Uncanny networks : dialogues with the virtual intelligentsia

For Geert Lovink, interviews are imaginative texts that can help create global, networked discourses not only among different professions but also among different cultures and social groups.

Conducting interviews online, over a period of weeks or months, allows the participants to compose documents of depth and breadth, rather than simply snapshots of timely references.

The interviews collected in this book are with artists, critics and theorists who are intimately involved in building the content, interfaces and architectures of new media.

The interviewees include Mark Dery, Kodwo Eshun, Bruno Latour, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Lev Manovich and Slavoj Zizek.

The topics discussed include digital aesthetics, sound art, navigating deep audio space, European media philosophy, the Internet in Eastern Europe, the mixing of old and new in India, critical media studies in the Asia-Pacific, Japanese techno tribes, hybrid identities, the storage of social movements, theory of the virtual class, virtual and urban spaces, corporate takeover of the Internet and cyberspace and the rise of nongovernmental organisations.