Debates about the cultural impact of digital, virtual and cybernetic technologies continue to rage, particularly across the arts where the impact of digital technology on forms such as photography and film have made it a matter of peculiar urgency. This is a formidable new collection which brings together truly stellar international commentators, thinkers, filmmakers and artists in dialogue with those at the forefront of thinking in the fields of informatics and communication studies. Moving beyond the use of existing theory to understand the impact of this brave new world and mindful, crucially, of the ethical and political questions posed by it, here are radical re-evaluations of the work of thinkers such as Foucault, Heidegger and C.S.Peirce. Here too are urgently needed critiques of claims made for new technologies; the everyday use of computers and our ignorance of the code "beneath the machine," and the effects of digitality on forms--such as photography and documentary--frequently considered to retain a unique relationship to reality and to the index.
