Good debates are invigorating. That digital media studies has thus far provided too few real debates is at least a partial explanation for its sluggish development, prematurely sunk by a buoyant enthusiasm for all things digital or halted by the endless repetition of trite slogans unopposed, like “everything is connected” or “information wants to be free.” So it is with great fanfare that we should greet the recent explosion of sophisticated texts tackling the digital apparatus from many directions. A golden age of tech theory is currently underway, and we may expect the next several years to be fruitful ones indeed.
Already a decade ago Mark Marino helped inaugurate a new field of inquiry dubbed “critical code studies,” a disciplinary shift evident today in scholarship from the likes of Rita Raley, Adrian MacKenzie, and Matthew Fuller. At the same time, a renewed interest in infrastructure has guided a number of...
