Information Please

Poster Mark Poster

Description

Information Please advances the ongoing critical project of the media scholar Mark Poster: theorizing the social and cultural effects of electronically mediated information. In this book Poster conceptualizes a new relation of humans to information machines, a relation that avoids privileging either the human or the machine but instead focuses on the structures of their interactions. Synthesizing a broad range of critical theory, he explores how texts, images, and sounds are made different when they are mediated by information machines, how this difference affects individuals as well as social and political formations, and how it creates opportunities for progressive change.Poster's critique develops through a series of lively studies. Analyzing the appearance of Sesame Street's Bert next to Osama Bin Laden in a New York Times news photo, he examines the political repercussions of this Internet "hoax" as well as the unlimited opportunities that Internet technology presents for the appropriation and alteration of information. He considers the implications of open-source licensing agreements, online personas, the sudden rise of and interest in identity theft, peer-to-peer file sharing, and more. Focusing explicitly on theory, he reflects on the limitations of critical concepts developed before the emergence of new media, particularly globally networked digital communications, and he argues that, contrary to the assertions of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, new media do not necessarily reproduce neoimperialisms. Urging a rethinking of assumptions ingrained during the dominance of broadcast media, Poster charts new directions for work on politics and digital culture.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Communication studies
• Social theory

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 30 août 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822388470
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

INFORMATION PLEASE

Mark Poster

INFORMATION PLEASE         

Duke University Press Durham and London 

©  Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper  Designed by Heather Hensley Typeset in Quadraat and Linotype Trade Gothic by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data and republication acknowledgments appear on the last printed pages of this book.

FOR ZACHARY KAROL, IN MEMORIAM

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

I. Global Politics and New Media . Perfect Transmissions: Evil Bert Laden . Postcolonial Theory and Global Media . The Information Empire

. Citizens, Digital Media, and Globalization

II. The Culture of the Digital Self

. Identity Theft and Media

. The Aesthetics of Distracting Media . The Good, the Bad, and the Virtual . Psychoanalysis, the Body, and Information Machines

III. Digital Commodities in Everyday Life . Who Controls Digital Culture?

. Everyday (Virtual) Life . Consumers, Users, and Digital Commodities . Future Advertising: Dick’sUbikand the Digital Ad

Conclusion Notes

References Index

ix 

   

   

   

   

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have been fortunate in being invited to present my work to many groups around the world, especially in North America, Europe, and Australia. My method has been to subject these groups to germinating ideas. Their suggestions and objections have pointed to directions for rethinking my formulations and revising my ideas. I have learned a great deal on these occasions from often spirited conversations, and this book is much im- proved as a consequence. My students and colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, in particular receive my thanks. I have benefited greatly from discussions of my work with Jon Wiener, John Carlos Rowe, Vinayak Chaturvedi, Victoria Johnson, Sean Hill, and the Critical Theory Institute members at, members of the Multi-Campus Research Group on Digi- tal Culture, Tama Leaver and David Savat in Perth, Bernhard Debatin in Berlin, Gary Hall in London, Mick Dillon in Lancaster, and my coeditors of the Electronic Mediations series at the University of Minnesota Press, Kate Hayles and Sam Weber, as well as Doug Armato, the press editor. Doug Kellner read the entire manuscript and provided me with invaluable suggestions. Winifred Poster and Jamie Poster have provided much sup- port and many ideas, and I thank them for it. Annette Schlichter has been a careful reader of my work and a truly sympathetic companion. Special thanks are due to Ken Wissoker and Courtney Berger of Duke University Press and to the readers whose advice they sought, who pro- vided me with excellent feedback.