Digital Delirium (Culturetexts) Book

Digital Delirium is written like a jazz album, with freeform narrative drifting around solid ideological structures the way that jazz improvisations run figures around fundamental themes. St. Martin's Press describes the book as "a manifesto against the right-wing politics of cyberlibertarianism." That's certainly a big part of this book. The contributors devote much of their efforts to examining the social and ethical structures of a wired world. But more than that, Digital Delirium revels in taking readers to places where they can view the whole world of cyberspace from new perspectives. Science fiction writer Bruce Sterling looks into the myth of the Cyberpunk Hacker Hero and proves that it's about as substantial as Spider-Man. Paul Virilio observes how cyberspace splits an individual into a physical being and a ghostly other being that can be dramatically involved with others at a distance. There's a mocking quality to the whole book that practically defies readers to take themselves or the grand pronouncements about cyberutopian thinking too seriously. While some contributors, such as Sterling, make their points through witty rants, others express themselves through poetry, literary prose, or even screenplays. This is a through-the-looking-glass examination of how technology affects society. Each article in the collection is food for hours of late-night conversation.Read More