The first English-language translation of Vilém Flusser’s final series of lectures: the definitive introduction to his methods and ideas in new media theoryIn summer 1991, shortly before his death, Vilém Flusser gave a series of lectures as guest professor at Ruhr University Bochum at the invitation of Friedrich Kittler. Flusser intended for these lectures to be the definitive introduction to his “communicology,” the study of human communication and the means by wh...

An original deep history of the internet that tells the story of the centuries-old utopian dreams behind it—and explains why they have died todayMany think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology. But is it? In The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is, Justin Smith offers an original deep history of the internet, from the ancient to the modern world—uncovering its surprising origins in nature a...

A prominent German thinker argues that—contrary to “Twitter Revolution” cheerleading—digital communication is destroying political discourse and political action.The shitstorm represents an authentic phenomenon of digital communication.—from In the SwarmDigital communication and social media have taken over our lives. In this contrarian reflection on digitized life, Byung-Chul Han counters the cheerleaders for Twitter revolutions and Faceboo...

Is anything ever not an interpretation?Does interpretation go all the way down?Is there such a thing as a pure fact that is interpretation-free? If not, how are we supposed to know what to think and do?These tantalizing questions are tackled by renowned American thinker John D Caputo in this wide-reaching exploration of what the traditional term 'hermeneutics' can mean in a postmodern, twenty-first century world. As a contemporary of Derrida's and longstandin...

**“Surprising, funny and resolutely unintimidating.” —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times Book ReviewIn the industrial age, automation came for the shoemaker and the seamstress. Today, it has come for the writer, physician, programmer, and attorney.**Literary Theory for Robots reveals the hidden history of modern machine intelligence, taking readers on a spellbinding journey from medieval Arabic philosophy to visions of a universal language, past Hollywood fic...

**"A mind-bending jaunt ... that makes clear in fascinating detail how math is more than a sum of its parts" (Publishers Weekly)Winner of the Neumann Prize**“Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here,” Plato warned would-be philosophers. Mathematician Karl Sigmund agrees.In The Waltz of Reason, he shows how mathematics and philosophy together have shaped our understanding of space, chance, logic, cooperation, voting, and the social contract. Sigmu...

French philosopher Gilles Deleuze is known as a thinker of creation, joyous affirmation, and rhizomatic assemblages. In this short book, Andrew Culp polemically argues that this once-radical canon of joy has lost its resistance to the present. Concepts created to defeat capitalism have been recycled into business mantras that joyously affirm “Power is vertical; potential is horizontal!”Culp recovers the Deleuze’s forgotten negativity. He unsettles the prevailing interpretation thro...

In Does Writing Have a Future?, a remarkably perceptive work first published in German in 1987, Vilém Flusser asks what will happen to thought and communication as written communication gives way, inevitably, to digital expression. In his introduction, Flusser proposes that writing does not, in fact, have a future because everything that is now conveyed in writing—and much that cannot be—can be recorded and transmitted by other means.Confirming Flusser’s status as a theori...

"There are many introductions to the life and work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, but I think James Klagge has produced the very best. Taking as his premise that his reader may know nothing about Wittgenstein or, for that matter, about philosophy, Klagge gives a lucid, charming, and wholly convincing account of Wittgenstein’s basic ideas, his way of thinking, his views on religion, culture, ethical behavior, and so on. He is especially good at explaining the root concepts like “language game,” "f...

Aren't we actually sick of sex, of difference, of emancipation, of culture? With this provocative taunt, the indomitable sociologist Jean Baudrillard challenges us to face up to our deadly, technologically empowered renunciation of mortality and subjectivity as he grapples with the complex issues that define our postmillennial world. What does the advent and proliferation of cloning mean for our sense of ourselves as human beings? What does the turn of the millennium say about our relation...

A panoramic view of the cosmos must begin with the tension of a single political moment. In Quantum History, Slavoj Žižek brings together Hegelian dialectics, Lacan psychoanalysis and quantum mechanics to rethink history, reality and political possibility.Taking up Lenin's challenge to radically reconsider materialism in the wake of each big scientific discovery, and rejecting the recent vogue for giving a vague spiritualist spin to wave mechanics, Žižek e...

Why narrative is essential to mathematicsCircles Disturbed brings together important thinkers in mathematics, history, and philosophy to explore the relationship between mathematics and narrative. The book's title recalls the last words of the great Greek mathematician Archimedes before he was slain by a Roman soldier—"Don't disturb my circles"—words that seem to refer to two radically different concerns: that of the practical person living in the concrete...