Author: Katherine Sender
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351838806
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
Queer media studies has mostly focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) visibility, stereotypes, and positive images, but media technologies aren’t just vehicles for representations, they also shape them. How can queer theory and queer methodologies complicate our understanding of communication technologies, their structures and uses, and the cultural and political implications of these? How can queer technologies inform debates about affect, temporality, and publics? This book presents new scholarship that addresses queer media production and practices across a wide range of media, including television, music, zines, video games, mobile applications, and online spaces. The authors consider how LGBTQ representations and reception are shaped by technological affordances and constraints. Chapters deal with critical contemporary concepts such as counterpublics, affect, temporality, nonbinary practices, queer technique, and transmediation to explore intersections among communication and media studies and cutting-edge queer and transgender theory. This collection moves beyond considering LGBTQ representations as they appear in media to consider the central role of technologies in understanding intersections among gender, sexuality, and media. Even the most heteromasculine technologies can be queered, yet we can’t assume queerness works in the same way across different media. Emergent media technologies afford queer worldmaking, but these worlds are forged between normalization and niche marketing. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication.
Author: Rob Brooks
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231553854
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 387
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Book Description
What happens when the human brain, which evolved over eons, collides with twenty-first-century technology? Machines can now push psychological buttons, stimulating and sometimes exploiting the ways people make friends, gossip with neighbors, and grow intimate with lovers. Sex robots present the humanoid face of this technological revolution—yet although it is easy to gawk at their uncanniness, more familiar technologies based in artificial intelligence and virtual reality are insinuating themselves into human interactions. Digital lovers, virtual friends, and algorithmic matchmakers help us manage our feelings in a world of cognitive overload. Will these machines, fueled by masses of user data and powered by algorithms that learn all the time, transform the quality of human life? Artificial Intimacy offers an innovative perspective on the possibilities of the present and near future. The evolutionary biologist Rob Brooks explores the latest research on intimacy and desire to consider the interaction of new technologies and fundamental human behaviors. He details how existing artificial intelligences can already learn and exploit human social needs—and are getting better at what they do. Brooks combines an understanding of core human traits from evolutionary biology with analysis of how cultural, economic, and technological contexts shape the ways people express them. Beyond the technology, he asks what the implications of artificial intimacy will be for how we understand ourselves.
Author: Pooja Nair
Publisher: Frog in Well
ISBN: 9789352013913
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
"Can real love ever blossom amidst a plethora of virtual chat apps and widgets? Can the mechanical swipes and eager clicks on the phone ever substitute the pleasures of a real-life chance encounter? For Aayushi, it all begins with an idle flickering message on her app's inbox, from a guy named Ayaan. This leads to an affair where the two discover a deep attraction for each other. However, Aayushi ends the relationship rather abruptly. Three years later, Aayushi unexpectedly bumps into Ayaan in her Singapore office. His changed behaviour perplexes her and she tries to find out if Ayaan had ever loved her the way she imagined love to be. She ends up uncovering revelations galore, and is finally led to a simple truth. Will this change her romantic notions forever or reaffirm her faith in love? "
Author: Eva Illouz
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509550267
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
Western culture has endlessly represented the ways in which love miraculously erupts in people’s lives, the mythical moment in which one knows someone is destined for us, the feverish waiting for a phone call or an email, the thrill that runs down our spine at the mere thought of him or her. Yet, a culture that has so much to say about love is virtually silent on the no less mysterious moments when we avoid falling in love, where we fall out of love, when the one who kept us awake at night now leaves us indifferent, or when we hurry away from those who excited us a few months or even a few hours before. In The End of Love, Eva Illouz documents the multifarious ways in which relationships end. She argues that if modern love was once marked by the freedom to enter sexual and emotional bonds according to one’s will and choice, contemporary love has now become characterized by practices of non-choice, the freedom to withdraw from relationships. Illouz dubs this process by which relationships fade, evaporate, dissolve, and break down “unloving.” While sociology has classically focused on the formation of social bonds, The End of Love makes a powerful case for studying why and how social bonds collapse and dissolve. Particularly striking is the role that capitalism plays in practices of non-choice and “unloving.” The unmaking of social bonds, she argues, is connected to contemporary capitalism which is characterized by practices of non-commitment and non-choice, practices that enable the quick withdrawal from a transaction and the quick realignment of prices and the breaking of loyalties. Unloving and non-choice have in turn a profound impact on society and economics as they explain why people may be having fewer children, increasingly living alone, and having less sex. The End of Love presents a profound and original analysis of the effects of capitalism and consumer culture on personal relationships and of what the dissolution of personal relationships means for capitalism.
Author: Carol Borden
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0557958393
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
Science fiction, fantasy, comics, romance, genre movies, games all drain into the Cultural Gutter, a website dedicated to thoughtful articles about disreputable art-media and genres that are a little embarrassing. Irredeemable. Worthy of Note, but rolling like errant pennies back into the gutter. The Cultural Gutter is dangerous because we have a philosophy. We try to balance enthusiasm with clear-eyed, honest engagement with the material and with our readers. This book expands on our mission with 10 articles each from science fiction/fantasy editor James Schellenberg, comics editor and publisher Carol Borden, romance editor Chris Szego, screen editor Ian Driscoll and founding editor and former games editor Jim Munroe.
Author: Alex Espinoza
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781944700829
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238
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Book Description
Acclaimed author Alex Espinoza takes readers on an uncensored journey through the underground, to reveal the timeless art of cruising. Combining historical research and oral history with his own personal experience, Espinoza examines the political and cultural forces behind this radical pastime. From Greek antiquity to the notorious Molly houses of 18th century England, the raucous 1970s to the algorithms of Grindr, Oscar Wilde to George Michael, cruising remains at once a reclamation of public space and the creation of its own unique locale―one in which men of all races and classes interact, even in the shadow of repressive governments
Author: Alyssa Jarrett
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781963875010
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
When high tech meets high fashion Celebrity stylist Casey Holbright is used to being the sidekick in someone else's story. But when her biggest client suddenly decides to dump her right before Fashion Week, she needs to channel some major main character energy. Casey's ecstatic when she lands a gig making over Evan Chen, the eccentric founder and CEO of San Francisco's next tech unicorn, Habituall. Her dream job quickly unravels into a nightmare, however, when she learns Evan never agreed to hire her and has zero intention of ditching his gym-rat attire-not for his own board of directors and definitely not for a fashionista who cares more about Prada than Python. The most infuriating part of this whole ordeal? Evan's got the rock-hard body to make even cargo shorts look good. But just when their rivalry turns into something more, Casey discovers a bigger threat than flip-flops at the office. To prevent Evan from losing the business he built from scratch, they'll need to team up to save his startup-and his reputation. Fans of Tessa Bailey, Ali Hazelwood, and Jasmine Guillory will love this satirical Silicon Valley rom-com that delivers big laughs with impeccable style.
