alexander0's review against another edition
3.0
One thing that's certainly impressive with this book is the sheer mass of interdisciplinary synthesis required to understand this book. If you are looking for an encyclopedia of work on the relationship of everything to the "agent" this is your book.
That said, there's no way to justify half of this book as being reasonable theory. Mostly the author speaks in prose, with little thought to justification outside of outdated news and popular interdisciplinary design and Continental philosophy references. I had much higher hopes for this work. In terms of the structure proposed, the "brief" was around 250 pages. It could have been done in 50. Also, it could have been done without half of the creative prose and anecdotal references. It seemed as though the author was going for breadth in references and didn't actually use them except for a surface claim. This was a strange academic read!
UPDATE (June 28, 2019): After a second read of this book, I moved my review of it from 2 to 3 stars. The reason for this is somewhat simple. Firstly, all of the above still applies. However, now having more of a background in theories of information, technology, design, and continental philosophy have shown me that with the required reading, this book shines a little more.
That said, the average reader must be patient than almost any reader should ever have to be in order to understand the details of this theoretical romp. There were so many better ways to condense this argument without losing anything. There's a lot of pretentiousness here. He does warn you in the first few pages that he will be unapologetically interdisciplinary. What he means is he will cite everything without clear explanation of most things or choices in citation. For example, he never makes it clear why he chooses his form of Sovereignty that he critiques. He just does, and uses it extensively without much clarity on what it means.
As much of a Goliath as this book is, you will have to use a search engine a good bit in order to understand it, making it even more laborious. That's not a mark of a good book usually, but I'm coming to realize this book has something crucially important to say, it just doesn't say it easily when it could have. Bratton could take from Galloway's writing in _Protocol_ in his future writing. As much as I love the subject matter here (and his choices are growing on me as I see the alternatives) I don't have it in me to read another book like this. The subject matter here is becoming too obvious to be this complex. It will eventually be the norm to think this way, but this book will have been read by essentially nobody by then. This is not going to be as academically productive of a read as such comparably dense writing as Hegel, Marx, or the like even if it is just as revolutionary.
So instead, because I see this book as important but near impenetrable, I will suggest you do some homework first. Read the following before you begin:
-Marx's _Capital_
-Deleuze, as much as you can stand, particularly his work with Guattari and _Difference & Repetition_
-Foucault: _Discipline and Punish_
-Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society" and _The Road to Serfdom_
-Galloway's _Protocol_
-Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto
-Latour's _Reassembling the Social_ (or Mike Michaels' book _Actor-Network Theory_)
-Some kind of introduction of Speculative Realism/Materialism
If you have this down, then you will have a much more steady grasp of the speculative materialist perspective provisioned here.
That said, there's no way to justify half of this book as being reasonable theory. Mostly the author speaks in prose, with little thought to justification outside of outdated news and popular interdisciplinary design and Continental philosophy references. I had much higher hopes for this work. In terms of the structure proposed, the "brief" was around 250 pages. It could have been done in 50. Also, it could have been done without half of the creative prose and anecdotal references. It seemed as though the author was going for breadth in references and didn't actually use them except for a surface claim. This was a strange academic read!
UPDATE (June 28, 2019): After a second read of this book, I moved my review of it from 2 to 3 stars. The reason for this is somewhat simple. Firstly, all of the above still applies. However, now having more of a background in theories of information, technology, design, and continental philosophy have shown me that with the required reading, this book shines a little more.
That said, the average reader must be patient than almost any reader should ever have to be in order to understand the details of this theoretical romp. There were so many better ways to condense this argument without losing anything. There's a lot of pretentiousness here. He does warn you in the first few pages that he will be unapologetically interdisciplinary. What he means is he will cite everything without clear explanation of most things or choices in citation. For example, he never makes it clear why he chooses his form of Sovereignty that he critiques. He just does, and uses it extensively without much clarity on what it means.
As much of a Goliath as this book is, you will have to use a search engine a good bit in order to understand it, making it even more laborious. That's not a mark of a good book usually, but I'm coming to realize this book has something crucially important to say, it just doesn't say it easily when it could have. Bratton could take from Galloway's writing in _Protocol_ in his future writing. As much as I love the subject matter here (and his choices are growing on me as I see the alternatives) I don't have it in me to read another book like this. The subject matter here is becoming too obvious to be this complex. It will eventually be the norm to think this way, but this book will have been read by essentially nobody by then. This is not going to be as academically productive of a read as such comparably dense writing as Hegel, Marx, or the like even if it is just as revolutionary.
So instead, because I see this book as important but near impenetrable, I will suggest you do some homework first. Read the following before you begin:
-Marx's _Capital_
-Deleuze, as much as you can stand, particularly his work with Guattari and _Difference & Repetition_
-Foucault: _Discipline and Punish_
-Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society" and _The Road to Serfdom_
-Galloway's _Protocol_
-Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto
-Latour's _Reassembling the Social_ (or Mike Michaels' book _Actor-Network Theory_)
-Some kind of introduction of Speculative Realism/Materialism
If you have this down, then you will have a much more steady grasp of the speculative materialist perspective provisioned here.
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