Digital CultureFrom our bank accounts to supermarket checkouts to the movies we watch, strings of ones and zeroes suffuse our world. Digital technology has defined modern society in numerous ways, and the vibrant digital culture that has now resulted is the subject of Charlie Gere’s engaging volume. In this revised and expanded second edition, taking account of new developments such as Facebook and the iPhone, Charlie Gere charts in detail the history of digital culture, as marked by responses to digital technology in art, music, design, film, literature and other areas. After tracing the historical development of digital culture, Gere argues that it is actually neither radically new nor technologically driven: digital culture has its roots in the eighteenth century and the digital mediascape we swim in today was originally inspired by informational needs arising from industrial capitalism, contemporary warfare and counter-cultural experimentation, among other social changes. A timely and cutting-edge investigation of our contemporary social infrastructures, Digital Culture is essential reading for all those concerned about the ever-changing future of our Digital Age. “This is an excellent book. It gives an almost complete overview of the main trends and view of what is generally called digital culture through the whole post-war period, as well as a thorough exposition of the history of the computer and its predecessors and the origins of the modern division of labor.”—Journal of Visual Culture |
Contents
The Beginnings of Digital Culture | |
The Cybernetic | |
The Digital Avantgarde | |
The Digital Counterculture | |
Digital Resistances | |
Digital Nature | |
Acknowledgements | |
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Common terms and phrases
Apple art practice artists avant-garde became become Burroughs Cage calculating machines capitalism century Cold War communication complex concept Conceptual Art concerns contemporary context counter-culture Cybernetics Cyberpunk Deleuze developed digital culture digital technology discourses dominated early economic electronic emerged enabled engineer example film Fluxus genre global graphic design groups Guattari Haacke hacker hacking Hans Haacke human Ibid ideas illus increasingly industrial influence information technology Information Theory interactive interest Internet involved issues kind labour late later logic London Marshall McLuhan mathematical McLuhan means military multimedia neo-liberal networks Norbert Wiener nuclear operations organization OuLiPo paradigm particular personal computer possibilities post-industrial post-war postmodern potential produced programme proposed Punk radical relation response Roy Ascott Shannon social society Spacewar Stewart Brand Structuralism suggested Techno television thinking Turing’s users visual Whole Earth Catalog Wiener World Wide York