Abstract

Under the concept of deformations, this chapter presents crucial aspects that link the phenomena of swarms to media theory. Here swarms are treated as a materialization of Serres's figure of the ‘parasite.’ By attending to disruptive potential, swarm research has yielded new information in the context of a comprehensive media theory of interference. This includes methodological insights that are productive for concepts of media historiography. The chapter closes by tracing the epistemological and cultural-technical expansion of the zone affected by swarms. The conversion of the swarm as an object of knowledge into an operative figure of knowledge by computer simulation signifies a general shift in epistemic strategies: self-organizational phenomena came to be applied to the study of complex interactive processes.

Keywords: media theory, parasite, noise, cultural techniques, computer simulation, epistemology

We are fascinated by the unit; only a unit seems rational to us. We scorn the senses, because their information reaches us in bursts. We scorn the groupings of the world (things like ‘a flight of screaming birds,’ ‘a cloud of chirping crickets,’ ‘crowds, packs, hordes on the move’) […]. Disaggregation and aggregation, as such, and without contradiction […] are repugnant to us. […] We want a principle, a system, an integration, and we want elements, atoms, numbers. We want them, and we make them. A single God, and identifiable individuals.