The 'Cloud', hailed as a new digital commons, a utopia of collaborative expression and constant connection, actually constitutes a strategy of vitalist post-hegemonic power, which moves to dominate immanently and intensively, organizing our affective political involvements, instituting new modes of enclosure, and, crucially, colonizing the future through a new temporality of control. The virtual is often claimed as a realm of invention through which capitalism might be cracked, but it is precisely here that power now thrives. Cloud time, in service of security and profit, assumes all is knowable. We bear witness to the collapse of both past and future virtuals into a present dedicated to the exploitation of the spectres of both.

About the Author
Rob Coley is currently a Doctoral candidate at the University of Lincoln, researching the power and politics of contemporary visuality. Dean Lockwood, awarded a PhD in Sociology at York in 1996, is a Senior Lecturer in Media Theory in the School of Media at the University of Lincoln.

Reviews
It's not only your head that is in the Cloud, but your whole body in its desires, actions, reactions, hiccups and errors too. Coley and Lockwood show in their strong theoretical take on cloudy media cultures that the more invisible control becomes, the more we need to develop fresh theoretical tools to open it up. Cloud Time offers a much-needed analysis of contemporary capitalism as a perverse form of informationalization and quantification of life to which we happily, voluntarily contribute. Even Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has admitted to the difficulty involved in clearly defining the Cloud - and yet, Coley and Lockwood give us excellent clues.(Jussi Parikka, Author of 'Insect Media' and 'Digital Contagions')



Book Information
ISBN 9781780990958
Author Rob Coley
Format Paperback
Page Count 128
Imprint Zero Books
Publisher Collective Ink
Weight(grams) 138g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 145mm * 9mm