Ken Hillis – författare

Investigations of affective experiences that emerge in online settings that range from Facebook discussion forums to “smart” classrooms.

Our encounters with websites, avatars, videos, mobile apps, discussion forums, GIFs, and nonhuman intelligent agents allow us to experience sensations of connectivity, interest, desire, and attachment—as well as detachment, boredom, fear, and shame. Some affective online encounters may arouse complex, contradictory feelings that resist dualistic distinctions. In this book, leading scholars examine the fluctuating and altering dynamics of affect that give shape to online connections and disconnections. Doing so, they tie issues of circulation and connectivity to theorizations of networked affect. Their diverse investigations—considering subjects that range from online sexual dynamics to the liveliness of computer code—demonstrate the value of affect theories for Internet studies.

The contributors investigate networked affect in terms of intensity, sensation, and value. They explore online intensities that range from Tumblr practices in LGBTQ communities to visceral reactions to animated avatars; examine the affective materiality of software in such platforms as steampunk culture and nonprofit altporn; and analyze the ascription of value to online activities including the GTD (“getting things done”) movement and the accumulation of personal digital materials.

ContributorsJames Ash, Alex Cho, Jodi Dean, Melissa Gregg, Ken Hillis, Kylie Jarrett, Tero Karppi, Stephen Maddison, Susanna Paasonen, Jussi Parikka, Michael Petit, Jennifer Pybus, Jenny Sundén, Veronika Tzankova

Hillis analyzes forms of ritual and fetishism made possible through second-generation virtual environments such as Second Life and the popular practice of using webcams to “lifecast” one’s life online twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Discussing how people create and identify with their electronic avatars, he shows how the customs of virtual-world chat reinforce modern consumer-based subjectivities, allowing individuals to both identify with and distance themselves from their characters. His consideration of web-cam cultures links the ritual of exposing one’s life online to a politics of visibility. Hillis argues that these new “rituals of transmission” are compelling because they provide a seemingly material trace of the actual person on the other side of the interface.

Everyday eBay is the first scholarly analysis of the internet marketplace that has become a global social, cultural and economic phenomenon. The eighteen new and classic essays gathered here examine eBay from a wide variety of perspectives as a bellwether of taste and material culture; as a rich site of cultural, racial, and sexual discourse and practice; as an emergent media form; and as a facilitator of global consumerism. From old toys steeped in nostalgia to ''rare'' limited edition shoes, the contributors demonstrate that value on eBay is never simply about ''price''.

On any given day, more than two million items are listed for sale on eBay, from everyday objects to kitsch and collectibles to the truly bizarre. Since its debut ten years ago, eBay has quickly become a central destination for millions of web browsers. According to eBay itself, up to 165,000 Americans now make their living by selling through the website, and other business analysts project that hundreds of thousands of individuals worldwide now make their living through eBay.

Everyday eBay is the first scholarly analysis of the internet marketplace that has become a global social, cultural and economic phenomenon. The eighteen new and classic essays gathered here examine eBay from a wide variety of perspectives as a bellwether of taste and material culture; as a rich site of cultural, racial, and sexual discourse and practice; as an emergent media form; and as a facilitator of global consumerism. From old toys steeped in nostalgia to ''rare'' limited edition shoes, the contributors demonstrate that value on eBay is never simply about ''price''.

On any given day, more than two million items are listed for sale on eBay, from everyday objects to kitsch and collectibles to the truly bizarre. Since its debut ten years ago, eBay has quickly become a central destination for millions of web browsers. According to eBay itself, up to 165,000 Americans now make their living by selling through the website, and other business analysts project that hundreds of thousands of individuals worldwide now make their living through eBay.

What did you do before Google?

The rise of Google as the dominant Internet search provider reflects a generationally-inflected notion that everything that matters is now on the Web, and should, in the moral sense of the verb, be accessible through search. In this theoretically nuanced study of search technology’s broader implications for knowledge production and social relations, the authors shed light on a culture of search in which our increasing reliance on search engines influences not only the way we navigate, classify, and evaluate Web content, but also how we think about ourselves and the world around us, online and off.

Ken Hillis, Michael Petit, and Kylie Jarrett seek to understand the ascendancy of search and its naturalization by historicizing and contextualizing Google’s dominance of the search industry, and suggest that the contemporary culture of search is inextricably bound up with a metaphysical longing to manage, order, and categorize all knowledge. Calling upon this nexus between political economy and metaphysics, Google and the Culture of Search explores what is at stake for an increasingly networked culture in which search technology is a site of knowledge and power.