Viruses, which in contrast to bacteria, were first studied in depth in the late 1920s, as an obligatory parasite of foreign cells, have to be reprogrammed in such a way that a mass reproduction of them takes place in the host body itself. All the important discourses of the twentieth century come together in the "principle of viruses." Virality, hence the "going viral" of information in mass culture, gives rise to something that attests to a new, rapidly accelerating communicative phenomenon of the twenty-first century as a result of digital reproduction technology. The CULTURAL VIROLOGY proposed here provides a wide-ranging overview of viruses as a figure of thought for interaction, transmission, interdisciplinarity, connectivity, and interdependence in the twentieth and twenty-first century.

Viruses, which in contrast to bacteria, were first studied in depth in the late 1920s, as an obligatory parasite of foreign cells, have to be reprogrammed in such a way that a mass reproduction of them takes place in the host body itself. All the important discourses of the twentieth century come together in the "principle of viruses." Virality, hence the "going viral" of information in mass culture, gives rise to something that attests to a new, rapidly accelerating communicative phenomenon of the twenty-first century as a result of digital reproduction technology. The CULTURAL VIROLOGY proposed here provides a wide-ranging overview of viruses as a figure of thought for interaction, transmission, interdisciplinarity, connectivity, and interdependence in the twentieth and twenty-first century.