Brett Bourbon is Professor of English Literature at the University of Dallas. He is also a Visiting Professor in The Program of Literary Theory, University of Lisbon. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard, and was a professor at Stanford. He was awarded a Mellon post-doctoral fellowship and a Fulbright Award. He has published many essays and four books, including Finding a Replacement for the Soul: meaning and mind in literature and philosophy (Harvard UP, 2004), Everyday Poetics: Ethics, Love, and Logic (Bloomsbury Press, 2022), Jane Austen And the Ethics of Life (Routledge Press, 2022), and Thinking with Words: A Literary Groundwork (with Miguel Tamen) (Routledge Press, Forthcoming 2024).Renita Murimi is an Associate Professor of Cybersecurity at the University of Dallas. She received her PhD and MS in Electrical Engineering from New Jersey Institute of Technology. Her research interests are in the areas of cybersecurity and network science. She has received the Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges Exploration grant. Her research has been widely published in journals, book chapters and conference proceedings. She is also the author of an upcoming book titled Ten Modern Cryptographic Algorithms (Forthcoming, No Starch Press).

• IntroductionPart I: A Crisis of Knowledge and Everyday Epistemology1. Problems with the Concept of Knowledge2. Knowledge Is Necessarily Contingent and Normative3. The Practices of Redescription (Paradiastole)Part II: Information and Misinformation4. What Is Information?5. Shannon’s Theory of Information6. Data, Counting, and Writing7. Is Information Subjective or Objective? Or Neither?8. Is Misinformation a Kind of Information? (Or Must Information Be True?)9. Truth Is Seldom the Motive : The Complexity of Human MotivesPart III: Gossip and Rumor10. A Critique of Current Models of Information Diffusion11. Gossip and Rumor12. A Discursive Grammar of Traditional GossipPart IV: Online Interfaces13. Online Information Diffusion as Gossip and Dreamscape14. The Grammar of Online Self‑Gossip15. The ‘Information Ecosystem’ and Gossiping AIsConclusionChapter 16 ◾ The Dynamo and the Internet

Brett Bourbon is Professor of English Literature at the University of Dallas. He is also a Visiting Professor in The Program of Literary Theory, University of Lisbon. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard, and was a professor at Stanford. He was awarded a Mellon post-doctoral fellowship and a Fulbright Award. He has published many essays and four books, including Finding a Replacement for the Soul: meaning and mind in literature and philosophy (Harvard UP, 2004), Everyday Poetics: Ethics, Love, and Logic (Bloomsbury Press, 2022), Jane Austen And the Ethics of Life (Routledge Press, 2022), and Thinking with Words: A Literary Groundwork (with Miguel Tamen) (Routledge Press, Forthcoming 2024).Renita Murimi is an Associate Professor of Cybersecurity at the University of Dallas. She received her PhD and MS in Electrical Engineering from New Jersey Institute of Technology. Her research interests are in the areas of cybersecurity and network science. She has received the Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges Exploration grant. Her research has been widely published in journals, book chapters and conference proceedings. She is also the author of an upcoming book titled Ten Modern Cryptographic Algorithms (Forthcoming, No Starch Press).

• IntroductionPart I: A Crisis of Knowledge and Everyday Epistemology1. Problems with the Concept of Knowledge2. Knowledge Is Necessarily Contingent and Normative3. The Practices of Redescription (Paradiastole)Part II: Information and Misinformation4. What Is Information?5. Shannon’s Theory of Information6. Data, Counting, and Writing7. Is Information Subjective or Objective? Or Neither?8. Is Misinformation a Kind of Information? (Or Must Information Be True?)9. Truth Is Seldom the Motive : The Complexity of Human MotivesPart III: Gossip and Rumor10. A Critique of Current Models of Information Diffusion11. Gossip and Rumor12. A Discursive Grammar of Traditional GossipPart IV: Online Interfaces13. Online Information Diffusion as Gossip and Dreamscape14. The Grammar of Online Self‑Gossip15. The ‘Information Ecosystem’ and Gossiping AIsConclusionChapter 16 ◾ The Dynamo and the Internet

Brett Bourbon is Professor of English Literature at the University of Dallas. He is also a Visiting Professor in The Program of Literary Theory, University of Lisbon. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard, and was a professor at Stanford. He was awarded a Mellon post-doctoral fellowship and a Fulbright Award. He has published many essays and four books, including Finding a Replacement for the Soul: meaning and mind in literature and philosophy (Harvard UP, 2004), Everyday Poetics: Ethics, Love, and Logic (Bloomsbury Press, 2022), Jane Austen And the Ethics of Life (Routledge Press, 2022), and Thinking with Words: A Literary Groundwork (with Miguel Tamen) (Routledge Press, Forthcoming 2024).Renita Murimi is an Associate Professor of Cybersecurity at the University of Dallas. She received her PhD and MS in Electrical Engineering from New Jersey Institute of Technology. Her research interests are in the areas of cybersecurity and network science. She has received the Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges Exploration grant. Her research has been widely published in journals, book chapters and conference proceedings. She is also the author of an upcoming book titled Ten Modern Cryptographic Algorithms (Forthcoming, No Starch Press).

• IntroductionPart I: A Crisis of Knowledge and Everyday Epistemology1. Problems with the Concept of Knowledge2. Knowledge Is Necessarily Contingent and Normative3. The Practices of Redescription (Paradiastole)Part II: Information and Misinformation4. What Is Information?5. Shannon’s Theory of Information6. Data, Counting, and Writing7. Is Information Subjective or Objective? Or Neither?8. Is Misinformation a Kind of Information? (Or Must Information Be True?)9. Truth Is Seldom the Motive : The Complexity of Human MotivesPart III: Gossip and Rumor10. A Critique of Current Models of Information Diffusion11. Gossip and Rumor12. A Discursive Grammar of Traditional GossipPart IV: Online Interfaces13. Online Information Diffusion as Gossip and Dreamscape14. The Grammar of Online Self‑Gossip15. The ‘Information Ecosystem’ and Gossiping AIsConclusionChapter 16 ◾ The Dynamo and the Internet