John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
American Academy in Berlin
New York University
Creative Capital
New York University
Prix Ars Electronica
Member, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study
Visiting Professor (Film and Visual Studies), Harvard University
Visiting Professor of Cinema Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Alexander R. Galloway is a media theorist, writer, and computer programmer whose work examines philosophy, digital media, networks, games, and theories of mediation. He is Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University and the author or coauthor of books including Protocol (MIT Press, 2004), Gaming (Minnesota, 2006), The Exploit (with Eugene Thacker; Minnesota, 2007), The Interface Effect (Polity, 2012), Excommunication (with Eugene Thacker and McKenzie Wark; Chicago, 2013), Laruelle: Against the Digital (Minnesota, 2014), and Uncomputable (Verso, 2021). He joined the NYU faculty in 2002 and has held visiting posts at the University of Pennsylvania (Spring 2012) and Harvard University (Fall 2016). Honors include a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2018 Berlin Prize, and a Golden Nica from the 2002 Prix Ars Electronica (as part of RSG’s “Carnivore”). citeturn1search6turn1search5turn21search0turn7search2turn15search0
A framework for analyzing video games as actions, classifying interactions along two axes—operator vs. machine and diegetic vs. non‑diegetic—yielding four types of gamic action. It links gameplay phenomenology to broader cultural and technical conditions.
Elaborates how technical protocols organize and govern distributed networks, making control immanent to decentralized systems. Treats code as a cultural text and maps layers of standards (e.g., TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP) as a distributed management apparatus.
Theory, Culture & Society (issue published Dec 2011; online Jan 2012) • Journal
Interrogates the limits of representation by asking how media confront phenomena that resist depiction. Engages debates in contemporary theory to show how practices of mediation both enable and foreclose visibility, reframing the problem of the unrepresentable for digital culture.
Games and Culture • Journal
Through a close reading of Jean Baudrillard, the essay tracks how his mature vocabulary—seduction, fatal strategies, illusion—reconfigures theories of play and games. It contrasts early Marxist themes with later accounts attuned to digitization, simulation, and mediation.
AI & Society • Journal
Presents RSG’s open‑source Carnivore as a case study to explain distributed data surveillance. Details the system’s architecture and client interfaces, the technological and political motivations for the project, and design challenges that remain, situating the work within debates on privacy, policy, and art–tech practice.
The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science • Journal
Derives general principles for understanding the information age by analyzing network protocols as mechanisms of control characterized by openness, flexibility, and voluntary adoption. Uses computer viruses to illustrate network vulnerabilities and the political challenges posed by contemporary, globally distributed systems.
Game Studies • Journal
Introduces “social realism” as a criterion for video games, arguing that realism arises when game action resonates with players’ lived political contexts. Using examples such as America’s Army and Middle Eastern titles, it proposes a “congruence” between gameplay and social reality as key to realist effects.
Verso Books • Book
A counter‑history of computation tracing episodes from photography and weaving to artificial life and war games. Through reconstructions of obsolete techniques, the book distinguishes the computable from the uncomputable and assesses the cultural and political stakes of the “cybernetic hypothesis” in the long digital age.
University of Minnesota Press • Book
A critical introduction to François Laruelle’s non‑standard philosophy that treats the “digital” as a philosophical—not merely technical—concept. Contrasts Laruelle’s One with the Zero of binary thought to critique digitality across computers, capitalism, art, ethics, and media.
University of Chicago Press • Book
Three linked essays argue that noncommunication is integral to communication. Galloway proposes a theory of mediation as exchange, illumination, and network; Thacker theorizes “dark media” at the limits of representation; and Wark advances a heretical swarm politics—together rethinking media, mediation, and the nonhuman.
Polity • Book
Reframes the interface as effect rather than object, arguing that digital media demand political interpretation. Interfaces are read as allegorical mediations shaped by technical, economic, and social forces, shifting attention from discrete artifacts to processes of translation and mediation across complex systems.
University of Minnesota Press • Book
Coauthored with Eugene Thacker, the book challenges the assumption that networks are inherently egalitarian. It shows how networks possess native modes of control and proposes the “exploit” as an asymmetrical counter‑topology, tracing examples from peer‑to‑peer systems to viral contagion and insurgent politics.
University of Minnesota Press • Book
Treats video games as actions rather than texts and develops a framework for classifying “gamic action” across operator/machine and diegetic/nondiegetic axes. Uses case analyses to connect realism, allegory, and avant‑garde practices to an emerging algorithmic culture, arguing that games make social and political logics playable.
The MIT Press (Leonardo Books) • Book
Argues that the Internet’s foundational logic is control enacted through technical protocols (e.g., TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP), not unfettered freedom. Reads code as a cultural text and shows how distributed networks are governed by layered, standardized procedures that enable connection and disconnection while shaping power. Explores practices of resistance and subversion within protocological systems.