Books published by MIT Press Ltd

An examination of telepresence technologies through the lens of contemporary artistic experiments, from early video art through current "drone vision" works.

Explorations of the "formering” of the West in contemporary art in the post-communist, postcolonial, posthuman, post-ideological, and posthistorical era.What has become of the so-called West after the Cold War? Why hasn't the West simply become "former,” as has its supposed counterpart, the "former East”? In this book, artists, thinkers, and activists explore the repercussions of the political, cultural, and economic events of 1989 on both art and the contemporary. The culmination of an eight-year curatorial research experiment, Former West imagines a world beyond our immediate condition. The writings, visual essays, and conversations in Former West—more than seventy diverse contributions with global scope—unfold a tangled cartography far more complex than the simplistic dichotomy of East vs. West. In fact, the Cold War was a contest not between two ideological blocs but between two variants of Western modernity. It is this conceptual "Westcentrism” that a "formering” of the West seeks to undo.The contributions revisit contemporary debates through the lens of a "former West.” They rethink conceptions of time and space dominating the legacy of the 1989-1990 revolutions in the former East, and critique historical periodization of the contemporary. The contributors map the political economy and social relations of the contemporary, consider the implications of algorithmic cultures and the posthuman condition, and discuss notions of solidarity—the difficulty in constructing a new "we” despite migration, the refugee crisis, and the global class recomposition. Can art institute the contemporary it envisions, and live as if it were possible?Contributors include Nancy Adajania, Edit András, Athena Athanasiou, Zygmunt Bauman, Dave Beech, Brett Bloom, Rosi Braidotti, Susan Buck-Morss, Campus in Camps, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Chto Delat?/What is to be done?, Jodi Dean, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Angela Dimitrakaki, Dilar Dirik, Marlene Dumas, Keller Easterling, Charles Esche, Okwui Enwezor, Silvia Federici, Mark Fisher, Federica Giardini and Anna Simone, Boris Groys, Gulf Labor Coalition, Stefano Harney, Sharon Hayes, Brian Holmes, Tung-Hui Hu, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Sami Khatib, Delaine Le Bas, Boaz Levin and Vera Tollmann, Isabell Lorey, Sven Lütticken, Ewa Majewska, Suhail Malik, Artemy Magun, Teresa Margolles, Achille Mbembe, Laura McLean, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Sandro Mezzadra, Walter D. Mignolo, Aernout Mik, Angela Mitropoulos, Rastko Mocnik, Nástio Mosquito, Rabih Mroué, Pedro Neves Marques, Peter Osborne, Matteo Pasquinelli, Andrea Phillips, Nina Power, Vijay Prashad, Gerald Raunig, Irit Rogoff, Naoki Sakai, Rasha Salti, Francesco Salvini, Georg Schöllhammer, Christoph Schlingensief, Susan Schuppli, Andreas Siekmann, Jonas Staal, Hito Steyerl, Mladen Stilinovic, Paulo Tavares, Trịnh Thị Minh Hà, Florin Tudor, Mona Vatamanu, Marina Vishmidt, Marion von Osten, McKenzie Wark, Eyal Weizman

How the breeding of new animals and plants was central to fascist regimes in Italy, Portugal, and Germany and to their imperial expansion.

How lessons from kindergarten can help everyone develop the creative thinking skills needed to thrive in today's society.

A neuroscientifically informed theory arguing that the core of qualitative conscious experience arises from the integration of sensory and cognitive modalities.

A sociotechnical investigation of ubiquitous computing as a research enterprise and as a lived reality.

Images and texts document the legendary Department of Media Study at SUNY Buffalo when it set the world standard; a history of the program and examples of work by "Buffalo heads" James Blue, Tony Conrad, Hollis Frampton, Gerald O'Grady, Paul Sharits, Steina, Woody Vasulka, and Peter Weibel.

This second volume of "Productivity" focuses on comparisons among industrialized countries. Although Germany and Japan are often portrayed as economic adversaries of the US, post-war experiences in these countries support policies that give priority to stimulating and rewarding capital formation.

In this insightful and incisive essay, Eugene Ferguson demonstrates that good engineering is as much a matter of intuition and nonverbal thinking as of equations and computation. He argues that a system of engineering education that ignores nonverbal thinking will produce engineers who are dangerously ignorant of the many ways in which the real world differs from the mathematical models constructed in academic minds.

Ben Shneiderman's book dramatically raises computer users' expectations of what they should get from technology. He opens their eyes to new possibilities and invites them to think freshly about future technology. He challenges developers to build products that better support human needs and that are usable at any bandwidth. Shneiderman proposes Leonardo da Vinci as an inspirational muse for the "e;new computing."e; He wonders how Leonardo would use a laptop and what applications he would create.Shneiderman shifts the focus from what computers can do to what users can do. A key transformation is to what he calls "e;universal usability,"e; enabling participation by young and old, novice and expert, able and disabled. This transformation would empower those yearning for literacy or coping with their limitations. Shneiderman proposes new computing applications in education, medicine, business, and government. He envisions a World Wide Med that delivers secure patient histories in local languages at any emergency room and thriving million-person communities for e-commerce and e-government. Raising larger questions about human relationships and society, he explores the computer's potential to support creativity, consensus-seeking, and conflict resolution. Each chapter ends with a Skeptic's Corner that challenges assumptions about trust, privacy, and digital divides.

Taking "Gangnam Style” seriously: what Internet memes can tell us about digital culture.In December 2012, the exuberant video "Gangnam Style” became the first YouTube clip to be viewed more than one billion times. Thousands of its viewers responded by creating and posting their own variations of the video—"Mitt Romney Style,” "NASA Johnson Style,” "Egyptian Style,” and many others. "Gangnam Style” (and its attendant parodies, imitations, and derivations) is one of the most famous examples of an Internet meme: a piece of digital content that spreads quickly around the web in various iterations and becomes a shared cultural experience. In this book, Limor Shifman investigates Internet memes and what they tell us about digital culture. Shifman discusses a series of well-known Internet memes—including "Leave Britney Alone,” the pepper-spraying cop, LOLCats, Scumbag Steve, and Occupy Wall Street's "We Are the 99 Percent.” She offers a novel definition of Internet memes: digital content units with common characteristics, created with awareness of each other, and circulated, imitated, and transformed via the Internet by many users. She differentiates memes from virals; analyzes what makes memes and virals successful; describes popular meme genres; discusses memes as new modes of political participation in democratic and nondemocratic regimes; and examines memes as agents of globalization. Memes, Shifman argues, encapsulate some of the most fundamental aspects of the Internet in general and of the participatory Web 2.0 culture in particular. Internet memes may be entertaining, but in this book Limor Shifman makes a compelling argument for taking them seriously.