<nettime-ann> Junkware by Thierry Bardini

The essential junkiness of our culture and biology

JUNKWARE

By Thierry Bardini

University of Minnesota Press | 304 pages | 2011

ISBN 978-0-8166-6751-2 | paperback | $25.00

ISBN 978-0-8166-6750-5 | hardcover | $75.00

Posthumanities Series, volume 13

Examining cybernetic structures from genetic codes to communication networks, Thierry Bardini explores the idea that most of culture and nature, including humans, is composed of useless, but always potentially recyclable, material otherwise known as “junk.” Junkware examines the cultural history that led to the encoding and decoding of life itself and the contemporary turning of these codes into a commodity.

PRAISE FOR JUNKWARE:

"This book is thrilling. No other book takes the problem of junk (and especially junk DNA) so seriously; no other book takes the question of what molecular biology has done to us so thoroughly. Thierry Bardini’s answer is that we have literally become junk—Homo Nexus. In the age of genetic capitalism, we’ve moved beyond Deleuze’s societies of control and into an age of infinite repurposing. At the very moment that many are celebrating ‘remix culture’ Bardini's book provides a wild and weird wake-up call. We are junk, junk is us. Junkware will help us sort it out." —Christopher Kelty, author of Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software

"Awakening us to the awe-ful splendor of an informatic planet crawling with self replicating ‘junkware,’ Professor Bardini joins a global cadre of interdisciplinary ecologists engaging with the digital evolution and development of living systems: Techno-Evo-Devo. Bardini’s inquiry owes as much to Woody Allen as it does to Gilbert Simondon, asking: Are we made of junk? In the tradition of Darwin's contemplation of an ‘entangled bank’ of interconnected life, Junkware beholds a planet transduced by the self replicating infoquake and a Dionysian festival of junk. Long may it replicate." —Richard Doyle, Penn State University

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Thierry Bardini is associate professor of communication at the Université de Montréal, where he codirects the Workshop in Radical Empiricism. He is the author of Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing.

For more information, including the table of contents, visit the book's webpage:

http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/B/bardini_junkware.html

To learn more about the Posthumanities Series, check out the following link:
http://www.upress.umn.edu/byseries/posthumanities.html

http://www.upress.umn.edu/mediaalert.html

Please email me if you have any questions.

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