Finn Brunton
School of Information
University of Michigan
3441 North Quad
105 S. State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285
Tel: 734-764-2064 | Fax: 734-615-3587
finnb@umich.edu | http://finnb.net
Centre for Modern Thought, University of Aberdeen, Scotland
Ph.D., Modern Thought, 2009
Dissertation title: “Spam in Action: Social Technology and Unintended Consequences.” Advisors: Prof. Christopher Fynsk, Prof. Mario Biagioli. Examiners: Prof. James Leach, Prof. Timothy Lenoir.
European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland
M.A., Communications Theory, 2006
UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
B.A., Interdisciplinary Studies, 2002
Assistant Professor of Information. School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Working on the digital humanities; adoption and adaptation of media, computing, and information systems; special focus on research in privacy, anonymity, innovation, and social dimensions of networking. 2010-current.
Postdoctoral Researcher. Department of Media, Culture and Communication, Steinhardt School, New York University. 2009-2010.
Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet. MIT Press, April 2013
Obfuscation (working title). With Helen Nissenbaum. In preparation
(Algorithmic Writing) (working title). In preparation
Thinking of Everything: Thick Gaming and the Art of Losing. In preparation
Closer to the Metal. With Gabriella Coleman. In Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society, ed. Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo Boczkowski, Kirsten Foot. MIT Press, forthcoming 2013
Political and Ethical Perspectives on Data Obfuscation. With Helen Nissenbaum. In Privacy, Due Process and the Computational Turn: The Philosophy of Law Meets the Philosophy of Technology, ed. Mireille Hildebrandt, Katja De Vries. Routledge, forthcoming April 2013
Chris Marker: 1921-2012. Radical Philosophy 176, Nov/Dec 2012
The Walled City: “Cannot One Dream of a Computer Hypothesis?” Radical Philosophy 175, Sept/Oct 2012
Constitutive Interference: Spam and Networked Communities. Representations 117, Winter 2012
Vernacular Resistance to Data Collection and Analysis: A Political Theory of Obfuscation. With Helen Nissenbaum. First Monday vol 16, no 5
Keyspace: Reflections on WikiLeaks and the Assange Papers. Radical Philosophy 166, Mar/Apr 2011
After WikiLeaks, Us The New Everyday, April 4, 2011
“Roar So Wildly”: Spam, Language, Technology. Radical Philosophy 164, Nov/Dec 2010
Digital and other new media (especially adaptation, modification, misuse and abuse); publicity, privacy, anonymity and trust; digital humanities; obsolete and experimental media; network culture and mediated subcultures; hardware and infrastructure literacy; architecture and industrial design
Future
Trusting the Numbers: Money and Community as Cryptographic Work. Explorers and Pirates: Digital creators and the creation of value(s), May 30 2013, European University at Saint Petersburg
Past
Creativity & Mayhem: Anonymous Communities at Work. With Gabriella Coleman and Quinn Norton. SXSWi, March 9 2013
Four Remarks on Spam for Transmediale. Transmediale, February 1 2013
Thinking of Everything: Algorithmic Gaming and Thick Simulation. Intel Science and Technology Center, November 19 2012, Cornell
Concentrate Upon the Effect: Notes Towards a History of Radical Media. A New Insurgency: The Port Huron Statement in Its Time and Ours, September 20 2012, University of Michigan
The Nonhumanities: Writing with Crowds and Algorithms. Institute for the Humanities 2012 Spring Seminar, May 5 2012, University of Michigan
The Metallurgical Machine: Exploring the Microchip with Dwarf Fortress. Gaming the Game, April 12 2012, UC Davis
All Tomorrow’s Pirates: Foucault, Gibson, and the Walled City. Radical Philosophy Conference, October 21 2011, Columbia University
Velocity/Growth: Essays and Experiments in the Digital Humanities. Institute for the Humanities, October 4 2011, University of Michigan
Dead Media: What the Obsolete, Unsuccessful, Experimental, and Avant-Garde Can Teach Us About the Future of Media. USENIX ATC 2011 and Webapps plenary session, June 16 2011, Portland OR
The Politics of User-Generated Content. With danah boyd, Mizuko Ito, Andres Monroy-Hernandez, and Jonathan McIntosh at Digital Media and Learning 2011, March 3-6, Long Beach, CA
Avenge Me: Anonymity, Publicity and Punishment on 4chan. Canadian Communications Association 2012, May 30, University of Waterloo
Cryptography, Auditing, Perturbation, Obfuscation. Computers, Privacy and Data Protection 2011, January 25-27, Brussels, Belgium
Secret Languages: Privacy, Ownership and Federated Social Networks. Privacy Research Group, October 6 2010, New York University
Vernacular Resistance to Data Collection and Surveillance: A Political Theory of Obfuscation. EASST 2010, September 2-4 2010, Trento, Italy
An Infinite Continuum of Spewage: Bayesian filtering and the reinvention of spam. International Symposium on Electronic Art, August 20-29 2010, Ruhr, Germany
A User’s Guide to Lulzy Media, the Pleasure of Trickery, and the Politics of Spectacle: from Luddites to Anonymous. With Prof. Gabriella Coleman at Hackers On Planet Earth, July 17 2010, New York City
The Unbook. Computers and Writing Conference, May 20-23 2010, Purdue University
The Pleasure of Spam: Metagaming and Misuse in Early Computer Culture. Cultural Studies Association, March 18-20 2010, UC Berkeley
Creating and violating anonymity in online communities: the case of 4chan, Anon, and Dusty the Cat. Privacy Research Group, February 24 2010, New York University
Communicating With and About Information. Fall 2013, in preparation.
SI110: Introduction to Information. Winter 2011, School of Information, University of Michigan.
SI535: Dead Media: Preserving Culture and Context. Winter 2011, School of Information, University of Michigan.
Dead Media Research Studio. Fall 2010, Department of Media, Culture & Communication, NYU-Steinhardt.
Introduction to Digital Media. Spring 2010, Department of Media, Culture & Communication, NYU-Steinhardt.
Digital Humanities: Contexts and Platforms. Co-taught with Dr. Kriss Ravetto, Fall 2008, School of Language & Literature, University of Aberdeen.
Co-founder of the Office of Net Assessments publishing project, 2013
Co-organizing the Digital Environments / Cyberinfrastructure (DE/CI) 2013 Series
Co-organizing the Science, Technology, & Medicine in Society (STeMS) 2013 series
Member of the Digital Environments Cluster
Member of the Values in Design (VID) Council, working with the Future Internet Architecture Workshop for the National Science Foundation, 2010-present
Consulting on the Unbook Lab at Illinois State University, 2010
Member of the Privacy Research Group, NYU, 2009-10
Member of the Mediations Group, NYU, 2009-10
http://enfoldment.net Collaborated with Processing artists and Prof. Laura Marks to create companion site for Enfoldment and Infinity (MIT, 2010)
http://finnb.net/a/b/ “Barricade/Labyrinth: Ten Years of Read/Writing Walter Benjamin,” personal project, 2010
http://crissp.poly.edu Creating and managing website for the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Security and Privacy, 2010
Created or consulted on various academic sitesGave interviews about social networks, spam, and digital culture by National Public Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, IEEE Spectrum, the New York Times, the Corriere della Sera, etc.