Ethical Programs

"Ethical Programs offers digital studies, rhetoric and composition, computers and writing, and new media an important work on the question of hospitality. Brown demonstrates that hospitality is at the core of network interactions--particularly where exploits, political campaigning, wiki editing, and other activities occur."
--Jeff Rice, University of Kentucky

"James J. Brown Jr. is without question one of the most sophisticated theorists working in the rapidly emerging field of digital rhetoric today. Not many writers can knowledgeably combine readings of continental philosophy, close interpretation of lines of computer code and data analytics, and commentary on Internet policies and practices; yet Brown does so expertly and confidently. This book is a must read in for scholars of digital culture interested in the politics of protocols. With examples that range from Wikipedia entries to updates from the Obama campaign website, the reader grows to understand not only how software promotes particular arguments but also how it advances an ethical agenda endowed with considerable nuance that must by necessity expand our understanding of conflict and hospitality."
--Elizabeth Losh, University of California, San Diego

"Jim Brown's work is a critical contribution to the growing body of scholarship studying software as a cultural form. Ethical Programs exposes the way computer programs--typically understood as strictly utilitarian tools--in fact embody, structure, and project a sense of ethics in networked environments."
--Mark Sample, Davidson College