Announcing three new reviews in the AI 'magazine' Robot Review of Books:
https://www.robotreviewofbooks.org/
RRB #17 I’m Like a PDF But a Girl: Girlblogging as a Nomadic Pedagogy by
Ester Freider
I'm Like a PDF But a Girl explores girlblogging culture as a
transformative form of cyberfeminist pedagogy. Blending literary
analysis, digital ethnography and personal experience, Freider reframes
Tumblr as a living research field. Girlblogging here is not a frivolous
pastime: it’s a form of pirate feminism, a radical engagement with
information's transformative potential.
RRB #18 On Giving Up by Adam Phillips - Part I: On Curiosity
In On Giving Up, Adam Phillips suggests that to feel alive we must
relinquish our ‘habitual tactics and techniques’ for deadening
ourselves. His book can be read as an invitation to notice not just what
we give up but also what we cling to. Yet what does Phillips himself
cling to in the very act of writing about giving up?
RRB #19 On Giving Up by Adam Phillips - Part II: On Aliveness
What alternative experiments in writing and publishing today embody what
Phillips insists we need: ways of sustaining aliveness in writing,
publishing, and thinking, the ‘true antidote to giving up’?
Computational books? Processual books? Robot reviews of books?
---
Robot Review of Books:
https://www.robotreviewofbooks.org/
<https://archive.org/details/no-1-rrb-introduction-v-2>
The Robot Review of Books is an AI ‘magazine’ consisting of short
computational media essays that are typically structured as book
reviews. Think of it as a 21st century version of the London Review of
Books - although in being presented by AI avatars it’s the first of its
kind.
Free: No subscriptions, no paywalls.
Non-Surveillance Capitalist: Viewer privacy is respected with no
collection, storage or sale of personal data.
Quiet: No hype, no appeals for likes, shares or follows.
The RRB has a bibliodiverse editorial policy that takes in works from
alternative, independent and open access publishers, not just legacy
print presses, in an attempt to avoid repeating the same old
pre-programmed ideas and patterns of behaviour. This policy extends from
material published by ‘professional’ entities in authoritative formats,
such as books and journal articles, through that made available more
informally using blogs, websites and newsletters, to experiments with
collaborative publishing platforms, so-called internet piracy and
beyond. Both established knowledges and those that are perhaps
considered a little strange when measured against the dominant criteria
of the Euro-Western university are part of this bibliodiversity. Texts
authored substantially by AI, for example.
--
Gary Hall
Professor of Media
Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University
Director of Open Humanities Press:http://www.openhumanitiespress.org
Blog:http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/
Latest:
Book: Masked Media: What It Means to Be Human in the Age of Artificial Creative
Intelligence:http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/masked-media/
Journal issue: Ecologies of Dissemination issue of PARSE Journal #21 - Summer
2025, edited by Eva Weinmayr and Femke
Snelting:https://parsejournal.com/journal/#ecologies-of-dissemination. (I'm one
of the contributors to this experimental issue which emphasizes collective over
individual authorship.)
Video: 'Liquidate AI Art', Computer Arts
Society:https://www.bcs.org/events-calendar/2025/october/webinar-liquidate-ai-art
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