Masters of Media

Book review: Basic Internet Security by Adam Hyde et.al.

Basic Internet Security successfully aims at two things - it points out that anybody involved in some kind of Internet activity should be concerned with at least some security measures, while keeping it easy and simple for both the...

By Joep Hegger on 09/19/11 Comments Off

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...

By Leonie Nijenmanting on 09/19/11 1

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...

By Philip Breek on 09/19/11 Comments Off

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...

By Renoud Netjes on 09/19/11 2

Masters thesis: Virtualized Subjectivity in Contemporary Art Practice

A few weeks ago I completed and submitted my Masters thesis, ending my yearlong study at the University of Amsterdam’s New Media MA program. Our cohort will officially graduate this Tuesday, 20 Sept, 2011. Here it is, if anybody’s...

By Ashiq Khondker on 09/19/11 1

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,...

By Autumn Hand on 09/18/11 Comments Off

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...

By Anne Laurine Stadermann on 09/18/11 1

Book Review: The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading. Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine by Peter Lunenfeld

The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading. Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine is a brilliant piece written by UCLA professor and digital media theorist Peter Lunenfeld, in which he sets out to explain his envisioning of the...

By Luana Pascu on 09/18/11 Comments Off

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:...

By Leander Roet on 09/18/11 1

Review on Stephen Baker’s The Numerati

Stephen Baker’s The Numerati, published in 2008, tells the story of our modern world’s “binarization;” how every individual is deduced to ones and zeroes through the trails of data we leave behind which are consequently gathered, analyzed and categorized...

By Jeroen Rijskamp on 09/18/11 2

Book review: Check in / check uit – Christian van ‘t Hof, Rinie van Est, Floortje Daemen

By Annet Bos on 09/18/11 2

Book Review: What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly

“Space: the final frontier – to boldly go where no man has gone before.” This may be the answer Kelly was looking for when he set out to answer his own question, the title of his book and thesis. ...

By Christopher Mead on 09/18/11 3

BOOK REVIEW The Murmuring of the Artistic Multitude: Global Art, Memory and Post-Fordism

BOOK REVIEW Title: The Murmuring of the Artistic Multitude: Global Art, Memory and Post-Fordism Author: Pascal Gielen Year: 2009 Publisher: Valiz In The Murmuring of the Artistic multitude, art-sociologist Pascal Gielen reflects on the increasing co-incidence of, and structural...

By Daniel de Zeeuw on 09/18/11 Comments Off

PICNIC: Life in Readable Cities

Using public transport, we leave digital traces when checking in and out with our OV chip cards. Once our Bonus Card at Albert Heijn got scanned over the counter, we provide Albert with valuable information about what we like...

By Caroline Goralczyk on 09/18/11 3

“Letters, Postcards, Email” Three ways of communicating by Esther Milne

One of my favorite moments of all is when I open my mailbox and find there a letter waiting for me. I don’t mean my emai box, but the traditional letterbox. It’s always full of advertisements and bills which...

By Urszula Jurgiel on 09/18/11 1

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...

By Clément Adam on 09/18/11 1

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...

By Juliana Paiva on 09/17/11 1

‘Mapping E-Culture’ book review

The book is recommended for people who start their new media education and/or want to get introduced to some pioneering digital artists in the Netherlands, Brazil, China, Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine.

By Andrian Georgiev on 09/17/11 Comments Off

Eagerness to share our lives with the others — where are the online boundaries?

More and more often I find on Facebook things which I would rather never want to find. Sonograms of unborn children of people who I know from high school and didn’t talk to them since then, tomographies of their...

By Urszula Jurgiel on 09/17/11 Comments Off

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...

By Erik van Mastrigt on 09/17/11 Comments Off

Book Review: The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser

The Filter Bubbler refers to the personalization processes taking place on the Web, which shape what content you see and more important what content you don't get to see. Big players like Google and Facebook feed you what they...

By Jorrit Schaap on 09/17/11 1

Korean gladiators from a distant galaxy

Most people just aren’t interested in watching videogames. They’d rather be playing them. That may be the case in Europe or in the United States but not in South Korea. In South Korea watching videogames is a national pastime,...

By Wouter Timmermans on 09/16/11 Comments Off

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...

By Jamie Franklin on 09/16/11 Comments Off

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...

By Ave Tampere on 09/16/11 1