condition of Iraq: The...

By Rosa Menkman on 09/17/07 Comments Off on Salam Pax’ The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi.

24/7 Time and Temporality in the Network Society

Real time, cyber time, machine time, clock time, chronos time, frankentime, mythic time, objective time, natural time, subjective time, present time, timeless time, being time, bullet time, internet time, chronoscopic time, global standard time, local time…are you still there?...

By Paulien Dresscher on 09/17/07 Comments Off on 24/7 Time and Temporality in the Network Society

Review: Henry Jenkins’ Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers

This is a review of Henry Jenkins’ book Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory culture (2006). Henry Jenkins is the co-director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies program. Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers is a compilation of several essays, including...

By Qilan Zhao on 09/16/07 Comments Off on Review: Henry Jenkins’ Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers

Television killed Howard Dean

Joe Trippi – The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Trippi was the campaign manager of Howard Dean, a Democratic candidate for the American presidency from the beginning of 2003 untill january 2004. In his book he writes about the...

By Felicia Plijter on 09/16/07 2

Review: The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

In this book review the theory and ideas that come forward in the book The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, will be discussed. Tipping point: one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once. The...

By Pieter-Paul Walraven on 09/16/07 1

Reflections on Uses of Blogs

Cross-posted at Politics of Many Minds From the perspective of Politics of Many Minds, and doing research into the ‘natively digital’ more general, the book Uses of Blogs provided me some interesting thoughts on investigating blogging and the blogosphere....

By Esther Weltevrede on 09/16/07 4

Review: Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge

This review of Jean-Noël Jeanneney’s Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge will provide the reader with an overview of the questions raised regarding the online publishing of books. A View from Europe Branded with the tagline a View...

By Raoul Siepers on 09/16/07 5

Smart Mobs: smart mob(ile)s or smart Men On Bits?

In this review, Howard Rheingold’s vision on the future of communication and interaction is explained, as layed out in his book ‘Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution’, 2002. Rheingold noted that SMS has been used for dating in teenage...

By Erik Borra on 09/16/07 21

Review: Extreme Democracy

Politics is always changing as society incorporates new technology for disseminating information and connecting people’ (6) Extreme democracy is a political philosophy of the information era that puts people in charge of the entire political process. It suggests a...

By Fleur Dujardin on 09/16/07 2

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

The Dark Side of Web 2.0

Andrew Keen wrote the in 2007 published book ‘The cult of the Amateur’. Keen, who founded audiocafe.com a rough ten years ago, went from digital pioneer to digital skeptic. Living in Silicon Valley during the dot-com bubble and being...

By Laura van der Vlies on 09/15/07 5

Review of Information politics on the Web (review by Adrienne Massanari)

Richard Rogers is head of the new media department from the University of Amsterdam. Adrienne Massanari wrote a review on Rogers book “information politics on the Web”. Information Politics on the Web Author: Richard Rogers Publisher: Cambridge, MA: MIT...

By Heleen on 02/02/07 1

Podcast: Discussing Henry Jenkins’ “Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers”

In this Podcast I will be giving a last minute Christmas gift recommendation. TUNE IN HERE

By Roman Tol on 12/24/06 6

The networked book: GAM3R 7H30RY & Code Version 2.0

Writing a book online and facilitating a discussion around it seems to be very popular these days. McKenzie Wark is working on GAM3R 7H30RY which will be published by Harvard University Press in April 2007, and it will contain...

By Anne Helmond on 12/11/06 4

Audio Book Review

Masters of Media presents another audio book review: Indonesian Transitions. Editor: Henk Schulte Nordholt. June 2006 The book review focuses on an essay by Bart Barendregt: Mobile modernities in contemporary Indonesia; Stories from the other side of the digital...

By Roman Tol on 10/22/06 7

We Are Iran

It all started in 2001 when Hossein Derakhshan, an Iranian journalist living in Canada, published a how-to-blog guide in Farsi (Persian). By doing this he started what can be considered as one of the most thriving sub-cultures in the...

By Jeff van Schie on 10/16/06 Comments Off on We Are Iran