Technopharmacology

2022
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Authors:

Joshua Neves, Aleena Chia, Susanna Paasonen, and Ravi Sundaram

Exploring networked technologies and bioeconomy and their links to biotechnologies, pharmacology, and pharmaceuticals

In Technopharmacology, Joshua Neves examines the close relations of media technologies to pharmaceuticals and pharmacology. It is a modest call to expand media theoretical inquiry by attending to the biological, neurological, and pharmacological dimensions of media and centers on emergent affinities between big data and big pharma.

Technopharmacology overturns how we think about the relation between media technologies and pharmaceutical agents. The book offers compelling new perspectives on the ways in which the agency of media oscillates between toxin and intoxicant, while drug technologies generate new infrastructures of communication.

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Thomas Lamarre, University of Chicago

Being on social media, having pornography or an internet addiction, consciousness hacking, and mundane smartness initiatives are practices embodied in a similar manner to the swallowing of a pill. Such close relations of media technologies to pharmaceuticals and pharmacology is the focus of this book. Technopharmacology is a modest call to expand media theoretical inquiry by attending to the biological, neurological, and pharmacological dimensions of media and centers on emergent affinities between big data and big pharma.

Joshua Neves is associate professor of film studies at Concordia University, and author of Underglobalization: Beijing’s Media Urbanism and the Chimera of Legitimacy.

Aleena Chia is lecturer in media, communications, and cultural studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she researches creative cultures in game development and Silicon Valley spiritualities.

Susanna Paasonen is professor of media studies at the University of Turku, Finland, and author of Dependent, Distracted, Bored: Affective Formations in Networked Media.

Ravi Sundaram is professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi. He is author of Pirate Modernity: Delhi’s Media Urbanism and editor of No Limits: Media Studies from India.

Technopharmacology overturns how we think about the relation between media technologies and pharmaceutical agents. The book offers compelling new perspectives on the ways in which the agency of media oscillates between toxin and intoxicant, while drug technologies generate new infrastructures of communication.

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Thomas Lamarre, University of Chicago

Technopharmacology hits a sore but absolutely crucial spot: the relation between the pharmaceutical industry and digital media, the pharmacologization of media, and the mediatization of pharmacology. A must-read to find new means of orientation in the chaotic post-pandemic world which Big Pharma and Platform Capital increasingly dominate.

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Tiziana Terranova, University of Naples "L'Orientale"