Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Science-Fictional North Korea: A Defective History, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Kafkaesque, Orwellian, eerie, surreal, bizarre, grotesque, alien, wacky, fascinating, dystopian, illusive, theatrical, antic, haunting, apocalyptic: these are just a few of the vaguely science-fictional adjectives that are now associated with North Korea. At the same time, North Korea has become an oddly convenient trope for a certain aesthetic – an uncanny opacity; an ominous mystique – that many writers and artists have exploited to generate striking science-fictional effects in texts with little or no connection to North Korean reality. (The 2002 Bond film Die another Day, for example, draws from North Korea’s science-fictional aura to animate North Korean super-villains who …

Financial Markets And Online Advertising: Reevaluating The Dotcom Investment Bubble, Matthew Crain

Publications and Research

While the dotcom period is often dismissed as a false start in the history of the web’s commercial development, it is better conceived of as highly generative of modern structures of online advertising. Soaring investment markets and the developing online advertising sector entered into a pattern of mutual reinforcement that began in 1995 and intensified until the bubble collapsed in 2000, transforming the character of the web in the process. This article sketches the contours of this generative capacity, focusing on the production of demand for online advertising services. Taking the approach of critical political economy, this narrative is contextualized …