- Mark.Poster

 saggio, 1995

Postmodern Virtualities

 http://www.hnet.uci.edu/mposter/writings/internet.html

(This essay appears as Chapter 2 in the book The Second Media Age (Blackwell 1995)

On the eve of the twenty first century there have been two innovative discussions about the general conditions of life: one concerns a possible "postmodern" culture and even society; the other concerns broad, massive changes in communications systems. Postmodern culture is often presented as an alternative to existing society which is pictured as structurally limited or funda mentally flawed. New communications systems are often presented as a hopeful key to a better life and a more equitable society. The discussion of postmodern culture focuses to a great extent on an emerging new individual identity or subject position, one that abandons what may in retrospect be the narrow scope of the modern individual with its claims to rationality and autonomy. The discourse surrounding the new communications systems attends more to the imminent technical increase in information exchange and the ways this advantage will redound to already existing individuals and already existing institutions. My purpose in this essay is to bring these two discussions together, to enact a confrontation between them so that the advantages of each may redo und to the other, while the limitations of each may be revealed and discarded. My contention is that a critical understanding of the new communications systems requires an evaluation of the type of subject it encourages, while a viable articulation of postmodernity must include an elaboration of its relation to new technologies of communication. Finally I shall turn to the issue of multiculturalism in relation to the postmodern subject in the age of the mode of information.

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 saggio, 1995

CyberDemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere

 http://www.hnet.uci.edu/mposter/writings/democ.html

The discussion of the political impact of the Internet has focussed on a number of issues: access, technological determinism, encryption, commodification, intellectual property, the public sphere, decentralization, anarchy, gender and ethnicity. While these issues may be addressed from a number of standpoints, only some them are able to assess the full extent of what is at stake in the new communications technology at the cultural level of identity formation. University of California, Irvine Copyright(c) Mark Poster 1995

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 ricercatore - sito web,

Poster Mark

 http://www.hnet.uci.edu/mposter/

I teach at the University of California, Irvine in the History Department, the Department of Film and Media Studies, and the Critical Theory Emphasis. I have courtesy appointments in the Department of Information and Computer Science and the Department of Comparative Literature. Some of my recent publications are: What's the Matter with the Internet? (University of Minnesota Press, 2001), The Second Media Age (Blackwell, 1995), The Mode of Information (Chicago Press, 1990) and Cultural History and Postmodernity (Columbia University Press, 1997). A collection of pieces old and new with a critical introduction by Stanley Aronowitz is published as The Information Subject (G & B Arts International, 2001). I continue my study of the social and cultural theory of electronically mediated information with a forthcoming work entitled Information Please: Culture and Politics in a Digital Age (Duke University Press, 2006). A full bibliography of my works may be found at this site .

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 news,

Critical Engagements with Professor Mark Poster Saturday July 3rd Sunday July 4th

 http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/research/smg/

Seminario - A seminar to be held at Edge Hill College of Higher Education, Saturday July 3rd – Sunday July 4th, under the aegis of the Social and Cultural Movements Research Group. The purpose of this seminar is to capitalise on the presence of Mark Poster in the UK, on a visit to give the closing plenary address at the 2nd International Conference of the Social and Cultural Movements Group, on the theme of ‘Imaging Social Movements’.

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