Computers Human-computer Interaction
When Technocultures Collide
Innovation from Below and the Struggle for Autonomy
- Publisher
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
- Initial publish date
- Oct 2013
- Category
- Human-Computer Interaction, Urban, General
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781554588992
- Publish Date
- Oct 2013
- List Price
- $20.99
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781554588978
- Publish Date
- Oct 2013
- List Price
- $26.99
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Description
Examines computer hackers, phone phreaks, urban explorers, calculator and computer collectors, CrackBerry users, whistle-blowers, Yippies, zinsters, roulette cheats, and chess geeks. The dangers and joys of struggles for autonomy are underlined in studies of RIMs BlackBerry and Julian Assanges WikiLeaks website.
When Technocultures Collide provides rich and diverse studies of collision courses between technologically inspired subcultures and the corporate and governmental entities they seek to undermine. Gary Genosko analyzes these practices for their remarkable diversity and their innovation and leaps of imagination. He assesses the results of a number of operations, including the Canadian stories of Mafiaboy, Jeff Chapman of Infiltration, and BlackBerry users.
The author provides critical accounts of highly specialized attributes, such as the prospects of deterritorialized computer mice and big toe computing, the role of electrical grid hacks in urban technopolitics, and whether info-addiction and depression contribute to tactical resistance. Beyond resistance, however, the goal of this work is to find examples of technocultural autonomy in the minor and marginal cultural productions of small cultures, ethico-poetic diversions, and sustainable withdrawals with genuine therapeutic potential to surpass accumulation, debt, and competition. The dangers and joys of these struggles for autonomy are underlined in studies of RIMs BlackBerry and Julian Assanges WikiLeaks website.
About the author
Gary Genosko is an independent writer, editor and cultural critic. He is the author of McLuhan and Baudrillard: The Masters of Implosion (Routledge 1999), Undisciplined Theory (Sage 1998), and Baudrillard and Signs: Signification Ablaze (Routledge 1994); and the editor of The Guattari Reader (Blackwell 1996), among other works. He teaches social and political theory at Lakehead University, and has written extensively on the life and work of activist-intellectual Félix Guattari.