Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND POSTMODERNITY
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to this settled way of life, with symbolic exchange a matter of articulating what
was already known and accepted by the community.
2 The era of written exchange, when signs had a representational role and in which
the self was conceived to be rational and individually responsible.
3 The era of electronic mediation, when signs are matters of informational simulations,
with their non-representational character being critical. Here the self is
‘decentred, dispersed, and multiplied in continuous instability’ (p. 6), swirling
in a ‘continuous process of multiple identity formation’ (Poster, 1994, p. 174),
since the ‘flow of signifiers’ is the defining feature of the times rather than signs
which indicate a given object.
What Poster suggests is that once people said and thought what was
expected of them, later they developed a strong sense of autonomy and used
writing especially to describe what was happening outside themselves in the
world, and then, in the postmodern present, the spread of simulation has shattered
previous certainties. No longer able to believe in a ‘reality’ beyond signs,
the self is left fragmented, unfocused and incapable of discerning an objective
reality. Despite the dislocation this brings about, Poster sees it, with Baudrillard
and Vattimo, as emancipatory because the ‘crisis of representation’ (Poster, 1990,
p. 14) results in a plethora of signs which do not signify, something which at last
frees people from the tyranny of ‘truth’.
Poster’s (2001) support for postmodernism’s resistance to ‘truth regimes’
sits comfortably with his enthusiasm for new technologies, especially for the
Internet. In his view the ‘netizen’, able to navigate without hindrance and at
will, supersedes and improves upon the ‘citizen’ whose rights – and obligations
– were enforced by nation states in the modern era and were used to impose
Western values on the rest of the world. To Poster the Age of Enlightenment that
promoted the rights and duties of the citizen is a Western discourse that bolstered
colonialism and imperialism. Now that globalisation subverts nation states,
the Internet promises further liberation, and a core element of this freedom is
rejection of the claims to rights of citizenship.
Jean-François Lyotard
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It is especially appropriate at this point to consider the work of Jean-François
Lyotard (1924–98), since his work has been particularly concerned to demonstrate
how truth claims have been subverted by postmodern developments. Moreover,
Lyotard goes about his task by centring attention on informational trends, arguing
that it is changes here which give rise to the scepticism towards truth claims which
characterises postmodern culture. In addition, Lyotard provides a revealing
contrast to the previous three thinkers since he arrives at similar conclusions while
approaching from a different starting point. That is, while Baudrillard, Vattimo and
Poster give emphasis to the rapid growth in signs (especially in media), Lyotard
starts his analysis with a concern for changes in the role and functions of information
and knowledge at a more general and simultaneously deeper level.
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