MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-122566-1
The explicitly stated intent of the editors of this book, who work for the Media and Communication Department of the University of Oslo, is to finally get over the vision of the ‘new media’ as innovation simply because they are ‘new’. In a tight succession of perspectives, the four cornerstones, on which the four sections are based, are: ethics, information design, its interdisciplinary nature and its interpretation. The guests of this book are many, from ‘electracy’, a definition of electronic literature based on its characteristics, to an analysis of Duke Nukem, considered as a cultural object which trascends its commercial character. The renowned theoretician Mary Flanagan, together with George P. Landow, contributes with a text on the critical and political use of the digital tools by women artists, to draw attention to the the unsatisfying representation of feminine models in the ‘gaming culture’, while Roger Silverstone cites Levinas’ concept of ‘other’ to introduce the possibilities of horizontal social experience on the Net. Even if the tone of this anthology is typically academic, it offers some ideas which fit well in the consolidated vision of the present digital culture.