We live in an age when consumption and consuming have come to define us. Consumption, now a global phenomenon, is so dominant it allows little room for alternatives. At the same time, information and digitization have become all-pervasive in our media culture . As ever greater aspects of the world have come to be seen as 'data', information has increasingly become the very currency of consumption.Consumption in an Age of Information maps this new terrain. Bringing together some of the world's leading theorists and critics, the essays range across high theory and popular culture - from informational flows to science fiction simulations, from pop-cultural consumption to capitalism as religion, from the consumption of time to the role of 'speed' in contemporary culture.

Film Analysis offers concise analyses of fifty diverse and historically significant films each written exclusively for the text by a leading scholar. Written with the undergraduate in mind, the essays are clear, readable, and great models for students to follow in helping them to hone their own writing. The Second Edition includes six new essays, a new, detailed guide to writing film analysis, and an extensive, up-to-date glossary of critical film terms."

In an age of high tech, our experience of technology has changed tremendously, yet the definition of technology has remained largely unquestioned. High Techne redresses this gap in thinking about technology, examining the shifting relations of technology, art, and culture from the beginnings of modernity to contemporary technocultures.

Drawing on the Greek root of technology (techne, generally translated as "art, skill, or craft"), R. L. Rutsky challenges both the modernist notion of technology as an instrument or tool and the conventional idea of a noninstrumental aesthetics. Today, technology and aesthetics have again begun to come together: even basketball shoes are said to exhibit a "high-tech style" and the most advanced technology is called "state of the art." Rutsky charts the history and vicissitudes of this new high-tech techne up to our day -- from Fritz Lang to Octavia Butler, Thomas Edison to Japanese Anime, constructivism to cyberspace.

Progressing from the major art movements of modernism to contemporary science fiction and cultural theory, Rutsky provides clear and compelling evidence of a shift in the cultural conceptions of technology and art and demonstrates the centrality of technology to modernism and postmodernism.

Today, we live in an age where consumption and consuming have become dominant practices - so dominant they allow little room for alternatives. Consumption has become a global phenomenon. This expansion of consumption has occurred at the same time as notions of information and digitization have become all-pervasive in our media culture . As ever greater aspects of the world have come to be seen as data, information has increasingly become the very currency of consumption.Consumption in an Age of Information analyses this new relationship between information and consumption. Leading theorists and critics map this new terrain, ranging across high theory and popular culture - from E-Bay auctions to smart homes, from the everyday consumption of MP3 files and DVDs to the rituals of media violence, from internet-surfing to the role of speed in contemporary culture.