As today's strategies of conceptual writing have become legitimized and cliched, Thacker's text reminds us of how radical and potent these gestures once were, treading a fine line between the mechanical and the authorial. This is an important book...these pages take cues from Burroughs and Gibson, while at the same time presciently pointing to the web-based path writing would take over the next decade. It's a joy to see this back in print.

- Kenneth Goldsmith, author of Day and Soliloquy, founder of Ubuweb

Eugene Thacker's An Ideal for Living in the apoptosis of hyperreal language shed a data flesh as a discourse toward death continuously from cracks in DNA...It is present in an inexplicable state of literary language and data.

- Kenji Siratori, author of Blood Electric and Mad In Japan"