An Interview with Tony David Sampson: Author of Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks

Abstract

Tony D. Sampson is Reader in Digital Culture and Communication in the School of Arts and Digital Industries (ADI) at the University of East London, where he directs the EmotionUX lab, supervising research on the cognitive, emotional, and affective aspects of user experience. In 2013, he co-founded Club Critical Theory, an organization dedicated to the application of critical theory in everyday life in Southend-on-Sea, Essex. Tony is the author of Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks and The Assemblage Brain: Sense Making in Neuroculture, both from the University of Minnesota Press. He blogs at viralcontagion.wordpress.com. The editors of this special NANO issue are delighted to have the opportunity to talk with Tony about how his work touches on issues of imitation and contagion—a loaded term unpacked within his 2012 book.

Keywords

• Assemblage
• network theory
• contagion
• originality
• imitation
• Tony David Sampson
• critical theory