Information Please Culture and Politics in the Age of Digital Machines

"Information Please" Advances the Ongoing Critical Project of 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 Appr