Book Description

First Published in 2001. In this collection of essays and interviews, Mark Poster examines theoretical approaches and develops his own position on our information based society. He contends that new communications media disrupt and transfigure the way identities are constituted in cultural exchanges. He looks in detail at several aspects of what might be called "internet culture", including virtuality and democracy. Poster advocates an awareness of the Internet and other new forms of communication, calling for a mobilization to ensure accessibility to all and to configure technology into vehicles of open cultural creation. For example, nothing is pure about the Internet politically, he points out, and it remains an open question as to who will transform the potentiality of new communications media into determinate cultural configurations. This book explores the rupture and potentiality between the electronic self and the face-to-face self inherent in new forms of technology and media.