The ‘beginnings’ issue of the M/C Journal, edited by Bjorn Nansen (University of Melbourne) and me, has just been published. We’re really pleased with how this issue has turned out: a number of articles engage with the beginnings of life — from pregnancy apps to social media microcelebrity infants to infant media use – but there are also some fantastically creative engagements, from the beginnings of spreadsheets in terms of both history and practice through to the rhetoric beginnings of new technologies such as smart contact lenses. As with all issues of M/C, the content is free and open access.

Here’s the issue contents:

• EDITORIAL: Beginnings – Bjorn Nansen, Tama Leaver

• Playing Pregnancy: The Ludification and Gamification of Expectant Motherhood in Smartphone Apps – Deborah Lupton, Gareth M Thomas

• ‘Getting Personal’: 
Contemplating Changes in Intersubjectivity, Methodology and Ethnography – Sophia Alice Johnson

• Micro­microcelebrity: Branding Babies on the Internet – Crystal Abidin

• Digitods: Toddlers, Touch Screens and Australian Family Life – Donell Joy Holloway, Lelia Green, Kylie Stevenson

• Accidental, Assisted, Automated: An Emerging Repertoire of Infant Mobile Media Techniques – Bjorn Nansen

• Spreadsheets and the Violence of Forms: Tracking Organisational and Domestic Use – Esther Milne

• Extra-Planetary Digital Cultures – David Crouch, Katarina Damjanov

• Startling Starts: Smart Contact Lenses and Technogenesis – Isabel Pedersen, Kirsten Ellison

[Image: 4/366: Beginning by Magic Madzik CC BY]