Internationally renowned media theorist and "net critic" Geert Lovink upgrades worn out concepts about the Internet and interrogates the latest hype surrounding blogs and social network sites.

Geert Lovink is an internationally renowned media theorist and net critic. His many books include Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture, Uncanny Networks: Dialogues with the Digital Intelligentsia, My First Recession: Critical Internet Culture in Transition,and The Principle of Notworking. He is a member of the Adilkno collective (Cracking the Movement, The Media Archive) and co-founder of Internet projects such as The Digital City, Nettime, Fibreculture and Incommunicado. He is founder and director of the Institute of Network Cultures (www.networkcultures.org), professor at Interactive Media (Hogeschool van Amsterdam) and associate professor at the Media & Culture department, University of Amsterdam. He was a 2005-2006 fellow at the Wissenschaftkolleg, the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study.

Introduction: The Pride and Glory of Web 2.0 1. Blogging, the Nihilist Impulse 2. The Cool Obscure: Crisis of New Media Arts 3. Whereabouts of German Media Theory 4. Blogging & Building: The Netherlands After Digitization 5. Indifference of the Networked Presence: On Internet Time 6. Revisiting Sarai: Five Years of New Media Culture in India 7. ICT After Development: The Incommunicado Agenda 8. Updating Tactical Media: Strategies for Media Activism 9. Axioms of Free Cooperation: Contesting Online Collaboration 10. Theses on Distributed Aesthetics 11. Introducing Organized Networks: The Quest for Sustainable Concepts. Notes. Bibliography. Index