In his newest book, Info-Aesthetics, world-renowned software studies expert Professor Lev Manovich investigates the ways in which the shift from an industrial to information society has resulted in new aesthetic sensibilities and representations. In doing so, he poses the following questions: Does new media represent a 'new avant-garde' of information? How can an information society be represented iconically if the activities that define it are all so dynamic? What are the cultural consequences of extending the internet into the physical world?
He answers these hot button questions by focusing on the underlying engine driving the current aesthetisation of information: software. Akin to the combustion engine making industrial society possible, Manovich demonstrates that software similarly enables information society and that it is in software that the new cultural logic manifests itself most clearly. A cutting-edge and systematic examination of contemporary culture, Info-Aesthetics acknowledges software as a critical societal force and successfully establishes it as a key subject for study and discussion.
