Memory Trade: A Prehistory of CybercultureThe notion of "culture" is changing at the speed of information itself. Computer technology is creating a new kind of public, a cyberculture with all its utopian & apocalyptic possibilities. But is it that new? Popular debate generally ignores cyberculture's historical context. The official history begins in the nineteenth century & tracks the evolution of telecommunications, the egalitarian dream of the global village, & the emergence of the military-industrial complex. However, this omits the deeper, prehistory of technological transformations of culture that are everywhere felt but nowhere seen in the telematic landscape of the late twentieth century. Cyberculture is an extension, rather than innovation, of human engagement with communication & information technologies. A work of archeology, Memory Trade scrapes away the surfaces of the contemporary world to detect the sedimentary traces of the past: a past that inflects the present with the echoes of ancient, unresolved philosophical questions about the relationships between humans & technology, creativity & artifice, reality & representations of reality. Memory Trade is an exploration, in text & image, of the unconscious of cyberculture, its silent, secret prehistory. From Plato's Cave to Borges' literary labyrinths, Freud's Mystic Writing-Pad, & Joyce's reinvention of language in Finnegans Wake, Memory Trade is a reflection of contemporary culture. |
From inside the book
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... Rushkoff , who are besotted with the cyberpunk world - view and have made it their business to popularize it . Rushkoff sees the egalitarian , do - it - yourself ethic within the new information economy as “ the next dimensional home ...
... Rushkoff , who are besotted with the cyberpunk world - view and have made it their business to popularize it . Rushkoff sees the egalitarian , do - it - yourself ethic within the new information economy as “ the next dimensional home ...
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... Rushkoff's description of immersive experience in his Cyberia : Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace ( London : Harper Collins , 1994 ) , pp . 63–66 . Rushkoff's hapless experience reveals not only how dependent virtual reality is upon ...
... Rushkoff's description of immersive experience in his Cyberia : Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace ( London : Harper Collins , 1994 ) , pp . 63–66 . Rushkoff's hapless experience reveals not only how dependent virtual reality is upon ...
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... Rushkoff is the unwit- ting enforcer of the literate world - view he is attempting to reshape . Rushkoff's faux pas concerning the linear fallacy is representative of a pervasive tendency toward generalization within much cybercultural ...
... Rushkoff is the unwit- ting enforcer of the literate world - view he is attempting to reshape . Rushkoff's faux pas concerning the linear fallacy is representative of a pervasive tendency toward generalization within much cybercultural ...
Common terms and phrases
abstract actually alphabetic literacy apparatus argued art of memory artificial memory Borges century classical communication complex concept contemporary context created critical cspace culture cyber cyberculture cybernetics cyberpunk cyberspace cyborg Deleuze Derrida Dery described discourse dream ecology of sense electracy electronic environment experience fact feedback fiction Finnegans Wake Freud Gibson Havelock human hypertext idea imagination immersion interaction interface Joyce Joyce's Kroker language linguistic literate logic machine mation McLuhan meaning Memex metaphor metonymy mind mode nature Nelson networks Neuromancer nology notion oral perception Phaedrus Plato polysemy post-symbolic communication poststructuralism poststructuralist printed psyche reader reading reference representation rhetoric sensory simulation social Socrates speech Stelarc suggests tech Ted Nelson telematic television textuality Theall theater things tion Tralfamadorian Ulmer understanding virtual reality virtual space visual Wiener World Wide World Wide Web written word Xanadu Yates