ReadMe! ASCII Culture and the Revenge of Knowledge (Paperback)

~ Nettime (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Media Studies. Technology. This collection, "filtered by Nettime," was generated as the result of various meetings, conferences, and an internet mailing list dealing with current technological and political issues. Nettime has been described as "a collective subjectivity with no fixed identity, made up of the people who come and go from the Nettime list, who contribute more or less to it characteristic ideas and expressions" (Introduction). The result is a vigorous international networked discourse that neither promotes cash-cow euphoria nor propagates cynical generalizations about the cultural possibilities of "new media." READ ME! pits the printing press against the Turing machine in an intellectual demolition derby. E-mail addresses of the authors are provided in the last section of the book, inviting collaboration on the part of the reader.

Product Details

• Paperback: 556 pages
• Publisher: Autonomedia (February 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570270899
• ISBN-13: 978-1570270895
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,459,636 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's Not For Everybody, But Hey, I'm Not Everybody, May 12, 1999

By A Customer

"Nettime" is a mailing list for anarcho, Euro-lefty, digital-arts people. Nettime is what WIRED magazine would be if WIRED came out of a squat in East Berlin, and had no funding, no ads, no paper and no ink. Nettime is one of the few Internet lists that could generate a book worth reading. Much of this book is frankly inexplicable -- imagine cyberfeminists whose first language is Latvian discussing why Deleuze and Guattari made them start an interactive website -- but there are many gems amid the murk, and frankly, I rather enjoy a good wallow in murk-for-murk's-sake. The publisher, Autonomedia, deserves support for their unflinching devotion to zero-commercial-potential nosebleed postmodernism.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Theory and practice do mix, June 23, 1999

By A Customer

I was expecting more self-indulgence than I found here. There is, suprisingly, quite a bit of clear prose in here, mixed in with ascii art and high theory. I loved the "cooking pot markets" essay about the free circulation of ideas on the net.

This book is a gift, full of ideas and original thinking. I didn't see any of the hackneyed leftism that anti-alienation reviewer below noted. If thinking and words are not your bag, don't read any book. If you know the power of words and that ascii is the true gift of the net, then read this book!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still timely cause it cuts deep, June 9, 1999

By A Customer

This book is packed with words. Revenge indeed; knowledge indeed. Something really is happening on the internet, but you'll half to cast your net as wide as these far-flung correspondents if you want to limn it. Big names in net writing are here: Erik Davis, Manuel De Landa, and Mark Dery are excerpted, but a gaggle of names you've never heard of matches them word for word, writing about, munging, life on net time.

Worth it just for some of the liner notes and ascii art....