The Server A Media History from the Present to the Baroque Markus Krajewski, Ilinca Iurascu
- Price: £40.00
- Add to Basket Buy ebook
Share this page:
- Format:
- Hardback
- Publication date:
- 19 Jun 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300180817
- Imprint:
- Yale University Press
- Dimensions:
- 456 pages: 235 x 156 x 30mm
- Illustrations:
- 17 b-w illus.
- Sales territories:
- World
Categories:
Though classic servants like the butler or the governess have largely vanished, the Internet is filled with servers: web, ftp, mail, and others perform their daily drudgery, going about their business noiselessly and unnoticed. Why then are current‑day digital drudges called servers? Markus Krajewski explores this question by going from the present back to the Baroque to study historical aspects of service through various perspectives, be it the servants’ relationship to architecture or their function in literary or scientific contexts. At the intersection of media studies, cultural history, and literature, this work recounts the gradual transition of agency from human to nonhuman actors to show how the concept of the digital server stems from the classic role of the servant.
“In this rich genealogy of the concept of the server Krajewski blends literary and historical evidence and media studies—brilliantly thought-provoking!”—Ann Blair, author of Too Much To Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age
“The Server is an intellectual romp, a learned and literate account of proxy servers, mailer daemons, and an astonishing parade of historical factotums and underlings that presaged today’s client-server logic. This is the history of agential knowing—in short, of media—dressed in livery, waiting on call, at your service.”— Lisa Gitelman, New York University
“Markus Krajewski has rescued from neglect a whole cast of characters—such go-betweens as demons, angels, bookkeepers, and doorkeepers—to show them in all their rollicking mischievousness. This book is at once a literary, social, semantic, and technical history—that is, a media history, and it casts a fresh and strange light on our moment.”—John Durham Peters, Yale University
“Descartes once proudly proclaimed that humans should understand themselves as 'masters and owners of nature.' Since then, most philosophers consider knowledge as emerging from rational, cognitive, and discursive structures. Krajewski’s stunningly original book finds it elsewhere--upending our common understanding of science, technology, and political philosophy--by showing that knowledge depends of the successful exploitation of the lowliest of the low.”— Jimena Canales, author of The Physicist and the Philosopher
“A breathtaking display of erudition, Markus Krajewski's The Server weaves together history, literature, and media theory into a potent critique of the governing metaphors of the digital age.”— Daniel Rosenberg, coauthor of Cartographies of Time
-
The Voice Catchers
Joseph Turow£25.00 -
Twitter and Tear Gas
Zeynep Tufekci£10.99 -
New Money
Lana Swartz£20.00 -
Lie Machines
Philip N. Howard£20.00 -
The Misinformation Age
Cailin O'Connor£11.99 -
The Internet in Everything
Laura DeNardis£25.00 -
Behind the Screen
Sarah T. Roberts£20.00 -
The Misinformation Age
Cailin O'Connor£18.99 -
Delayed Response
Jason Farman£20.00 -
Custodians of the Internet
Tarleton Gillespie£25.00 -
Twitter and Tear Gas
Zeynep Tufekci£10.99 -
Fabulous
madison moore£18.99 -
Reporting War
Ray Moseley£12.99 -
Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today
Eva Respini£55.00 -
Digital World War
Haroon K. Ullah£18.99 -
(Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love
Brooke Erin Duffy£25.00 -
Plugged In
Patti M. Valkenburg£25.00 -
Mindful Tech
David M. Levy£12.99 -
Reporting War
Ray Moseley£20.00