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What's the Matter with the Internet?

What's the Matter with the Internet? Historical Materialism , volume 14:1 (311–325) © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2006 Also available online – www.brill.nl 1 Barbrook and Cameron 1996. What’s the Matter with the Internet? M ARK P OSTER (Electronic Mediations, Volume 3) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001 Reviewed by C HRISTOPHER M AY Technology, Social Revolution and the Information Age Considerable effort has been deployed to convince us that we are witnessing a revolution as important, as life-changing, as the industrial revolution. And, while some of the hyperbole has subsided in the wake of the dot.com crash, still the claims that we are entering a new age, the ‘information age’, abound. Leaving aside the posturing of the most extreme proponents of the ‘Californian ideology’, 1 perhaps what is more worrying is that these claims have become a commonplace in the socio-political literature that contributes to our continuing analysis of the everyday. Here, I examine a recent contribution to these debates by Mark Poster and lay out two important problems that an historical-materialist analysis might identify with these claims. Like most literature examining the internet, Poster identifies its constituent technologies as being important drivers behind globalisation. Indeed, he offers us the by now relatively http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Historical Materialism Brill

What's the Matter with the Internet?

May, Christopher
Historical Materialism , Volume 14 (1): 311 – Jan 1, 2006
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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 2006 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
1465-4466
eISSN
1569-206X
DOI
10.1163/156920606776690910
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Historical Materialism , volume 14:1 (311–325) © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2006 Also available online – www.brill.nl 1 Barbrook and Cameron 1996. What’s the Matter with the Internet? M ARK P OSTER (Electronic Mediations, Volume 3) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001 Reviewed by C HRISTOPHER M AY Technology, Social Revolution and the Information Age Considerable effort has been deployed to convince us that we are witnessing a revolution as important, as life-changing, as the industrial revolution. And, while some of the hyperbole has subsided in the wake of the dot.com crash, still the claims that we are entering a new age, the ‘information age’, abound. Leaving aside the posturing of the most extreme proponents of the ‘Californian ideology’, 1 perhaps what is more worrying is that these claims have become a commonplace in the socio-political literature that contributes to our continuing analysis of the everyday. Here, I examine a recent contribution to these debates by Mark Poster and lay out two important problems that an historical-materialist analysis might identify with these claims. Like most literature examining the internet, Poster identifies its constituent technologies as being important drivers behind globalisation. Indeed, he offers us the by now relatively

Journal

Historical Materialism – Brill

Published: Jan 1, 2006

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