What is the 21st century equivalent of a 1960s protest song? One possible answer is the protest bot, a new kind of tactical media that speaks truth to power. Such bots have the potential to be the algorithmic equivalent of the Wobblies’ Little Red Songbook-bots that fan the flames of discontent.

Mark Sample is an Associate Professor of Digital Studies at Davidson College. Professor Sample’s teaching and research focuses on contemporary literature, new media, and videogames. His examination of the representation of torture in videogames appeared in Game Studies, and his critique of the digital humanities’ approach to contemporary literature is a chapter in Debates in the Digital Humanities (University of Minnesota Press, 2012). He has work in Hacking the Academy, a crowdsourced scholarly book published by the digitalculturebooks imprint of the University of Michigan Press.

His most recent project is 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10, a collaboratively written book about creative computing and the Commodore 64, which was published by MIT Press in November 2012.

In recognition of his commitment to innovation in teaching, he was the recipient of George Mason’s 2010 Teaching Excellence Award. Professor Sample is a regular contributor to ProfHacker at the Chronicle for Higher Education, and he also writes for Play the Past, a collaboratively edited scholarly blog that explores the intersection of cultural heritage and games. Professor Sample can be found online at samplereality.com or on Twitter as @samplereality.