"Wendy Chun's important new book explores one of the salient questions raised by networked computing: the paradox of furthering the directly opposed aims of surveillance and democracy, or, as her title puts it, control and freedom. Chun's interrogation of this paradox proceeds through the realms of erotica and race, themselves vexed issues. Anyone interested in new media would do well to read this book."
—Mark Poster, University of California, Irvine
"
Control and Freedom is the most theoretically rich, deftly written, and historically grounded treatment of race in cyberspace to date. In this fine and enjoyable book, Chun traces the intermedial connections between online and offline representations of race and gender. This is a lucid, rigorous, and fascinating critical analysis of new media."
—Lisa Nakamura, Assistant Professor of Communication Arts and Visual Culture Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"
Control and Freedom makes a major contribution to our understanding of digital media and networked society. Chun offers up a refreshing and much-needed challenge to the core assumptions of Lev Manovich's
The Language of New Media, moving beyond that book's insistent formalism toward a more contextualized understanding of the difference that a medium makes. Her book also breaks free of the tired old binary of techno-euphoria versus techno-phobia, challenging popular assumptions that the computer is either empowering and transparent or a relentless surveillance machine."
—Tara McPherson, University of Southern California
Customer Reviews & Comments
This theoretically-savvy but nonetheless highly readable book makes a provocative and vital intervention in the field of internet studies. In an engaging romp through topics as diverse as cyberporn, cyberpunk, wecams, globalization, race, TV commercials, TCP/IP, and Schreber's turn-of-the-century delusions, the author argues compellingly that our freedom depends on moving beyond rhetorics of the internet as democratic and/or dangerous. It's a sharp and often stunning analysis that lays bare the ideological stakes of such notions as user-friendliness, protecting children, and techno-Orientalism -- a must-read for anyone interested in media archaeology or cyber-politics.
