Mark Poster - Böcker

The contributors to this study confront both recent, startling upheavals in international politics and the reorganization of foundations in the humanities and social sciences in order to re-examine Western political thought.

-- Christopher Kent, Canadian Journal of History

-- Christopher Kent, Canadian Journal of History

Neither a city nor a traditional suburb, Orange County, California represents a striking example of a new kind of social formation. This multidisciplinary volume offers a cogent case study of the "postsuburban" phenomenon.

In this path-breaking work, Mark Poster highlights the nature of the newly emerging forms of social life, in the current era. The flexibility of language which the computer allows makes the written word less certain and less concrete. The result of these changes, Poster argues, is a new communication experience, an interaction between humankind and a new kind of reality. Poster discusses the addictive properties of television and arcade video games, as well as the surveillance possibilities which the new communication technologies offer the state. His wide-ranging analysis incorporates the new language-based theories of mathematics, philosophy and literature in Wiener, Derrida and Barthes, among others.This work is a major new contribution to the debate surrounding the future of electronically mediated-experiences.

This book examines the implications of new communication technologies in the light of the most recent work in social and cultural theory and argues that new developments in electronic media, such as the Internet and Virtual Reality, justify the designation of a "second media age".

Jean Baudrillard, alternately provocative and astonishing, is one of the leading theorists of media and culture. Regarded by many as the chief prophet of postmodernism, his writings raise important issues about the changing nature of social and political life in our contemporary, media-saturated age. This book makes his most important writings available in a single volume. It includes selections from the entire range of his work, from his early writings on consumer culture and the political economy of the sign to his more recent work on desire, simulation and the 'hyperreal'. This new edition includes five new extracts from Baudrillard's writings in the 1990s, including his writings on the Gulf War, on the internet and his autobiographical reflections. It also includes an updated introduction by Mark Poster which provides an extremely lucid overview of Baudrillard's work. Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings is an excellent introduction to the thought of one of the most important and influential thinkers of our day.

Jean Baudrillard, alternately provocative and astonishing, is one of the leading theorists of media and culture. Regarded by many as the chief prophet of postmodernism, his writings raise important issues about the changing nature of social and political life in our contemporary, media-saturated age. This book makes his most important writings available in a single volume. It includes selections from the entire range of his work, from his early writings on consumer culture and the political economy of the sign to his more recent work on desire, simulation and the 'hyperreal'. This new edition includes five new extracts from Baudrillard's writings in the 1990s, including his writings on the Gulf War, on the internet and his autobiographical reflections. It also includes an updated introduction by Mark Poster which provides an extremely lucid overview of Baudrillard's work. Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings is an excellent introduction to the thought of one of the most important and influential thinkers of our day.

In a world where our lives are increasingly mediated by technologies it is surprising that more attention is not paid to the work of Gilles Deleuze. This is especially strange given Deleuze's often explicit focus and reliance on the machine and the technological. This volume offers readers a collective and determined effort to explore not only the usefulness of key ideas of Deleuze in thinking about our new digital and biotechnological future but, also aims to take seriously a style of thinking that negotiates between philosophy, science and art.This exciting collection of essays will be of relevance not only to scholars and students interested in the work of Deleuze but, also, to those interested in coming to terms with what might seem an increasing dominance of technology in day to day living.Contributors to this volume include: William Bogard, Abigail Bray, Ian Buchanan, Verena Conley, Ian Cook, Tauel Harper, Timothy Murray, Saul Newman, Luciana Parisi, Patricia Pisters, Mark Poster, Horst Ruthrof, David Savat, Bent Meier Sørensen and Eugene Thacker.

This is an expanded edition of the first comprehensive overview of the work of Jean Baudrillard, one of the most fascinating thinkers on the French intellectual scene. To the original selection of his writings from 1968 to 1985, this new edition adds examples of Baudrillard's work since that time.Reviews of the First Edition"This is a good book, and the author of its selected writings, Jean Baudrillard, deserves only a share of the compliment. It is difficult to introduce a difficult author, and Mark Poster has done a brilliant job. He has selected wisely from Baudrillard's writings. . . . More important, Poster has written what may be, pound for pound, the best introduction to a social theorist I have read. . . . Poster has somehow said everything the uninitiated needs to know before deciding to read Baudrillard."—Contemporary Sociology"Following the lead of thinkers such as Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze, Baudrillard engages in a task of pointing away from any traditional sociological themes. His writings demand that one turn away from convenient or customary interpretations of society and, in the process, one is forced to use his or her imagination in new ways."—Choice"Poster's Introduction presents what is probably as clear and intelligent an exposition of Baudrillard's ideas as you'll find anywhere."—Philosophy and Literature

This is an expanded edition of the first comprehensive overview of the work of Jean Baudrillard, one of the most fascinating thinkers on the French intellectual scene. To the original selection of his writings from 1968 to 1985, this new edition adds examples of Baudrillard's work since that time.Reviews of the First Edition"This is a good book, and the author of its selected writings, Jean Baudrillard, deserves only a share of the compliment. It is difficult to introduce a difficult author, and Mark Poster has done a brilliant job. He has selected wisely from Baudrillard's writings. . . . More important, Poster has written what may be, pound for pound, the best introduction to a social theorist I have read. . . . Poster has somehow said everything the uninitiated needs to know before deciding to read Baudrillard."—Contemporary Sociology"Following the lead of thinkers such as Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze, Baudrillard engages in a task of pointing away from any traditional sociological themes. His writings demand that one turn away from convenient or customary interpretations of society and, in the process, one is forced to use his or her imagination in new ways."—Choice"Poster's Introduction presents what is probably as clear and intelligent an exposition of Baudrillard's ideas as you'll find anywhere."—Philosophy and Literature

A provocative investigation into the social and cultural implications of the Internet by a leading cultural critic.As the Internet has become more and more a part of our daily lives, responses to its impact on culture and society have tended toward the extremes, hopeful or pessimistic. Fears that the Internet undermines community, inhibits social interaction, exacerbates economic and racial divisions, and facilitates greater state or corporate intrusion into our lives are balanced by excitement about the transformative qualities of the new medium and its potential to stimulate individual creativity, inspire new social forms, and further democratization.In What’s the Matter with the Internet?, leading cultural theorist Mark Poster offers a sophisticated and astute assessment of the potential the new medium has to redefine culture and politics. Avoiding the mindless hype and meaningless jargon that has characterized much of the debate about the future of the Web, he details what truly distinguishes the Internet from other media and the implications these novel properties have for such vital issues as authorship, national identity and global citizenship, the fate of ethnicity and race, and democracy. Arguing that the Internet demands a social and cultural theory appropriate to the specific qualities of cyberspace, Poster reformulates the ideas of thinkers associated with our understanding of postmodern culture and the media (including Foucault, Deleuze, Heidegger, Baudrillard, and Derrida) to account for and illuminate the virtual world, paying particular attention to its political dimensions and the nature of identity. In this innovative analysis, Poster acknowledges that although the colonization of the Internet by corporations and governments does threaten to retard its capacity to bring about genuine change, the new medium is still capable of transforming both contemporary social practices and the way we see the world and ourselves.

Information Please advances the ongoing critical project of the media scholar Mark Poster: theorizing the social and cultural effects of electronically mediated information. In this book Poster conceptualizes a new relation of humans to information machines, a relation that avoids privileging either the human or the machine but instead focuses on the structures of their interactions. Synthesizing a broad range of critical theory, he explores how texts, images, and sounds are made different when they are mediated by information machines, how this difference affects individuals as well as social and political formations, and how it creates opportunities for progressive change.Poster’s critique develops through a series of lively studies. Analyzing the appearance of Sesame Street’s Bert next to Osama Bin Laden in a New York Times news photo, he examines the political repercussions of this Internet “hoax” as well as the unlimited opportunities that Internet technology presents for the appropriation and alteration of information. He considers the implications of open-source licensing agreements, online personas, the sudden rise of and interest in identity theft, peer-to-peer file sharing, and more. Focusing explicitly on theory, he reflects on the limitations of critical concepts developed before the emergence of new media, particularly globally networked digital communications, and he argues that, contrary to the assertions of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, new media do not necessarily reproduce neoimperialisms. Urging a rethinking of assumptions ingrained during the dominance of broadcast media, Poster charts new directions for work on politics and digital culture.

First Published in 2001. In this collection of essays and interviews, Mark Poster examines theoretical approaches and develops his own position on our information based society. He contends that new communications media disrupt and transfigure the way identities are constituted in cultural exchanges. He looks in detail at several aspects of what might be called "internet culture", including virtuality and democracy.Poster advocates an awareness of the Internet and other new forms of communication, calling for a mobilization to ensure accessibility to all and to configure technology into vehicles of open cultural creation. For example, nothing is pure about the Internet politically, he points out, and it remains an open question as to who will transform the potentiality of new communications media into determinate cultural configurations. This book explores the rupture and potentiality between the electronic self and the face-to-face self inherent in new forms of technology and media.