Finn Brunton, “Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet” (MIT Press, 2013)
New Books in Critical Theory16 Feb 2016

Finn Brunton, “Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet” (MIT Press, 2013)

Finn Brunton‘s Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet (MIT Press, 2013) is a cultural history of those communications that seek to capture our attention for the purposes of exploiting it. From pranks on early computer networks in the 1970s to commercial nuisances in the 1990s to the global criminal infrastructure of today driven by botnets and algorithms, spam’s history surfaces and shifts with the Internet itself. Spam is a lively book packed with tales of the people responsible for sharing and stopping spam’s myriad of forms in email, web sites and social networks. This includes everyone from programmers and security professionals, marketers and lawyers, and con artists and thieves to name a few. Each person has personal experiences with spam and opinions about when they’re being spammed, but Brunton, a professor at New York University, reminds us about the critical role that communities, organizations, and governments have played in regulating spam. Ultimately, the governance agreed to by these groups defines spam in the contemporaneous moment, but more importantly, shapes spam’s future forms. As long as open communication platforms exist, so will spam. It is more useful to treat spam as signal about the quality of our digital interactions. The more our attention is captured and exploited the worse our digital communities are functioning. Like the mysterious meat in a can (and with full appreciation for all the spam lovers out there), a digital diet heavy on spam isn’t just unappetizing, it’s unhealthy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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Mark Pennington, "Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom" (Oxford UP, 2025)

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Ainehi Edoro, "Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think" (Columbia UP, 2026)

Ainehi Edoro, "Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think" (Columbia UP, 2026)

Forests in fiction are often understood simply as settings, symbols, or remnants of a premodern past. Yet many African novelists have turned to the forest to experiment with worldbuilding and to imagi...

30 Mars 1h 2min

Emmanuel Ofuasia, "Ìwà: the Process-Relational Dimension to African Metaphysics" (Springer, 2024)

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29 Mars 1h 31min

Thomas Hegghammer and Diego Gambetta eds., "Fight, Flight, Mimic: Identity Mimicry in Conflict" (Oxford UP, 2024)

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Time spent and words spent—what does each signal? Deceptive mimicry—the manipulation of individual or group identity—includes passing off as a different individual, as a member of a group to which on...

28 Mars 1h 5min

The Criminal Record Complex: Risk, Race, and the Struggle for Work in America

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Most employers in the United States routinely conduct criminal background checks on job applicants, weeding out those with criminal convictions—and thus denying opportunities to those who need them m...

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Hsuan L Hsu, "Olfactory Worldmaking" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

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In this episode of High Theory, Gloria Fisk talks to Kim about Prolepsis. Defined by Gerard Genette in the 1970s, prolepsis is a flash forward, the opposite of analepsis, a flash back. Initially the p...

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