Index

Contents:

Introduction: 
The General Accident of Digital Culture.......................1
     Disease and Technology...................................1
     Media Theory Meets Computer Technology: Concepts and Sources...11
     Media and Multiplicity: Nomadic Cultural Memory .........20
     Notes ...................................................26

Chapter One:
Fear and Security: From Bugs to Worms .......................33
     Prologue: Foldings of Order and Cleanliness ............33
     Security in the Mainframe Era: from Creepers to Core Wars...39
     The shift in Safety: The 1980s..........................52
     Fred Cohen and Risks of Computer Viruses................63
     The Morris Worm: A Media Virus..........................75
     Computer Viruses and Network Society....................86
     Coda: Viral Capitalism..................................96
     Notes ..................................................101

Chapter Two:
II Body: Biopolitics of Digital Systems ....................119
     Prologue: How Are Bodies Formed?.......................119
     Diagrams of Contagion .................................126
     The Order-Word of AIDS ................................137
     Excursus: Faciality ...................................144
     Digital Immunology.....................................147
     The Care of the Self: Responsible Computing ...........161
     The Body of the Virus Writer: Irresponsible Vandalism..172

Chapter Three:
     Life: Viral Ecologies..................................199
     Prologue: The Life of Information......................199
     The Benevolent Viral Machine...........................207
     Cellular Automata and Simulated Ecologies .............216
     Organisms of Distributed Networks......................229
     Ecologies of Complexity and Networking ................244
     Coupling and Media Ecology.............................256
     Coda: Viral Philosophy ................................264
     Notes: ................................................272

Conclusions: Media Archaeology as Ecology...................285
     Notes: ................................................295

Appendix: 
A Timeline of Computer Viruses and The Viral Assemblage ....297