Vol. 5 No. 1 (2016): Excessive Research

Excessive Research highlights the compulsive actions of digital culture, and how we are constantly encouraged to stay active, to make, to share and to secure. While idealised by hackers, these actions are at the same time the conveyors of new agile innovation strategies, and modes of economic and symbolic exchange. A culture of sharing, for instance, is evidently one of the most fetishised activities of the network and describes how value is now created. ‘Sharing is caring’, goes the catchphrase, but by its inclination of excess, loss and indebtedness, sharing also challenges the very logic of accumulation, and hence it must be domesticated and normalised. Articles delve into the nature of these actions and their limits, asking: What happens when research is less about exchange and more about excess?