The Geek's Chihuahua: Living with Apple
By (Author) Ian Bogost
University of Minnesota Press
University of Minnesota Press
22nd April 2015
United States
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Media studies
Digital and information technologies: social and ethical aspects
004.167
Paperback
88
Width 127mm, Height 178mm, Spine 25mm
At dinnertime: check. At a traffic light: check. In bed at the end of the day: check. In line at the coffee shop: check. In The Geek's Chihuahua, Ian Bogost addresses the modern love affair of "living with Apple" during the height of the company's market influence and technology dominance. The ubiquitous iPhone and its kin saturate our lives, changing everything from our communication to our posture. Bogost contrasts the values of Apple's massive success in the twenty-first century with those of its rise in the twentieth. And he connects living with Apple with the phenomenon of "hyperemployment"-the constant overwork of today's technological life that all of us now experience. Bogost also reflects on the new potential function-as well as anxiety and anguish-of devices like the Apple Watch. We are tethered to our devices, and, as Bogost says: that's just life-anxious, overworked, and utterly networked life. Forerunners: Ideas First is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital publications. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.
Ian Bogost is Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in media studies and Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology.