Hashtag (Object Lessons) - Softcover

Elizabeth Losh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501344277 ISBN 13: 9781501344275

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019

Synopsis

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Hashtags can silence as well as shout. They originate in the quiet of the archive and the breathless suspense of the control room, and find voice in the roar of rallies in the streets. The #hashtag is a composite creation, with two separate but related design histories: one involving the crosshatch symbol and one about the choice of letters after it.

Celebration and criticism of hashtag activism rarely address the hashtag as an object or try to locate its place in the history of writing for machines. Although hashtags tend to be associated with Silicon Valley invention myths or celebrity power users, the story of the hashtag is much longer and more surprising, speaking to how we think about naming, identity, and being human in a non-human world.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

About this title

About the Author

Elizabeth Losh is Associate Professor of English and American Studies at William and Mary, USA. She is the author The War on Learning: Gaining Ground in the Digital University (MIT Press, 2014), winner of the Mina Shaughnessy Award, Honorable Mention, Modern Language Association 2017, Conference of College Composition and Communication Outstanding Book Award 2016, and Donald McGannon Award for Social & Ethical Relevance in Communications Technology Research 2015. Her other publications include Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History of Government Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster, Miscommunication, and Mistakes (MIT Press, 2009) a textbook in the form of a graphic novel, Understanding Rhetoric, co-authored with Jonathan Alexander (Bedford St. Martins, 2013; second edition 2017), and, as editor, MOOC and Their Afterlives: Experiments in Scale and Access in Higher Education, editor (University of Chicago Press, 2017).

From the Back Cover

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Hashtags silence as well as shout. They originate in the quiet of the archive and the breathless suspense of the control room, as well as in the roar of rallies in the streets. The #hashtag is a composite creation, with two separate design histories: one involving the crosshatch symbol and one about the choice of letters after it. Celebration and criticism of hashtag activism rarely addresses the hashtag itself as an object or tries to locate its place in the history of writing for machines. Although hashtags tend to be associated with Silicon Valley invention myths or celebrity power users, the story of the hashtag is much more interesting and surprising, speaking to how we think about naming, identity, and ownership. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1501344277
• ISBN 13: 9781501344275
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160