Elon University

Archives: Expert Predictions

Interview With Mark Poster: Community, New Media; Post-humanism

Even when gender or whatever are someone fixed by the nature of the board, there is the question of the structural effects of the culturally constituted technology. Another question to raise is whether the individuals on these boards know each other in face-to-face relations before joining the board. I suspect each of these conditions will influence quite a bit the question of subject constitution.

Interview With Mark Poster: Community, New Media; Post-humanism

I see the current situation as containing enormous potentials for expanding domains and extents of freedom but also as fraught with harrowing dangers. Just at the time when it appears to many that we are stalled politically, the limits of what can be done are in my view broadly expanded.

Interview With Mark Poster: Community, New Media; Post-humanism

We can’t let the term “community” be limited to its earlier (humanist) meanings … I don’t think the “alienation” of one-way media will evaporate but that a slow cultural transformation is in process, one that is very profound and which we need to comprehend if we are to participate in it in a political way.

Interview With Mark Poster: Community, New Media; Post-humanism

The concept of community is connected with assumptions of face-to-face interactions and leaves little room for electronic forms of conviviality. Internet associations will, I believe, claim more and more of our energy and commitment until the point when the refusal of the term community becomes silly. As you say, these commitments take away from other activities, though I suspect mostly from television watching. Nonetheless Internet associations are competitive with all forms of sociability.

The Internet: Computer Network is Superhighway On-Ramp

The Internet will be choked by a software program called Mosaic, which layers text in the user-friendly manner of Windows help screens. The problem is that Mosaic consumes so much memory it could force the Internet to expand its capacity faster than is economically feasible. It’s much like urban sprawl forcing the premature expansion of highways.