The Unseen Internet
Conjuring the Occult in Digital Discourse
- Paperback
232 pages
- Release Date
10 March 2026
Summary
How the intersection of magical thinking and technological innovation helped to form digital culture, both past and present.
Our contemporary digital landscape often reflects a strange logic- Elon Musk believes there’s a one-in-a-billion chance that we are not living in a computer simulation. People argue about culturally collective false memories popularly known as “Mandela Effects.” And various factions engaged in a magic meme war leading up to the 2016 election. In The Unseen I…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780262553889 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0262553880 |
| Author: | Shira Chess |
| Publisher: | MIT Press Ltd |
| Imprint: | MIT Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 232 |
| Release Date: | 10 March 2026 |
| Weight: | 369g |
| Dimensions: | 229mm x 152mm |
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Critics Review
ENDORSEMENTS
“In her authoritative account of the occult development of digital spaces, Shira Chess sympathetically chronicles the emergence of these newfound, unseen, interstitial realities, as well as their co-option by some of the darker forces promoting technology today.”
—Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest and Team Human
“Blending scholarship and deep research, Chess illuminates the occult dimensions of the internet then and now. The upshot: whether you believe in it or not, magical thinking lit the fire behind today’s digital meltdown of consensus reality.”
—Erik Davis, author of High Weirdness and Blotter
“By exploring the occultic encoding and decoding of the digital, Shira Chess provides an innovative (and spooky!) account of internet culture—and the esoteric beliefs that helped conjure it.”
—Whitney Phillips, coauthor of The Shadow Gospel
“With a mischievous sense of humor, a willful suspension of judgement, and a palpable respect for those she studies, Chess is a present-day psychopomp, leading curious readers into the digital underworld of online occultism, then and now.”
—Joshua Gunn, author of Political Perversion and Speech Craft
About The Author
Shira Chess
Shira Chess is Associate Professor of Entertainment and Media Studies at the University of Georgia. She is the author of Play Like a Feminist and Ready Player Two, and the coauthor of Folklore, Horror Stories, and the Slender Man.
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