Ebook: The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn, and Other Anomalies From the Dark Side of Digital Culture

For those of us increasingly reliant on email networks in our everyday social interactions, spam can be a pain; it can annoy; it can deceive; it can overload. Yet spam can also entertain and perplex us. This book is an aberration into the dark side of network culture. Instead of regurgitating stories of technological progress or over celebrating creative social media on the Internet, it filters contemporary culture through its anomalies. The book features theorists writing on spam, porn, censorship, and viruses. The evil side of media theory is exposed to theoretical interventions and innovative case studies that touch base with new media and Internet studies and the sociology of new network culture, as well as post-representational cultural theory.

Jussi Parikka is Professor in Technological Culture & Aesthetics at the Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton).

Tony D. Sampson is reader in digital culture and communications at the University of East London. He is author of Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks (Minnesota, 2012).