Technopharmacology (2022), the new edited collection by Joshua Neves, Aleena Chia, Susanna Paasonen, and Ravi Sundaram, is out now through the University of Minnesota Press, and available via the open-access Meson Press. The book, part of the publisher's In Search of Media series, 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."
About Technopharmacology: 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.
About the authors
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.