Rob Latham
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226468914
- eISBN:
- 9780226467023
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226467023.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter deals with the cultural discourses surrounding the so-called Information Superhighway, a vast engineering project conceived on a par with the Fordist construction of the literal ...
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This chapter deals with the cultural discourses surrounding the so-called Information Superhighway, a vast engineering project conceived on a par with the Fordist construction of the literal superhighway system in the 1950s. The Information Superhighway would realize the fantasy of a totally “wired life” that had circulated in postindustrial discourse in the 1970s. Don Tapscott's indictment of Generation X as a cohort of grumbling slackers cynically complicit with boomer technologies emerges as quite suggestive, since GenXers' transitional status makes them an especially contradictory social formation. A GenX effort to grapple allegorically with the cultural promises and perils of the Infobahn is presented. Ernest Hebert's Mad Boys struggle to find some way out of an invidious double bind, in which every prosthetic enhancement of them as consuming subjects bears with it an inescapable exploitation, a vampiric shadow that leeches their youthful substance and energy.Less
This chapter deals with the cultural discourses surrounding the so-called Information Superhighway, a vast engineering project conceived on a par with the Fordist construction of the literal superhighway system in the 1950s. The Information Superhighway would realize the fantasy of a totally “wired life” that had circulated in postindustrial discourse in the 1970s. Don Tapscott's indictment of Generation X as a cohort of grumbling slackers cynically complicit with boomer technologies emerges as quite suggestive, since GenXers' transitional status makes them an especially contradictory social formation. A GenX effort to grapple allegorically with the cultural promises and perils of the Infobahn is presented. Ernest Hebert's Mad Boys struggle to find some way out of an invidious double bind, in which every prosthetic enhancement of them as consuming subjects bears with it an inescapable exploitation, a vampiric shadow that leeches their youthful substance and energy.
Stephanie Ricker Schulte
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814708668
- eISBN:
- 9780814788684
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814708668.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter examines the emergence of the “World Wide Web”—the Internet's best-known hypertext system—when the global nature of the Internet became an animating idea in news media and popular ...
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This chapter examines the emergence of the “World Wide Web”—the Internet's best-known hypertext system—when the global nature of the Internet became an animating idea in news media and popular culture as well as for policymakers and academics. It explores how, despite being understood as global, the Internet is nonetheless identified as a distinctly American space, or an “American virtual nation.” This Americanness was visible in the organization of the Internet, including the ways the U.S. government retained control over Internet addresses and domains. The American virtual nation was also visible, however, in news media and policy language describing the Internet as a “new democratic frontier” and an “information superhighway.” These terms were enabled by hopeful U.S. policymakers, who aimed to colonize the Internet before competitors arrived. Major Internet corporations also capitalized on this presumptive Americanness of the Internet in their efforts to become “American corpoNations.”Less
This chapter examines the emergence of the “World Wide Web”—the Internet's best-known hypertext system—when the global nature of the Internet became an animating idea in news media and popular culture as well as for policymakers and academics. It explores how, despite being understood as global, the Internet is nonetheless identified as a distinctly American space, or an “American virtual nation.” This Americanness was visible in the organization of the Internet, including the ways the U.S. government retained control over Internet addresses and domains. The American virtual nation was also visible, however, in news media and policy language describing the Internet as a “new democratic frontier” and an “information superhighway.” These terms were enabled by hopeful U.S. policymakers, who aimed to colonize the Internet before competitors arrived. Major Internet corporations also capitalized on this presumptive Americanness of the Internet in their efforts to become “American corpoNations.”
Peter Wright (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846310577
- eISBN:
- 9781846314056
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846310577.003.0024
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
In a discursive essay on the impact of computer technology on libraries and learning, Wolfe opens by arguing that contemporary America is adapting to ignorance and illiteracy and characterises ...
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In a discursive essay on the impact of computer technology on libraries and learning, Wolfe opens by arguing that contemporary America is adapting to ignorance and illiteracy and characterises American youth as disinterested in learning. He considers the ’information superhighway’ as inherently discriminatory and likely to provoke resentment towards the educated class. Anticipating, correctly, that much of the information on this superhighway will be fake, bypass peer review, and be the product of pranksters, he adopts an antagonistic stance towards computers in the first half of his article. In the second, he recognises the interlinking of library computers will provide an opportunity for those educationally and economically marginalised. He concludes by seeing librarians as instrumental in safeguarding the education and development of the disenfranchised.Less
In a discursive essay on the impact of computer technology on libraries and learning, Wolfe opens by arguing that contemporary America is adapting to ignorance and illiteracy and characterises American youth as disinterested in learning. He considers the ’information superhighway’ as inherently discriminatory and likely to provoke resentment towards the educated class. Anticipating, correctly, that much of the information on this superhighway will be fake, bypass peer review, and be the product of pranksters, he adopts an antagonistic stance towards computers in the first half of his article. In the second, he recognises the interlinking of library computers will provide an opportunity for those educationally and economically marginalised. He concludes by seeing librarians as instrumental in safeguarding the education and development of the disenfranchised.
Thomas Streeter
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814741153
- eISBN:
- 9780814708743
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814741153.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter looks at the structure of feeling created in the early 1990s as knowledge workers began to discover the pleasures of online communication and elites groped for an organizational ...
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This chapter looks at the structure of feeling created in the early 1990s as knowledge workers began to discover the pleasures of online communication and elites groped for an organizational framework under the umbrella of the “information superhighway.” Web browsing articulated itself with a structure of desire centered around an endless “what's next?” and spread in a context in which middle ranks knew things that their superiors did not, adding to that articulation a romantic sense of rebellion; one could in theory rebel, express oneself, and get rich all at once. Taken together, this fusion of romantic subjectivity and market enthusiasms, exemplified and enabled in the early Wired magazine, created the conditions that fueled both the rapid triumph of the internet as the network of networks and the dotcom stock bubble.Less
This chapter looks at the structure of feeling created in the early 1990s as knowledge workers began to discover the pleasures of online communication and elites groped for an organizational framework under the umbrella of the “information superhighway.” Web browsing articulated itself with a structure of desire centered around an endless “what's next?” and spread in a context in which middle ranks knew things that their superiors did not, adding to that articulation a romantic sense of rebellion; one could in theory rebel, express oneself, and get rich all at once. Taken together, this fusion of romantic subjectivity and market enthusiasms, exemplified and enabled in the early Wired magazine, created the conditions that fueled both the rapid triumph of the internet as the network of networks and the dotcom stock bubble.
Stephanie Ricker Schulte
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814708668
- eISBN:
- 9780814788684
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814708668.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Internet became a major player in the global economy and a revolutionary component of everyday life for much of the United States and the world. It offered users new ways ...
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In the 1980s and 1990s, the Internet became a major player in the global economy and a revolutionary component of everyday life for much of the United States and the world. It offered users new ways to relate to one another, to share their lives, and to spend their time—shopping, working, learning, and even taking political or social action. Policymakers and news media attempted—and often struggled—to make sense of the emergence and expansion of this new technology. They imagined the Internet in conflicting terms: as a toy for teenagers, a national security threat, a new democratic frontier, an information superhighway, a virtual reality, and a framework for promoting globalization and revolution. This book maintains that contested concepts had material consequences and helped shape not just our sense of the Internet, but the development of the technology itself. It focuses on how people imagine and relate to technology, delving into the political and cultural debates that produced the Internet as a core technology able to revise economics, politics, and culture, as well as to alter lived experience. The book illustrates the conflicting and indirect ways in which culture and policy combined to produce this transformative technology.Less
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Internet became a major player in the global economy and a revolutionary component of everyday life for much of the United States and the world. It offered users new ways to relate to one another, to share their lives, and to spend their time—shopping, working, learning, and even taking political or social action. Policymakers and news media attempted—and often struggled—to make sense of the emergence and expansion of this new technology. They imagined the Internet in conflicting terms: as a toy for teenagers, a national security threat, a new democratic frontier, an information superhighway, a virtual reality, and a framework for promoting globalization and revolution. This book maintains that contested concepts had material consequences and helped shape not just our sense of the Internet, but the development of the technology itself. It focuses on how people imagine and relate to technology, delving into the political and cultural debates that produced the Internet as a core technology able to revise economics, politics, and culture, as well as to alter lived experience. The book illustrates the conflicting and indirect ways in which culture and policy combined to produce this transformative technology.
