For many years computational systems have been accompanied by the cultural imaginary and technical unleashing of viruses hellbent on destruction. Bugs,
worms, trojan horses – these are just some of the common names of malicious code designed to infect and replicate across computers and networks. With discursive attributes derived from the biological sciences, digital viruses obtain an anthropomorphic status that draws a line of equivalence between
humans and machines. Both can be treated with sufficient intervention by experts in concert with a general cultural atmosphere alive to security, risk and parasitical capitalism. If viruses distributed across communication networks and through shared devices condition the ontology of the digital, what possibilities emerge for building media-theoretical concepts attentive to technical propensities and social practices of infection? Does data contagion, specifically, alert us to new circuits of distribution and modes of attack
