“In this rich genealogy of the concept of the server Krajewski blends literary and historical evidence and media studies—brilliantly thought-provoking!”—Ann Blair, author of Too Much To Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age
“The Server is an intellectual romp, a learned and literate account of proxy servers, mailer daemons, and an astonishing parade of historical factotums and underlings that presaged today’s client-server logic. This is the history of agential knowing—in short, of media—dressed in livery, waiting on call, at your service.”— Lisa Gitelman, New York University
“Markus Krajewski has rescued from neglect a whole cast of characters—such go-betweens as demons, angels, bookkeepers, and doorkeepers—to show them in all their rollicking mischievousness. This book is at once a literary, social, semantic, and technical history—that is, a media history, and it casts a fresh and strange light on our moment.”—John Durham Peters, Yale University
“Descartes once proudly proclaimed that humans should understand themselves as 'masters and owners of nature.' Since then, most philosophers consider knowledge as emerging from rational, cognitive, and discursive structures. Krajewski’s stunningly original book finds it elsewhere--upending our common understanding of science, technology, and political philosophy--by showing that knowledge depends of the successful exploitation of the lowliest of the low.”— Jimena Canales, author of The Physicist and the Philosopher
“A breathtaking display of erudition, Markus Krajewski's The Server weaves together history, literature, and media theory into a potent critique of the governing metaphors of the digital age.”— Daniel Rosenberg, coauthor of Cartographies of Time
“In this rich genealogy of the concept of the server Krajewski blends literary and historical evidence and media studies—brilliantly thought-provoking!”—Ann Blair, author of Too Much To Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age
~Ann Blair
“The Server is an intellectual romp, a learned and literate account of proxy servers, mailer daemons, and an astonishing parade of historical factotums and underlings that presaged today’s client-server logic. This is the history of agential knowing—in short, of media—dressed in livery, waiting on call, at your service.”— Lisa Gitelman, New York University
“Markus Krajewski has rescued from neglect a whole cast of characters—such go-betweens as demons, angels, bookkeepers, and doorkeepers—to show them in all their rollicking mischievousness. This book is at once a literary, social, semantic, and technical history—that is, a media history, and it casts a fresh and strange light on our moment.”—John Durham Peters, Yale University
~John Durham Peters
“Descartes once proudly proclaimed that humans should understand themselves as 'masters and owners of nature.' Since then, most philosophers consider knowledge as emerging from rational, cognitive, and discursive structures. Krajewski’s stunningly original book finds it elsewhere--upending our common understanding of science, technology, and political philosophy--by showing that knowledge depends of the successful exploitation of the lowliest of the low.”— Jimena Canales, author of The Physicist and the Philosopher
~Jimena Canales
“A breathtaking display of erudition, Markus Krajewski's The Server weaves together history, literature, and media theory into a potent critique of the governing metaphors of the digital age.”— Daniel Rosenberg, coauthor of Cartographies of Time
~Daniel Rosenberg
