Pathology and Technology

D. Travers Scott is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Clemson University, South Carolina. He holds a PhD in communication from Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, a Master of Communication in Digital Media from the University of Washington, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

“How did ‘sick’ become the new normal? How do the stories we tell about disordered, degenerate, and abnormal media users reveal reflections of ourselves? From anthrax to viruses, from neurasthenia to schizophrenia, technopathologies, in D. Travers Scott’s able hands, reveal more than technical conditions: they reveal our many humanities. Drawing together diverse cultural, sociological, political, and critical theoretical sources, this lively cultural historical account enriches scholarly understanding of how modern communication, and its makers, police and pathologize the technical limits of human behavior. Confident in the face of critical difference and evenhanded in its analysis, Scott has opened a new chapter on the medical-moral panics, the scapegoating thrills, and unease we rediscover in every new disease. A vital read.”—Ben Peters, Associate Professor of Media Studies, Henry Kendall College of Arts & Sciences, University of Tulsa

• List of Illustrations – Acknowledgments – Introduction: Pathological Technoculture: Sick Users and Reinforced Stereotypes – Pathology Shapes Subjects: Gendering and Normalizing – Audiences and Users: A False Dichotomy of Entangled Subjects – Not So Crazy: Electrical Logics of Technopathologies – The Electrical Banal: Anderson, SC, "The Electric City" – Not So New: Historic Continuity and the Pathologization of Users – Technopathologies as Social Disease: Reproducing Good and Bad Users – Technopathologies as Outbreaks: Carriers and Demonized Collectivity – Conclusion: All Users Are Sick: The Normalization of Disease – Index.