Parikka and Sampson 2009

Parikka, Jussi and Thomy D. Sampson, eds. The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn, and Other Anomalies from the Dark Side of Digital Culture. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2009.

On Anomalous Objects of Digital Culture, by Jussi Parikka and Tony D. Sampson (1-22)

digital pollution -- "a major downside (or setback) to a communication revolution that promised to be a noiseless and friction-free Road Ahead" (3)

"In this context, and against the prescribed and often idealized goals of the visionaries of digital capitalism, they appear to us as anomalies. Neverthelessw, despite the glut of security advice -- a lot of which is spuriously delivered to our e-mail inboxes, simply adding to the spam -- little attention has been paid to the cultural implications of these anomalous objects and processes by those of us engaged in media and communication studies, and particularly studies linked to digital network culture. ... However intrusive and objectionable, we argue that the digital anomaly has become central to contemporary communication theory. Along these lines, we begin this book by asking: "In what sense are these objects anomalous?"" (3)

spam, porn, viruses "are not irregular or abnormal" (one sense of anomalous) -- they are everywhere

anomalies "feedback into the expressive and material components of the assemblages that constitute network culture" -- e.g. through security businesses (4)

"Whether they are seen as novel business opportunities of network futures, anomalous objects,f ar from being abnormal, are constantly made use of in a variety of contexts, across numerous scales. therefore, our aim in this introduction is to primarily address the question concerning anomalies by seeking conceptual, analytic, and synthetic pathways out of the binary impasse between the normal versus the abnormal." (4)

avoiding metaphors and representational language; "in our opinion, the avoidance of such representational categorizations is equal to rejecting the implicit positioning of a pre-fabricated grid on which the categories identified constrain or shackle the object" (4)

• "conceptual approach that is more fluid, precise, and inventive in terms of a response to the question of the anomaly"
• "designed to grasp the liminal categories and understand the materiality and paradoxical inherency of these weird 'objects' and processes from theoretical and political points of view" (5)

affect and ethology

• "how various assemblages of bodies (whether technological, biological, political or representational) are composed in interaction with each other and how they are defined, not by forms and functions, but by their capabilities or casual capacities" (5)