Twenty years later, Vale Vale and Company finally return to the land of pranksters with Pranks 2 (RE/Search). These interviews, mostly done by V. Vale himself, illustrate just how deep pranks run in our current cultural milieu — and how far they’ve spread since the last volume (RE/Search #11: Pranks). From the spread of culture jamming and parody to the mainstays of satire and social commentary, pranksterism is standard fare. Heck, just the mainstreaming of the lyrical spoof, which has nearly put Weird Al Yankovic out of business, is proof …

I don’t know how most people feel about stickers, but they make me get all smiley. Sticker Nation (Disinformation) contains over 400 stickers emblazoned with subversive themes. Classic slogans like “Let the good times roll,” “Express yourself,” and “Power to the people” are peppered amongst “I just changed the world,” “Listen to Marshall McLuhan,” “Eat more veggies,” and “Talk nerdy to me.” My personal favorite is “When I hit the drum, you shake the booty,” but it’s difficult to have a favorite when there are so many good ones in …

If, as Martin Heidegger wrote and Michael Heim clarified, philosophy is to stay one step ahead of science, then art is to stay one step ahead of philosophy. Art has the most freedom as a form of exploration, as a method by which to find the limits of a domain of research. That said, Eugene Thacker doesn’t necessarily consider himself an artist, but, as he told Josephine Bosma in an interview for Net-time, “I have always been interested in approaching things from a theoretical viewpoint, as well as exploring the …

After exploring the newest science of cultural evolution in her last book, The Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore returns now with twenty interviews with some of the world’s biggest minds. What does one talk about with the world’s biggest minds? Well, minds of course.

In Why Societies Need Dissent, Cass R. Sunstein illustrates the powers and dangers of dissent through a clear and concise exposition of three basic phenomena: conformity, social cascades, and group polarization. His epistemological view of conformity shows how we tend to learn less first-hand than from what others think and believe. Social cascades occur when a meme, carried by early-adopters, reaches its tipping point. Group polarization shows how extreme views become more extreme in group deliberations.

A Hacker Manifesto is the Big Picture of not only where we are in the “information age,” but where we’re going as well. Adopting the epigrammic style of Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, as well as updating its ideas, Ken Wark establishes so-called “knowledge workers” as an unrecognized social class: “the hacker class.” Wark also updates Marx and Engels, Deleuze and Guattari, Nietzsche, and a host of others:

If you believe that your thoughts originate inside your brain — do you also believe that television shows are made inside your television set? — Warren Ellis
We’re all connected. Our saturated selves are each a part of a collective, socially constructed mix of language games and habits without names. “All minds quote,” once quoth Ralph Waldo Emerson, but let’s forget about the mind, the brain, and the head that holds them. It’s not about nouns; it’s about verbs. It’s not about the dots, it’s about the connections between them. Networks, …

My friends and I always used to do year-end top ten lists of our favorite records of the year. Thinking back through 2003, I decided to archive my favorite ideas of the year. Not that I was let down by music this year, on the contrary, I heard plenty of good records in the ’03 (e.g., Aesop Rock, Kinski, Cex, Prefuse 73, Radiohead, Ilya, Interpol, Mogwai, Tomahawk, Deadsy, Why?, The Blood Brothers, The Mars Volta, Atmosphere, The Roots, etc.), but I thought this would be more interesting. We shall …

Columbus killed more Indians than Hitler did Jews, but on his birthday you get sales on shoes — The Goats
What at first might seem mundane subject matter is made illuminating and interesting by Thomas Hine’s engaging narrative, personal and historical examples, and downright deep digging. Excavating our culture of consumption from the perspectives of power, responsibility, discovery, self-expression, insecurity, attention, belonging, celebration, and convenience, Hine unearths the desires and rituals that have made us all shoppers in one sense or another. In the spirit of the quote above, I Want …

I must Create a System, or be enslav’d by another Man’s
I will not Reason and Compare; my business is to Create.
– William Blake
Bucky Fuller used the name “Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science” for his field of holistic, generalized engineering. In this endeavor, he tried to include every possible angle and scenario in designing his wares. I’ve been attempting to merge this sentiment with Richard Saul Wurman’s idea that the most important design project one can undertake is the design of one’s life. I adore the phrase “design science,” and I think …