Pre-Class Poster

I think Poster’s discussion in “Postmodern Virtualities” really helped sum up for me a few ideas concerning society’s recent move into the postmodern world that had previously appeared, to me, to be nothing more than mere fragmented notions which lacked any true sense of collectiveness or collobarativeness. In this piece, Post effectively articulates how all of the diverse themes that are used to describe the postmodern (the micro-narrative, the virtual and multiple realities, the multiple self-identities, the democratization of the Internet, the postmodern man v. the modern man, the information super highway) are women threads of a greater ideological fabric. Along with his ability to “put a face” to this postmodern age, Post’s main argument throughout the piece is also one I find particularly enlightening, in which he expresses the fact that post-modern issues cannot be judged/evaluated/interpreted through a modernist lens but rather a new set of criteria/rules/laws/logic must be established us to be able to fully understand what is occurring socially and culturally without placing any limits on our thought.


Aside from these two points, one quote that I thought was particularly effective in his evaluation of the postmodern age, read a s follows: “The process by which the telephone was instituted as a universally disseminated network in which anyone is able to call anyone else occurred in a complex, multi-leveled historical articulation which the technology, the economic structure, the political institutions, the political culture and the mass of the population each played interacting rules… a similarly complex history will no doubt accompany the institution of the information superhighway and virtual reality” (540). Poster makes the suggestion of the internet being a parallel form of communication to that of the telephone numerous times because of their shared ability to be used by so many at simultaneous times. Both the phone and the internet have mass accessibility and are, thus, places for universal participation that is not only allowed, but promoted. Unlike many forms of culture, these two are not simply within the reach of the few and the powerful, suggesting a decentralized system in which anyone in the system can contact almost everyone else in the system. Because of the massive popularity of the Internet over the last decade, I think this notion of it as a democratizing tool will have powerful consequences for society at large. The Internet allows for an individual participatory, public discourse in which even the softest of voices can be heard and shared among many. There is no ruling authority to monitor what is said or put censorship on what can be heard. I think the Internet is finally the most effective tool we can employ in order for us as a nation to really be able to think of ourselves as a democracy, for we almost all as citizens (because of its cheap cost and massive accessibility) have the ability to use it as a way to connect with one another, communicate ideas, and perhaps initiate change. This notion of community ties being legitimized over the web is one we have heavily discussed in my CMC350 class, “Social Media for Social Change”. The Internet, and its many forms of media based on social networking (particularly, Facebook/Twitter/blogs) has become the new place for public commentary that lacks (for the most part, at least) private interests and has created a new, uncommodified public sphere. The potential these sites have for creating ties between people of all races, all ages, all locations, all beliefs are both endless and great... instead of perpetuating a hierarchy, they constitute a new “reality” based on an ever-changing, fluid process of open relations.