"Now that you know I'm a bitter graduate student from the 90s, I'd start out with a quotation from Roland Barthes. Because, you know, we don't get enough Americans who talk too much about French theory anymore. So here's Barthes: "The psychotic lives in fear of a breakdown", "There are moments when a patient needs to be told that the breakdown, fear of which is wrecking his life, has already occurred." I think there's a breakdown - a catastrophe - in the culture that we have been fearing. And it has already occurred..."

"I've been fooling around with the idea that there might be something called dialectical immaterialism, the opposite of Marxist dialectical materialism, where people like me who love technology believe that we are moving farther and farther away from heavy, dusty, expensive things like this into a world of almost pure abstraction and thought. But lately I realised that that revolution, the digital revolution, like Marxist revolution, might not be quite so smooth. There are always people who are interested in the sound of music on vinyl records, who are interested in the dusty smell of bindings on real books, who like the excitement of going to book stores and owning things..."
Regarder ou lire l'interview de Virginia Heffernan

"At the very origins of computer culture, we witness the emergence of the stereotype of the socially awkward computer hacker, isolated by the calculating machine which alienates him and keeps him apart from his peers. This characterization dates back to a time before the Web. In his Computer Power and Human Reason : From Judgement to Calculation (1976) Joseph Weizenbaum delivers us the portrayal of this subculture of compulsive computer programmer - or, as he liked to dub them, computer bums..."
Lire le texte d'Antonio A. Casilli

"Sur Internet, les individus s'adressent des signaux les uns aux autres afin d'exprimer et faire reconnaître leur singularité. Mais en élargissant considérablement le répertoire des signes servant à manifester leur identité (informations personnelles, statuts, photos, localisations, blagues, vidéos, récits d'activités etc.), les internautes ont aussi poussé à considérer ces signes de soi comme des contenus amateurs. Avec l'abaissement considérable des coûts et des barrières d'accès à la production de textes, de sons, d'images ou, dans une moindre mesure, de vidéos sur internet, tout un ensemble d'activités expressives destinées à communiquer, se montrer ou exposer ses passions entre dans le champ des pratiques amateurs..."