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2 books match the query 'Parisi, David'
Archaeologies of Touch
Interfacing with Haptics from Electricity to ComputingDavid Parisi
University of Minnesota Press, 2018
A material history of haptics technology that raises new questions about the relationship between touch and media
Since the rise of radio and television, we have lived in an era defined increasingly by the electronic circulation of images and sounds. But the flood of new computing technologies known as haptic interfaces—which use electricity, vibration, and force feedback to stimulate the sense of touch—offering an alternative way of mediating and experiencing reality.
In Archaeologies of Touch, David Parisi offers the first full history of these increasingly vital technologies, showing how the efforts of scientists and engineers over the past three hundred years have gradually remade and redefined our sense of touch. Through lively analyses of electrical machines, videogames, sex toys, sensory substitution systems, robotics, and human–computer interfaces, Parisi shows how the materiality of touch technologies has been shaped by attempts to transform humans into more efficient processors of information.
With haptics becoming ever more central to emerging virtual-reality platforms (immersive bodysuits loaded with touch-stimulating actuators), wearable computers (haptic messaging systems like the Apple Watch’s Taptic Engine), and smartphones (vibrations that emulate the feel of buttons and onscreen objects), Archaeologies of Touch offers a timely and provocative engagement with the long history of touch technology that helps us confront and question the power relations underpinning the project of giving touch its own set of technical media.
Endurance Media
Neta Alexander
University of Minnesota Press, 2027
How digital platforms profit from our inability to log off
Endurance Media explores how contemporary digital technologies extract value from our bodies by demanding sustained engagement that pushes us beyond, and even reconfigures, our limits. It introduces the concept of “endurance media”—systems, platforms, and practices that require users to align their bodily rhythms with relentless media temporalities, transforming exhaustion itself into a profitable resource and a cultural fantasy.
In Endurance Media leading media scholars explore the dark intersection of metabolic capitalism and algorithmic control. From exercise bikes that monetize heart rates and caloric expenditure, to gaming suits that deliver electric shocks for “haptic realism,” to energy drinks marketed as performance enhancers for marathon gaming sessions, Endurance Media reveals how digital platforms colonize rest time under the guise of pleasure, interactivity, and autonomy. This analysis extends from individual bodies to planetary infrastructure, connecting personal media habits to the environmental costs of server farms and AI resource extraction.
At stake is the possibility of recuperating endurance as a space for alternative modes of duration, relationality, and collective survival. To that end, this book offers a critical alternative through “anti-endurance media”—a disability-informed framework that values rest, refusal, and collective care over relentless individual optimization.
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