Writing remains to me an unusual practice that transforms my experience
of the world whilst under the spell of writing. This book has had a particularly
intensive birth, written as it is in the middle of the academic year and
with everyday life swirling around it with all the attendant distractions. It
has emerged from a number of related research themes that continue to
guide my work and are focused on the challenge to thinking that is posed
by technology. This work has been influenced, inspired, guided and challenged
by such a plethora of authors that it is not possible to list them all
here. However, I feel that they are all flowing in different modulations and
intensities through the text that follows. I pass on this text in the hope
that future readers will find something interesting in a subject I continue
to find deeply fascinating.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Nikki Cooper, the
Callaghan Centre for the Study of Conflict, Power, and Empire, and the
Research Institute for Arts and Humanities (RIAH) at Swansea University
for funding the workshop, The Computational Turn, which explored
key issues around software. Thanks also to N. Katherine Hayles and Lev
Manovich and the other participants at this workshop who enthusiastically
discussed many of the themes pertinent to this book in a rigorous
and critical setting. I would also like to thank the many people who
gave comments and suggestions to the text as it developed. In particular,
Chapter 5 was presented at a number of places which assisted
in writing, and so I would like to thank colleagues in the Department
of Political and Cultural Studies at Swansea University and in particular
Alan Finlayson and Roland Axtmann; the Department of Media and Film
at Sussex University, particularly Michael Bull, Caroline Bassett, Sharif
Mowlabocus, and Kate O’Riordan; The Law and Literature Association of
Australia (LLAA) and The Law and Society Association of Australia and
New Zealand (LSAANZ) and Griffith University for inviting me to present
Chapter 5 in Brisbane, in particular William MacNeil; and lastly, Daniel
Hourigan, Steve Fuller, Peter Bloom, William Merrin, and John Tucker for
helpful additional comments. An early version of Chapter 6 was previously
presented at Generation Net: Arts and Culture in the 21st century
at Nottingham University, funded by the Institute of Film and Television
Studies, and I would like to thank Iain Robert Smith for the invitation.
A slightly reworked version of Chapter 4 was presented at Swansea University in the Politics Research in Progress seminar series arranged by
Jonathan Bradbury and I would like to thank all colleagues who attended
for their generous feedback and ideas. Lastly, parts of Chapter 3 were
presented at the New Materialisms and Digital Culture: An International
Symposium on Contemporary Arts, Media and Cultural Theory at Anglia
Ruskin University, and I would like to thank Jussi Parikka and Milla
Tiainen for their invitation. I would also like to make a special note of
thanks to Trine Bjørkmann Berry for reading and correcting early drafts
of the chapters.
This book would not have been possible without the support and generosity
of a great number of friends and colleagues at Swansea University
who were always available to discuss subjects I found interesting. In
particular, Claes Belfrage and Christian De Cock and the participants in
the Cultural Political Economy research group, who may not realise that
many of the ideas in the book were also aired there. I would also like to
thank students on the MA Digital Media and my PhD students: Faustin
Chongombe, Leighton Evans, Mostyn Jones, and Sian Rees for their useful
contributions and discussions over the course of the year. Finally,
I would like to thank my wife, Trine, and my children Helene, Henrik
Isak, and Hedda Emilie, for waiting patiently, seemingly forever, to go to
the beach.
DMB
Swansea, July 2010