The Mode of Information E-Book

Mark Poster

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 354

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

In this path-breaking work, Mark Poster highlights the nature of the newly emerging forms of social life, in the current era. The flexibility of language which the computer allows makes the written word less certain and less concrete. The result of these changes, Poster argues, is a new communication experience, an interaction between humankind and a new kind of reality.

Poster discusses the addictive properties of television and arcade video games, as well as the surveillance possibilities which the new communication technologies offer the state. His wide-ranging analysis incorporates the new language-based theories of mathematics, philosophy and literature in Wiener, Derrida and Barthes, among others.

This work is a major new contribution to the debate surrounding the future of electronically mediated-experiences.

Leseprobe

The Mode of Information

Poststructuralism and Social Context

Mark Poster

Polity Press

Copyright © 1990 Mark Poster

First published 1990 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Reprinted 1992,1996, 2004,2007

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge, CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press350 Main StreetMaiden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN: 978-0-7456-6821-5 (Multi-user ebook)

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typeset in 10½ on 12pt Sabonby Photo graphics, Honiton, Devon

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Marston Book Services Limited, Oxford

For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.polity.co.uk

For Jamie

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction Words without Things

1    The Concept of Postindustrial SocietyBell and the Problem of Rhetoric

2    Baudrillard and TV AdsThe Language of the Economy

3    Foucault and DatabasesParticipatory Surveillance

4    Derrida and Electronic WritingThe Subject of the Computer

5    Lyotard and Computer ScienceThe Possibilities of Postmodern Politics

Notes

Names Index

Acknowledgements

The position I develop in this book evolved over a period of several years. During that time many colleagues and friends participated in that process by their comments, suggestions, criticisms, encouragements, warnings. I thank the following people for that help and for reading various parts of the manuscript: David Carroll, Andrew Feenberg, Rob Kling, Tania Modleski, Leslie Rabine, John Rowe, Gabriele Schwab, Martin Schwab, Miriam Silverberg, Jonathan Wiener. Robert Sieber helped me with the research on the discipline of Computer Science that is discussed in chapter 5. In the course of presenting the material in this book at various institutions I received helpful responses from many persons. For their interest and concern I thank them. I benefited greatly, as I have for the past decade, from the work of the Critical Theory Institute at the University of California, Irvine, and this not only by its financial support but also by the responses to my work by its members. A University of California President’s Research Fellowship in the Humanities allowed me the time to bring this work to its conclusion. Students in the History Department and the Emphasis in Critical Theory at the University of California, Irvine were helpful in their skepticism, enthusiasm or critique of my ideas. Part of the introduction is appearing in the journal October, 54 (Winter 1990) as “Words without Things: The Mode of Information.” Part of chapter 3 appeared in Discourse, 12(2) (Spring–Summer 1990) as “Foucault and Data Bases.” An early version of part of chapter 4 will appear in “The Subject of the Computer: Derrida and Electronic Writing,” in José Lambert, ed., Literature and Technology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming).

IntroductionWords without Things

A relatively thinly populated country, with well-developed means of communication, has a denser population than a more numerously populated country, with a badly-developed means of communication; and in this sense the Northern States of the American Union, for instance, are more thickly populated than India.

Karl Marx, Capital

An increasing segment of communications is mediated by electronic devices. People watch television, make phone calls, listen to the radio, go to the movies, use computers, fax machines, VCRs and stereos. Such communications occur in every institution and in every social group. Politics, work, consumption, the family, the military, the church, education, leisure activities – in varying degrees all employ electronic mechanisms in their communications. In each instance, symbols are exchanged, messages are sent and received, information is retrieved just as they have been since human beings began using language. And yet something has changed as well. Electronic communications are new language experiences in part by virtue of electrification. But how are they different from ordinary speech and writing? And what is the significance of this difference? This book explores these differences and in particular considers various theoretical perspectives that might be useful for opening new interpretive strategies for critical social theory in relation to these differences.

Some observers argue that the introduction of electronic devices makes no substantial difference in the nature or consequence of a communication. The politician who speaks in a TV ad campaign still attempts to gain votes according to the rules of constitutional democracy. The worker who uses a computer to control an assembly process or type a letter is paid for his or her labor as in the past according to the contract of employment. The consumer who watches a TV merely gains information about products that might be bought in a store, much like reading a newspaper. The soldier who uses a computer to guide a projectile to its target, like the archer who visually aims his arrow, is practicing the art of destroying the enemy. The electronic device simply increases the efficiency of the communication in question. From this perspective language appears as a tool for the purposes of acting human subjects, clearly subordinate in importance to the positional intentions of individuals in determinate institutional frameworks.

Nor do electronic devices nullify the theories that explain the nature of communications. To a Marxist, new communications devices fall within the thesis of the class struggle: increased access to information occurs differentially in relation to one’s position in the class structure. To neoMarxists, electronic media reinforce the culture industry, heightening the hegemonic force of ideology. To an economist, the laws of the market determine who shall use a computer, who shall advertise on television, who shall have their songs broadcast to radio receivers. To a Weberian, electronic communications increase the differentiation of society into subsystems and promote the power of bureaucracy. To a liberal they are subject to the contest for power among pluralist factions. Even for technological determinists, nothing is new: electronic media confirm the progress of the proliferation of machines that alleviate toil and subordinate nature to the wishes of mankind. Regardless of one’s theoretical perspective, the conclusion appears incontrovertible that with the introduction of electronically mediated communication nothing basic has changed.