Insect Media
* Book: Insect Media. An Archaeology of Animals and Technology. Jussi Parikka. University of Minnesota Press,2010
URL = http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/P/parikka_insect.html
Description
"Uncovering the insect logic that informs contemporary media technologies and the network society
Since the early nineteenth century, when entomologists first popularized the unique biological and behavioral characteristics of insects, technological innovators and theorists have proposed insects as templates for a wide range of technologies. In Insect Media, Jussi Parikka analyzes how insect forms of social organization—swarms, hives, webs, and distributed intelligence—have been used to structure modern media technologies and the network society, providing a radical new perspective on the interconnection of biology and technology.
Through close engagement with the pioneering work of insect ethologists, including Jakob von Uexküll and Karl von Frisch, posthumanist philosophers, media theorists, and contemporary filmmakers and artists, Parikka develops an insect theory of media, one that conceptualizes modern media as more than the products of individual human actors, social interests, or technological determinants. They are, rather, profoundly nonhuman phenomena that both draw on and mimic the alien lifeworlds of insects.
Deftly moving from the life sciences to digital technology, from popular culture to avant-garde art and architecture, and from philosophy to cybernetics and game theory, Parikka provides innovative conceptual tools for exploring the phenomena of network society and culture. Challenging anthropocentric approaches to contemporary science and culture, Insect Media reveals the possibilities that insects and other nonhuman animals offer for rethinking media, the conflation of biology and technology, and our understanding of, and interaction with, contemporary digital culture." (http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/P/parikka_insect.html)
Introduction
Presentation by the author:
"Explaining the theory behind the way of life in digital network society, Dr Parikka explains: ‘Network culture is a rather peculiar phase in our modern technical civilization, as it seems to be a combination of high technology and a fascination with such seemingly simple life forms as insects. We continuously make sense of emerging media and technology through references and metaphors borrowed from the biological world: viruses, worms, swarms, and other similar eclectic ideas that suggest a complex view of scientific culture.’
‘What this book offers is an extensive and systematic take on this conflation of biology and technology; it shows how often modern culture has turned to animals and such simple life forms as insects to understand a radically non-human way of seeing the world. Imagine how the world looks and feels like to an animal who does not share our two-footed, two-handed, two-eyed world view? Such ideas fascinated a lot of early pioneers in the 19th and 20th century, from artists to scientists.’
‘More recently, so many network scientists and designers turned to insects as well: thinking about software, network architectures, and forms of organisation through ideas that they borrowed from entomology. What I do in this book is offer a thorough look at such “border crossings” between sciences and artistic appropriations of such ideas.’ ‘When we approach contemporary digital economy, we need complex cultural historical perspectives to thoroughly understand its contexts, historical development, as well as the implications to our worldview.’
The book is both a historical and critical look at how we approach network culture – it approaches it not from the point of view of humans, but from an insect point of view. As other books in the series Posthumanism from University of Minnesota Press, this title looks at non-human ways of understanding contemporary culture where even basic seemingly biological processes as ‘life’ are increasingly rethought and recreated in artificial, technological practices, in science, but also in science fiction." (Anglia Un. press release)