Table of Contents

Visceral Facades: Taking Matta-Clark's Crowbar to Software; A Means of Mutation: Notes on 1/O/D 4: The Web Stalker; Break the Law of Information: Notes on Search Engines and Natural Selection; The Impossibility of Interface; The Long, Dark Phone-In of the Soul; It Looks Like You're Writing a Letter: Microsoft Word

About the Author

Matthew Fuller is Reader in Media Design at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. As a member of the group I/O/D and collaborator with the group Mongrel, he participated in some of the key experiments in software that ground this book. He is the author of ATM (Shake Editions) and co-editor of Readme! ASCII Culture and the Revenge of Knowledge (Autonomedia).

Reviews

"a 'critical help system' to help us understand what is really going on behind the menu and the windows of our computer screens"--Dr. Lev Manovich, University of California; 'While most institutions are still trying to figure out what to do with 'new media,' some of the best of new-media artists and theorists have already moved on to the next paradigm: the study of software culture. Matthew Fuller's excellent collection is the first monograph in this emerging field. Combining solid understanding of theory and modern art history with the groundbreaking practical work in software culture, Fuller brilliantly analyzes the tools which we all use everyday to interface with the world and each other: Web browsers, search engines, word processors. What Fuller gives us is not just a usual book of theory but rather a kind of software--a 'critical help system' to help us understand what is really going on behind the menu and the windows of our computer screens.' --Dr. Lev Manovich, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego; author of "The Language of New Media" (MIT Press); 'A compelling hybrid of sci-fi style merged with hard-edged software criticism from the perspective of a very dissatisfied customer. This book is your chance to ingest the venom and bile of Bill Gates's evil twin.'--Critical Art Ensemble"