Jussi Parikka, author of Digital Contagions is interviewed by Ignacio Nieto.

[Ignacio Nieto]: I am very interested in the way virus is conceived as thought: as an abstract form that can auto-replicate itself on an environment, in an autonomous way, without considering the system of relations based on capitalism or in religion or in politics (usually as we are organized in the public and private sphere). Do you think that there is a possibility to translate those kinds of considerations for human relationships? Could you imagine or describe, a possible world, where bioelectronic devices attached to humans, or to other organic forms or to other generations of machines could exist with that kind of protocol?

[Jussi Parikka]: What interested me early on with this project (Digital Contagions) was how to think the virus in itself as a form of thought, a vector, a mode of transmission and media. Instead of approaching it merely as a socially constructed metaphor that is fabricated in order to impose sense on the imperceptible events of the computer, it might be fruitful to approach the viral as carrier, a condensation point concerning much of the agenda concerning media in the age of networks....

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