Book review: Svitlana Matviyenko and Paul D. Miller (Eds.), The imaginary App

As an increasing number of online products and services move to mobile incarnations, an edited collection that focuses on apps as a media genre—their affordances, ideologies, and consequences—is more timely than ever. Part of MIT Press’s Software Studies series,  The Imaginary App  assembles contributions from scholars, artists, and independent researchers to analyze apps through a diversity of approaches, including media analytic, sociological, philosophical, and psychoanalytic. Coedited by media scholar Svitlana Matviyenko and multimedia artist, writer, and composer Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, the collection explores the sometimes synergetic, sometimes parasitic, but always complex interconnections between apps and their users.