Mark Dery

Mark Dery is a cultural critic and essayist. He popularized the concept of “culture jamming” and, in his 1993 essay “Black to the Future,” coined the term “Afrofuturism.” He is the author of four books: Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century (1996), a critique of the libertarian "cyber bro" ideology behind the Digital Revolution of the ‘90s; two studies of American mythologies (and pathologies), The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink (1999) and the essay collection I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-by Essays on American Dread, American Dreams (2012), and, most recently, a biography, Born To Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey (2018).