Jean Baudrillard in Cyberspace: Internet, Virtuality, and Postmodernity

Abstract

From ATT it has now entered into common speech on and off Internet as a shorthand for this conception of computer networks as a cybernetic space. From a Baudrillardian perspective, this figuration of Internet as a kind of cybernetic terrain works to undermine symbolic distance between metaphoric and real. It abandons the for hyperreal by presenting an increasingly real simulation of a comprehensive and comprehendible This heading points way toward Baudrillard's hypertelia, that fated catastrophe when sophistication of a model outdoes reality it attempts to comprehend. If Baudrillard's critique of modernity applies to current acceleration in and communication technology as well as media euphoria surrounding these occurrences, then Internet likewise provides a context for understanding Baudrillard's image of fatal technology. This image in Baudrillard and, conversely, shadow of Baudrillard cast upon technology foregrounds contemporary challenges to the in postmodern culture. This reading also suggests, however, how Baudrillard can be used to dissuade Internet beyond its modern closures. Replacing one world with possible worlds, Internet ultimately offers both seductions and subductions of a postmodern world. For Baudrillard, shift from real to hyperreal occurs when representation gives way to simulation. One could argue that we are standing at brink of such a moment, marked primarily by emerging presence of a virtual Just as highways once transformed our country, information superhighway offers an image of dramatic change in American lives through a change in virtual landscape. Although this expression originated in White House as a catchy term for proposed National Information Infrastructure (NII), expression quickly entered into popular parlance as a pseudonym for already existing worldwide network of Internet. The overused expression does little to represent actual network architecture that connects these machines, yet metaphor of highway persists as a media image, functioning as a conceptual model for world created by this technology. …

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