The word "parasite" evokes nearness and feeding: the Greek parasitos is "one who eats at the table of another". In biology, a parasitic organism is the beneficiary of an unequal relation with its host. The social parasite, too, is one recognized or misrecognized as the unproductive recipient of one-way exchange. In communications theory, meanwhile, static or interference ("parasite", in French) is the useless information which clouds the channel between sender and receiver. In 1980, Michel Serres's Le Parasite mobilized the concept of the parasite to figure noises, disruptions,...