Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND POSTMODERNITY
dazzling array of fast-changing signs, but there is no serious evidence that this
results in the abandonment of meaning. To be sure, it makes clear-cut interpretation
of signs exceedingly difficult, but complexity is no grounds for asserting that,
with interpretation being variable, interpretation itself is lost. People are not yet
sign-struck, not yet the gawking ‘silent majorities’ Baudrillard imagines.
Mark Poster echoes a good deal of Baudrillard’s assertions, and much the
same objections to his work are pertinent. In addition, however, one can remark
on features of his historical analysis. Poster’s tri-part history – oralism, writing
and electronic exchange – is deeply technological determinist and subject to the
familiar objection that it is historically cavalier (Calhoun, 1993).
Gianni Vattimo is, of course, correct to draw attention to the multiperspectivism
that the expansion of media can bring. Television has brought to our
homes experiences from other cultures and, indeed, from within our own society
(Meyrowitz, 1985) which can challenge and disconcert. However, a glance at the
mountain of empirical evidence must reveal the marked limitations of this
perspectivism since it shows clearly that some perspectives – notably American
and, to a lesser extent, European – are a great deal more exposed than others
(Tunstall, 1977). To say that Hollywood dominates the world’s movies, that US
television accounts for large chunks of most other nations’ programming, or that
rock music originates in the main in London, Los Angeles and New York, is not
to argue that alternative perspectives are ignored. Quite the contrary, it is easily
conceded that other cultures are noticed and even given voice here – consider,
for instance, rap music or the urban movies which might show life through the
eyes of ethnic minorities.
However, to accept that media have opened out to include other ways of
seeing, at the same time as they have expanded exponentially, is by no means
the same as agreeing that they offer ‘multiple realities’. On the contrary, it is
surely the case, as scholars such as Herbert Schiller demonstrate time and again,
that what perspectives are to be included are subject to ideological and economic
limits. That is, while some cultures may be given voice, it is an inflected one
which is, as a rule, packaged in an appropriate and acceptable way for media
corporations and, above all, it must be – or be made – marketable, something
which limits the potential of, say, Chinese or Ukrainian ways of seeing to get
much air time.
A fundamental objection to Vattimo, as well as to other postmodern
commentators, is that his account is devoid of an empirical analysis that endeavours
to assess the realities of media output. His point that a profusion of media
has led to inclusion of some ‘alternative realities’ is well made. However, analysis
needs to go beyond this truism, to demonstrate the variation in perspectives (and
the discernible limits placed on that which gets access to media) and the differential
exposure of these perspectives. That requires, of course, a determined
analysis of power, something which postmodern thinkers resolutely ignore (even
while they proclaim that power is everywhere).
This same absence is also noticeable in the work of Lyotard, though his
account of the influence of performativity criteria and the commodification of
information/knowledge is revealing. One can readily discern, in an enormous
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