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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Feminism and Critical Hindu Studies with Shreena Gandhi, Harshita Kamath, Sailaja Krishnamurt, and Shana Sippy

Feminism and Critical Hindu Studies with Shreena Gandhi, Harshita Kamath, Sailaja Krishnamurt, and Shana Sippy

This episode features a conversation with the founding members of the Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective, also known as the Auntylectuals. We began with each of them reflecting on their pathwa...

16 Feb 1h 1min

Carl Death, "African Climate Futures" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Carl Death, "African Climate Futures" (Oxford UP, 2025)

This episode is brought to you by the BISA Environment and Climate Politics Working Group. African Climate Futures (Oxford UP, 2025) shows how climate-changed futures are imagined in Africa and by Af...

16 Feb 1h 2min

Agustín Santella and Adrián Piva, "Marxism, Social Movements and Collective Action" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

Agustín Santella and Adrián Piva, "Marxism, Social Movements and Collective Action" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

Marxists have an obvious interest in understanding social movements. Less obvious, even with the voluminous theoretical archives at hand, is how to pull their various forms together into a cohesive th...

16 Feb 34min

Sourit Bhattacharya, "Postcolonialism Now: Literature, Reading, Decolonising" (Orient BlackSwan, 2024)

Sourit Bhattacharya, "Postcolonialism Now: Literature, Reading, Decolonising" (Orient BlackSwan, 2024)

Postcolonialism Now: Literature, Reading, Decolonising (Orient BlackSwan, 2024) by Sourit Bhattacharya introduces a new method of decolonial reading and criticism. It critically examines the history a...

13 Feb 58min

Laura K. Field, "Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Laura K. Field, "Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Political Theorist Laura Field has written an insightful and detailed exploration of the people and the ideas that have shaped the second Trump Administration (and some contributed, as well, to the fi...

12 Feb 43min

Alex Prichard, "Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2022)

Alex Prichard, "Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2022)

If you asked a passerby on the street what anarchism is, they may answer that it is an ideology based on chaos, disorder, and violence. But is this true? What exactly is anarchism? Anarchism: a Very S...

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Olivier Esteves et al., "France, You Love It but Leave It: The Silent Flight of French Muslims" (Polity, 2025)

Olivier Esteves et al., "France, You Love It but Leave It: The Silent Flight of French Muslims" (Polity, 2025)

Their names are Mohamed, Samira, sometimes Matthieu or Sophie. They were born and bred in France and are highly qualified, but they have decided to go and live in London or New York, Montreal or Bruss...

6 Feb 57min

Patricia Daley and Ian Klinke, "Human Geography: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Patricia Daley and Ian Klinke, "Human Geography: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Human geography offers answers to some of the most important challenges of our time. To understand contemporary struggles over global economic inequality, forced migration, racial injustice, gender ju...

5 Feb 1h 7min

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