Why do we view our networked devices as “personal” when they are so chatty and promiscuous? What would happen, Wendy Chun asks, if, rather than pushing for privacy that is no privacy, we demanded public rights—the right to be exposed, to take risks and to be in public and not be attacked?
The rise of networks has been central to the emergence of neoliberalism, replacing “society” with groupings of individuals and connectable “YOUS.”
Analytic, creative, and commercial efforts focus exclusively on the next big thing: figuring out what will spread and who will spread it the fastest. Chun suggests another approach, arguing that our media matter most when they have become habitual, and we become our machines: streaming, updating, capturing, linking, trashing and trolling.

Published 2016, Hardcover, 264 pp., 44 b&w illus.