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Caribbean and Western Cyberculture

Strategic Space and Pathways to an Age of Smart Machines

Caribbean and Western Cyberculture cover

Caribbean and Western Cyberculture

Strategic Space and Pathways to an Age of Smart Machines

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Pre-order. Available Apr 15 2027
$86.40 RRP $108.00 Website price saving $21.60 (20%)

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Description

Curwen Best offers readers a perspective on the expansion of digital culture through the prism and within the context of Caribbean culture by examining major technologies impacting Caribbean and Western society and discusses the ways that Caribbean creatives and others have employed, deployed, and reshaped technologies for their own purpose in proximity to new digital plantations.

This book argues for a new dimension to cyberspace, "the strategic-space Web," as a counter balance to concepts such as the digital divide and the attention economy. If those concepts privilege visibility and equality of access, the nurturing of strategic space engenders invisibility and strategic access. As part of its pervasive subtext, this book questions more conventional ways of thinking about cyberculture, suggesting that Caribbean societies were “cyber” before the late-20th century iteration and expansion of digital culture. Best suggests that technology is a fluid construct and that the more conventional tendency to place designated nations and institutions at the center of discourses around such terms (and of the world) has possibly encoded a fractured way of seeing the universe.

Best supports and combats this idea by exploring popular culture and global issues ranging from global affairs, religion, politics, knowledge economies, entertainment, video games, music, music technology, literature, communications, sports, digital identities, hacking, the news media, the end times, representation, simulation, virtual reality, augmented reality, Internet of things, Apps, memes, to selfies. Ultimately asking if humanity embarks on a real, metaphorical, and virtual quest for salvation, redemption, or the ultimate discovery, is it possible that some key pathways reside outside the spaces and nations that we tend to locate at the epicenter of human activity?

Accessibility Information

Additional accessibility information

  • PDF/UA-2, 1.4
  • accessibility@bloomsbury.com

Hazards

The publication contains no hazards

Support for non-visual reading

Has alternative text descriptions for images

Navigation

  • Page list to go to pages from the print source version
  • Elements such as headings, tables, etc for structured navigation
  • All or substantially all textual matter is arranged in a single logical reading order

Table of Contents

Introduction: Cyberculture & Strategic Space in a Post-Machine Age
1. Proximity to Technology: Who's in Awe of the 'Matricks' and Things HyperQuantum
2. Culture that's Dark, Deep and Beyond Reach
3. Fibre and Optics in an Age of Spiritual & Religious Machines
4. Communications. Media. Entertainment
5. Caribbean Music and Entertainment Culture in a Post-Internet Dispensation
6. She Pompasettes on the Holodeck: Rihanna & Post-Digital Bodies in a Metaverse
7. The Russia-Ukraine/Nato Wars
8. Video Games: You 'Fraid the Smart smart smart Machines
9. Post-Video Games: Mining, Sculpting, Terraforming our Worlds

Endnotes
Bibliography
About the Author
Index

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published Apr 15 2027
Format Ebook (PDF)
Edition 1st
Pages 308
ISBN 9798216452942
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Curwen Best

Curwen Best is Professor of Popular Culture, Liter…

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