Team Poster: Information Please
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Introduction
The purpose of this wiki is to provide background information so that readers can develop a deeper understanding of Mark Poster's book Information Please. We hope that this will be a useful reference guide for people to refer to before reading the book. Our link to Mark Poster should allow readers to gain insight into Poster's personal life and his views. In addition, we will investigate various aspects of the three sections of the book. This includes defining technology jargon,digging deep into crucial topics,and linking various related articles.
Click here [1] to see an interview with Mark Poster and to get a deeper insight on his thoughts.
Poster: His Views on Technology
Posters main goal is stated clearly in the introduction of Information Please, "I am interested in particular in the cultural significance of migration of information from humans to machines, the change in the nature of information, the way it mediates relationships and creates bonds between humans and machines, as well as the political implications of that ensue"
Mark Poster is very interested by the internet as a means of communication and transfer of ideas. He states that, "The Internet is above all a decentralized communication system. Like the telephone network, anyone hooked up to the Internet may initiate a call, send a message that he or she has composed, and may do so in the manner of the broadcast system, that is to say, may send a message to many receivers, and do this either in "real time" or as stored data or both. The Internet is also decentralized at a basic level of organization since, as a network of networks, new networks may be added so long as they conform to certain communications protocols. "[2] He believes that technology is shaping the world around us and that we are not shaping it.
Finally, Poster believes that cultural theorists must take into consideration the major effect that media is having on every aspect of our culture. They must realize the changes that are happening and realize that media technology has taken a strong foot hold in our lives. He also believes that the relationships between humans will also be changed by technology, and changed for the better. Poster challenges his reader to rethink the classical definition of "technology", "culture" and "media". He makes this clear when he says, "culture can no longer be understood as separate from technology".
Global Politics and New Media
In the first section, Poster discusses the relations between politics and digital media and the interactions of cultures in the context of human-machine relations. He pays close attention to the effects of media on culture.
Mark Poster argues that cultural theory has not taken into consideration of the full effects of this second media revolution that we are currently going through and its effects on our culture. Poster achieves this by giving specific examples of the effect of media on culture. Poster begins his introduction to this concept with a discussion about protesters in Afghanistan carrying a poster with Sesame Street's Bert sitting on Bin Laden's shoulder. Poster explores the many interpretations and explanations about the puppet's reason for being there. (Bert also appears by the side of many other public figures such as Adolf Hitler and a member of the KKK.) The Bangladesh protesters did not even recognize Bert on the posters as they carried him around. Poster raises the issue of the decoding of cultural objects in a globalized culture. Globalization (of which Internet is a component) imposes a heightened level of interaction between cultures that pushes them over the boundaries of the nation.
The internet is what enables people to cross the boundaries of different cultures and share different cultural objects and ideas. Following the idea of Jean-Luc Nancy, Poster focuses on how interactions between cultures do not leave them unchanged. There is no longer a clear line separating media 'forms' and 'content'.
In addition, Poster offers three arguments about humans and digital information. It would be helpful to familiarize oneself with these arguments. The first one says that digital information is inevitable and a “central aspect of globalization” (Information Please, 48). The second argument says that this new technology may lead to power struggles as well as new challenges. Thirdly, Poster states that people may resist new powers by creating their own facets of digital networks. These ideas are complex, but crucial to understanding Poster’s argument.
The Culture of the Digital Self
In the second section, Poster focuses on the recent growth in identity theft that occurs due to the creation of an identity through global networked computing. He focuses on several case studies where he differentiates the identity of self from the identity that exists in a database. He realizes that in order for identity theft to occur, one's identity would have to be made tangible. Through digital media, the security of one's identity is threatened and things that were once safe are no longer so. According to a Winferno article titled "Internet Identity Theft," "1 in 8 Americans in the last 5 years has been affected by Internet Identity Theft." Click here [3] to find out more about Identity theft and to find tips on preventing it from happening to you.
Poster also argues that culture is underdeterministic as a result of the digital age. This term was coined by Rene Descartes when he presented two arguments. Basically, the way to prove an argument is underdetermined is to prove the rival theory with evidentiary support. Yet, people today just follow what they are told, even if there is no evidence to support the theory. If you would like to find out more about underterminism, you can click here [4].
Poster goes on to talk about questioning identity further in relation to artists who have connected their artwork with the technological world. Poster talks about how digital cultural objects disconnect us from the aesthetics of the analog cultural object and even the past. He uses a term, "underdetermination" to describe such a culture that the technological world has created and how such asulture will lead to that disconnection(go to terms). Poster discusses the instability of the cultural objects made in digital networking and how that instability can raise ethical issues. He expresses an a idea to the reader to keep close the identity you have created in realtion to others as opposed to the identity created in a database.
Digital Commodities in Everyday Life
In the third part of the book, Poster focuses on the influence of human-machine relations in the social and political realm. He talks about file sharing and how books change from being a structural and material object of which someone could have ownership to a digital media in which files can be shared no matter who has ownership. We also catch a glimpse of the attention that Poster pays when talking about copyright and the characteristics of digital cultural objects. Namely when Poster is dealing with the topic of copyright, he talks about the history of bookmaking, exclusively focusing on the need for a stable text and for the inviolability of the author's work were inscribed in the book from the beginning. Poster's argument is particularly important because he focuses on the difference between fixed and variable cultural objects; which he argues that books, or a fixed cultural object, could be owned and how if you edited something in your book, thats the only book it effects. Poster discusses the difference between digital cultural objects which do not fall in the same category as the book because digital media can be copied at almost no price.
Poster also pays a lot of attention to how the development of technology, namely the advent and rapid propagation of file sharing, has changed the way we perceive property. According to him, a physical object falls under the economics of scarcity. In other words, physical objects are limited; if you sell an object, you no longer possess it. Only one person may own the object at a certain time. On the other hand, "digital objects"--files such as music, photos and applications--do not follow the same laws as physical objects. A file can be copied over and over again without limits. Plus, when you copy a file, this does not mean that you are taking it away from the person you downloaded it; instead, you merely copied it without affecting the other individual. Now, you both own it, and technically the same file can be owned by more than one person. This is a key difference between physical property and digital files. Poster then latches onto this argument to counteract the music industry's claim that file sharing is equal to shoplifting; it is not similar at all. By raising this point of reflection, the author makes the reader think about copyright laws and their validity when referring to digital creations. He also says that the current copyright laws and the music industry's efforts to hinder file sharing affect cultural development. Poster concludes by proposing that "we must invent an entirely new copyright law that rewards cultural creation but also fosters new forms of use or consumption and does not inhibit the development of new forms of digital cultural exchange that explore the new fluidity of texts, images and sounds" (209). According to him, "an infrastructure is being set into place for a day when cultural objects will become variable and users will become creators as well" (204). This last quote reveals that Poster firmly believes in technological determinism [5] If you would like to learn more about this, you can visit the following links to get more insight: [6] and [7]
Key Terms
Poster devotes an entire chapter to the concept of Global Media. Communication has become easier and easier as technology has expanded. Medias such as newspapers, telephones and radios have been added to the internet. Social practices are becoming more connected and even more dependent on the internet.
Mediascape [8] is described by Poster as, "the media constitute a complex, vast apparatus of forms and contents that increasingly characterizes cultural exchanges and do so in an increasingly global expanse. We as a nation are moving more from physical space into the realms of cyberspace.
Poster opens up an interesting argument when he discusses the concept of Identity Theft. Identity theft is usually described as a fraud that involves stealing money or receiving other benefits by pretending to be someone else. However, Poster questions if a persons identity can actually be stolen. He points out the views of different philosophers such as Erik Erikson [9], Descartes [10] and Locke [11]. In the conclusion, Poster states, "The practice of identity theft is conditional on the heterogeneity of identity, the inextricable mixing of consciousness with information machines, the dispersal of the self across spaces of culture, its fragmentation into bits and bytes, the nonidentical identity or better identities that link machines with human bodies in new configurations or assemblages the suturing or coupling of pieces of information in disjunctive time and scattered spaces." Poster observes that identity must be considered an "thing" that is possible to steal. Poster says in Information Please that, "Digital networks thus extend the domain of insecurity to objects that had been relatively safe ... When their material character metamorphizes to the digital level from the analog realms of paper, film, tape and the like, they step into the dangerous world of insecurity that had previously affected only large material objects".
Poster invests a good amount of time defining the word "control"[12]. He sites the varies dictionary definitions of the world however, he seems to not be satisfied. He investigates the fact that there is no "contol" over the new media of digital technology. He uses this to segway into his opinions on file sharing.
Peer-to- peer file sharing is a key topic in Part III: Digital Commodities and New Media in Poster's book, "Information Please". He points out that many people around the globe are involved in file sharing as a means of exchanging information. Objects in our culture are shifting to a more digitialized form that currently has little rules and regulations. Many people equate file sharing to stealing because a user did not purchase the information. However, Poster points out that this is not the case because in the traditional definition of stealing, a stolen item is no longer present in its origional location. File sharing is mearly a form of copying. Poster says, "Copying is essential to the institution of higher learning that developed networked computers. It represents a basic condition for intellectual freedom, scientific advance and critial thinking(208)." Poster argues that in order to control our new digitalized world, new rules and regulations need to be adopted that controls but does not inhibit the new developing forms of digitalized media technology.
Other Works
This link is to the complete list of works by Poster. [13]
Click here [14] to read an except from a book titled The Second Media Age
Click here [15] to read another essay "CyberDemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere"
