Post Modern Virtualities

A few quotes I picked out from Mark Poster's 'Postmodern Virtualities'

'The crucial political question is `Who controls the switches?' There are two extreme choices. Users may have indirect, or limited control over when , what, why, and from whom they get information and to whom they send it. That's the broadcast model today, and its seems to breed consumerism, passivity, crassness, and mediocrity. Or, users may have decentralized, distributed, direct control over when, what, why, and with whom they exchange information.'


'The problem for capitalism is how to contain the word and the image, to bind them to proper names and logos when they flit about at the speed of light and procreate with indecent rapidity, not arborially, to use the terms o f Deleuze and Guattari, as in a centralized factory, but rhyzomically, at any decentered location'


'The Internet interface must somehow appear "transparent," that is to say, appear not to be an interface, not to come between two alien beings and also seem fascinating, announcing its novelty and encouraging an exploration of the difference of the machinic. The problem of the Internet the n is not simply "technological" but para-machinic: to construct a boundary between the human and the machinic that draws the human into the technology, transforming the technology into "used equipment" and the human into a "cyborg," into one meshing with machines. '

This last quote seems particularly interesting in relation to what I have been reading from Deleuze regarding the control society, and  with this notion of the human "meshing" with the machines --- whereby new technologies (and interfaces) in turn produce new forms of control. But in our culture we are so in-grained (the cyber-human condition) in this type of culture and technological practice it becomes unnoticed and moreover common-sense.