Poster

While reading “Postmodern Virtualities” by Mark Poster I found his emphasize on the communications “superhighway” pretty interesting. “Information superhighways are being constructed that will enable a vast increase in the flow of communications” (535). In postmodern culture, we are constantly building our abilities to communicate by inventing new technologies that permit greater and more diverse communication. Poster begins by commenting on the single use of a telephone as a great invention in 1876 and then moves to the postmodern equivalent of the telephone, the internet. Then he gets into the concept of the media conglomerate that is taking over the means of communicating by merging different technological advances. “…the new technology will force the merger of television, telecommunications, computers, consumer electronics, publishing and information services into a single interaction information industry” (1993: 52-3) (536). A recent example of this is Microsoft’s construction called, “Microsoft Surface.” The concept behind this is that Microsoft takes the modern concept of a computer and connects it with two other communication mediums such as the cellular phone and the digital camera. Microsoft has invented a type of communication technology that takes three communication devices and turns them into one. This, I think, is a great example of what Poster is trying to get at, which is we take the modern ideas and turn them into postmodern through the invention of new communication technologies.