Dear all, I am proud to announce the appearance of my new book, Zero Comments, Blogging and Critical Internet Culture, the third volume in a series on critical Internet culture (after Dark Fiber and My First Recession). I got it in the mail on Friday, you can order it through Amazon but I am not sure if it has yet arrived in bookshops. The book contains eleven essays and an introduction that deals with Web 2.0 and Internet culture after its recovery of 9/11 and the dotcom crash. This is the table of content: Introduction: Pride and Glory of Web 2.0 Blogging, the Nihilist Impulse The Cool Obscure: Crisis of New Media Arts Whereabouts of German Media Theory Blogging & Building: The Netherlands After Digitization Indifference of the Networked Presence: On Internet Time Revisiting Sarai: Five Years of New Media Culture in India ICT After Development: The Incommunicado Agenda Updating Tactical Media: Strategies for Media Activism Axioms of Free Cooperation: Contesting Online Collaboration Theses on Distributed Aesthetics Introducing Organized Networks: The Quest for Sustainable Concepts And this is the original blurb that I wrote for the backcover: In Zero Comments Geert Lovink upgrades worn-out concepts and inquires the latest Web 2.0 hype around blogs, wikis and social network sites. In this third volume of his studies into critical Internet culture, Lovink develops a 'general theory of blogging.' Unlike most publications he is not focusing on the dynamics between bloggers and the mainstream news media. Instead of celebrating 'citizen journalism' blogs are analyzed in their 'nihilist impulse' to empty out established meaning structures. Blogs bring on decay of the 20th century broadcast media, and are proud of their in-crowd aspect in which linking, tagging and ranking have become the main drivers. The book also deals with the silent globalization of the Net in which no longer the West, but countries like India, China and Brazil are becoming main players in new media culture. It is not only the latest that Internet enthusiasts should focus on. Zero Comments upgrades concepts such as global Internet time, tactical media, the crisis of new media arts and the problematic relationship between architecture and the Net. The book ends with speculative notions on concepts such as organized networks, free cooperation and distributed aesthetics. Zero Comments contains two large essays, the extended chapter on blogging and my take on new media arts. The book has made an interesting three years journey. I started working on it in Brisbane in July 2003, then took it to Amsterdam and finished at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. I closed the manuscript eleven months ago, early September 2006. The book has won an honorable mention, the 2007 Ars Electronica Media Art Research Award, will come out this Fall in German (Transkript Verlag, Bielefeld) and in a shortened edition in Italian (with Bruno Mondadori). I am not sure yet if and where launches and presentations will be held. For now I am excited to hold it in my hand and flip through the pages. Let the Infrastructure do its workâand then you can have a read. Thanks for everyone who supported me in the writing and enjoy! With regards, Geert