Delusive Spaces: Essays on Culture, Media and Technology

In 2006, NBC posted clips from its fall lineup on YouTube, and the government produced antidrug spots. As new media is gaining not only street cred but real market share, traditional media outlets are increasingly looking for a piece of the pie. By now, that is a well-worn critique. New-media theorist Eric Kluitenberg, who has been on the scene since 1988, focuses on not only keeping the utopian potential of such public forums alive but also critiquing the “delusions of the new” that absorbed new media culture in its nascency. Kluitenberg places his argument within the broader histories of culture and technology with sections on alternative histories of technology, the politics of media, ways to live in our newly networked world and the problem of employing artistic strategies in a mechanized society.