Finn Brunton
Finn Brunton is the author of Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet (MIT Press, 2013), Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest with Helen Nissenbaum (MIT Press, 2015), Communication with Mercedes Bunz and Paula Bialski (University of Minnesota Press/Meson, 2019), and Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Technologists, and Utopians Who Created Cryptocurrency (Princeton University Press, 2019) along with numerous articles and papers.
Research Interests
Histories and theories of technology; history of computing (pre- and post-electronic), networking, early programming, cryptography; hacking and hacker culture, free and open source software; failed technologies, vaporware, theories of hype, dead media, abandoned infrastructure; transhumanism, cosmism, cryonics, Extropians; surveillance and privacy; currencies, cryptocurrencies, transaction and payment systems, debt, alternative and experimental currencies; history of capitalism, socialist calculation problem, Cybersyn, autonomy, workerism/operaismo; ancient technologies: knots and knotting, cordage and textiles, mnemonics, metallurgy, foraging, load carriage; abolitionist projects; historiography, theories of history, Ginzburg, Braudel, Koselleck; manufacturing and logistics. Currently working on a project about the history and practices of rational utopians and their media over the last two hundred years or so.
Source: University of California, Davis and NYU Steinhardt
