Authors and Corporations: | |
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In: | Journal of Communication Inquiry, 22, 1998, 2, p. 177-204 |
published: |
SAGE Publications
|
Media Type: | Article, E-Article |
Physical Description: | 177-204 |
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ISSN: |
0196-8599
1552-4612 |
DOI: | 10.1177/0196859998022002005 |
published in: | Journal of Communication Inquiry |
Language: | English |
Subjects: | |
Collection: | SAGE Publications (CrossRef) |
<jats:p> Using Foucauldian discourse analysis, this paper examines five temporal regularities produced in emergent cyberculture discourse in the immediate post-WWII period in the United States. The construction of entropy as social; the understanding of systemic change in evolutionary terms; the embrace of the present as a revolutionary historical discontinuity; the adoption of a machine standard of condensed time; and the shaping of memory as a notion of performative efficiency, work to shape a particular vision of time and the future. The cybernetic futurology which emerges has continued power/knowledge effects within the discursive formation of cyberculture. Time is fast, chaotic, and unpredictable; history is no longer relevant for understanding the present or future; information technology forms an ubiquitous terrain upon which teleological cybernetic futurologies unfold; and the future becomes, not about its prediction, but about the control and management of the risks of the present. </jats:p> |