We live in a time of transition, translation, and displacement. These terms signify the processes that are serving to transform our culture from the Marxist “Mode of Production” to Mark Poster’s “Mode of Information.” Subject and object are equally displaced in this “mode of information” because of the rise of electronic technologies.

I approached this course with some trepidation, after all my training was more in the use of theory to criticize “texts,” in this course we have criticized the texts which deliver the theories. In some ways my trepidations (and Dr. Steinberg’s) I think have been fulfilled. Although I was able to read and “understand” many of the the selections for the course, it was not until I read Mark Poster’s Critical Theory and Poststructuralism that I found a “place” I could latch onto to make some form of intervention for this paper.

Thus what I hope to do in this paper is critique Poster’s “Mode of Information” in and of itself and in relation to texts by Derrida (“Signature Event Context”) and Walter Ong (Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word). I had hoped to find other texts to place in opposition to Poster but found that they critiqued the new technologies merely as expressions of old forms of domination. Instead of changing their theories to critique these new technologies, these other texts simply repositioned the technologies until they fit into their theory. I will attempt to develop an ideological critique of these texts as well as of the mode of information.

We first encountered the “Mode of Information” in Mark Poster’s Critical Theory and Poststructuralism. Initially, he designated this new mode in opposition to the Marxist “Mode of Production.” The mode of production had been used to critique economic and political methods of domination. Poster proposed the “Mode of In­formation” in order to account for the structuring role of language in linguistic methods of domination. He did this because he sensed a change in the underlying structure of society due to the rise of high-tech electronics. This shift requires the reconstitution of critical theory, a reformulation that can unlock the forms of domination inherent in diverse linguistic experiences.[Poster89, p.110] I believe that in reconstituting critical theory, Poster was attempting to build on its socio-economic critique of power relationships by showing that such power relationships can come about through linguistic as well as political means.

In Critical Theory and Poststructuralism, Poster based the mode of information in poststructuralism because of its attention to the text of a communication rather than the sender or receiver. He draws heavily on Foucault’s critique of science as being non-neutral and subjective. It is “not innocent of force”[p. 112]. He builds on this to demonstrate that discourse is implicated in the critique of domination and hege­mony [p. 114,118]. Poster then criticizes critical theory for its failure to address this implication of discourse in domination. He states that it ignores the structuring features of language or at best treats language in the form of ideology as part of the superstructure.[p. 117] Critical theory then fails to address the mode of informa­tion because it ignores the role of language in society. Poststructuralism also fails to address the mode of information because it fails to move from the critique of printed or written texts to a critique of electronic texts. Poster takes from these theories those elements he finds salutary (critiques of power relationships, Foucault’s discourse/practice dualism and the structuring influence of language) and builds his theory of the mode of information.

For Poster, global society is approaching a new epoch in which electronics and high technology greatly affect humanity. For him, the mode of information designates social relations mediated by electronic communication systems which will in turn affect language and language use. He believes that this new epoch, based as it is in communication and language, can only be critiqued through the use of linguistic concepts.[p. 126] This is in opposition to traditional social theory which addressed and analyzed the effects of action in society. He labels this theory “mode of information” in order to build upon the Marxist “mode of production.” Poster states: [the mode of information] parallels the Marxist theory of the mode of production [...] in that it presupposes that all communicationally based social relations are historically constituted and transitory; [...] and finally that the aim of theory is to reveal the structures of domination as well as the liberatory potential in any given pattern of language experience.[p. 130] Thus while displacing the criticism of production, he wished to retain the criticism of structures of domination through language.

Poster’s latest book, The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context, has done a much better job of explicating his theory of the mode of information. In this text, he paired four poststructuralists with elements of the mode of information. His strategy locates sectors of electronically mediated communication and in each case invokes a poststructuralist position to highlight and examine the self-referential linguistic mechanism instantiated therein.[Poster90, p. 18] After using Daniel Bell to set an opposition between “postindustrial theory” and his own mode of information, Poster cites Baudrillard, Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard to demonstrate the connections among the electronic age, mode of information, and poststructuralist theory.

Of the themes Poster discusses, these interest me most: Foucault and databases (formerly concerned with the panopticon), the digital encoding of language, and the separation of subject/object/referent over space and time in a way impossible before the electronic age.

In Critical Theory and Poststructuralism, Poster attempted to develop Foucault’s notion of the panopticon within the context of the mode of information. Foucault had taken Bentham’s prison panopticon and demonstrated that it was a structure of domination and not the “rational, humanist intention” Bentham had supposed it to be.[Poster90, p.90] Poster builds on this dark conception of the panopticon by demonstrating that through computerization, new methods of surveillance are possible. The police and government are able to check on who goes where and who owns what much easier now that most everyone has a social security number and a credit record. In the earlier work, Poster had emphasized the panopticon and a superpanopticon — one that supplements and complicates the self of the individual by constituting another self for that individual, one that may be as socially effective as the self that walks in the street.[Poster89, p.123] Because of the collection of data on our selves, we are reconstituted anew in the records of the government, our employers, and our creditors. We are then two selves-a “real” person who lives and breathes, and a simulacra that exists solely in the data banks of computers. One problem with the concept of panopticon as it relates to computers and data banks is that in the original concept, the prisoner knew he was being watched whereas we might know that there are records of our affairs, but this “surveillance” is not obvi­ous.

Perhaps recognizing this problem, Poster shifts the discussion away from panopticons to databases in The Mode of Information. We are still reconstituted by the in­formation held in these databases (as in the superpanopticon) but there is no “su­perpanopticon”—no one single overseeing guard instilling discipline in those being watched.

The problem with databases is that they are limited in their ability to maintain the context of a given piece of information. If your name is 15 characters long but there is space for only 13, you suddenly are referred to by a new name in the data­base: “Edward Costel” for instance. Poster contends that databases impose new languages on top of those already existing and that it is an impoverished, limited language, one that uses the norm to constitute individuals and define devi­ants.[Poster90, p. 95] Thus if you somehow fall outside the norm, if you want to have your middle name on your driver’s license for instance, you cannot or you have to resort to tricks like hyphenating your first and middle names.

A second issue with databases is that the reconstitute the self by associating bits of information together in a way not possible nor probable before this age. Poster states that the structure or grammar of the database creates relationships among pieces of information that do not exist in those relationships outside of the database.[p. 96] Someone interested in running a background check on me could call up a list of all periodicals I have subscribed to and attempt to correlate that list to the places I lived or my income level at the time. It does not matter whether the correlation is valid or even logical. A search on “all people who have subscribed to Mother Jones and now live in Pittsburgh” and a search on “all people who have subscribed to the Wall Street Journal and now live in Pittsburgh” might be possible ways of staking out political ideologies of subscribers (Mother Jones indicating a leftist bent while The Wall Street Journal might indicate that you’re a good Republican). Possible except that I would show up on both lists. Thus to both camps, I’m “one of them” (unless, of course, it was the Republicans searching on Mother Jones subscribers or vice-versa). Poster goes on to note that what gives databases their power is their combination of speed, digital encoding, and digital storage.

The concept of digital encoding interests Poster because of the way it restricts language and depersonalizes it. One cannot have an “electronic signature” in the same way that one has a written signature. Just as I can type “Edward Costello” after an email message, so could anyone else. On a computer monitor there would be no difference between the two “signatures.” Digital encoding restricts meaning and eliminates ambiguity.[p. 94] In much the same way that databases restrict the meaning and context of the information they hold, digital encoding enforces singular interpretations of the codes. The letter “K” will be legible on any computer screen it shows up on. There is no nuance to the way I typed it nor any indication of the situational context when I typed it. Digital encoding allows for all messages to be legible and iterable assuming all use the same code (and overwhelmingly most computers do use the same code — with modifications for national characters).

This digital encoding of language enforces the separation between subject and object, sender and receiver. Other than the “From:” line in an email message, there is little to indicate who has composed and sent it. One cannot recognize a person’s identity through email by looking at the writing or type of paper—there are no contextual cues in electronic communication as to the source of the message. Many email systems neglect to put a person’s “real name” at the top of a message, instead the receiver sees she has gotten a note from XD3$RDW@POKVMCR3. Unless the sender has indicated in the note who he or she is, the receiver has no way of knowing. On some computer systems, the userid XD3$RDW could even be from a program running on the machine. What is identity when there is no verifiability of who you are in an electronic discourse? How can we know who we are communicating with without the possibility of verification?

Lack of verifiability helps Poster to problematize the issue of community in the mode of information. How is a community constituted when its members no longer communicate face to face? If we all live in our own atomic little worlds, still communicating but by electronic means, can there be community? He raises this issue in order to demonstrate once again how critical theory fails to account for this new age: critical theory (according to Poster) assumed a community based in face-to-face communication. It does not seem prepared for the community of the internets or of Usenet where thousands of people interact daily in the discrete electronic communities of computer conferences.

In the conferences, the people “know” one another by their userid’s and “handles” on the nets. The nets offer people a new means of reconstituting the self because of the ability to be anonymous (or near anonymous as with user XD3$RDW) or to be a different identity than their “real” identity. Thus a man can impersonate a woman on the nets and there is little chance of being discovered. Poster talks of the French Minitel system which offers anonymity as well as the ability to create new identities. He notes that in France, the concept of freedom is now associated with anonymity because of the Minitel.[Poster90, p.119] He quotes one user as saying thanks to the pseudo [sic] which can be changed at any time, one is able to play a game of masks, of trying on different identities.... one is there without being there, one can see without being seen, play at being someone else, venture into the unknown without any risk.[p. 120] The users delight in this ability to peek into conversations (for one cannot really listen to an email conversation) and to create themselves anew. Poster notes that this may be due to the individual’s perception that the Superpanopticon has complete surveillance over her life, thus safety rests in anonymity.[p. 120]

In a strange sense, Poster seems to welcome the mode of information. Strange because he has spent an entire book (several if you count the parts of earlier ones) developing this critique of the mode of information and problematizing the issues raised by this new age. While he notes the problems (if they are such) of disconnectedness and de-personalization due to electronic communication, he seems content with demonstrating that the “mode of information” is a valid label for this epoch. What is missing from this book is a critique based in the mode of information. What critiques he offers are still based in poststructuralism or a modified critical theory. In my view, the mode of information is the start of a possibly “good” theory. Unfortunately, Poster spends much of his time re-developing and re-positioning his theory. This would not be “bad” (to use Laurie’s oppositions) if it weren’t the third book which has dealt with this theory. In this and earlier treatments, Poster demonstrates what the mode of information is not.

In the next section, I discuss Ong’s and Derrida’s perspectives on the impact of technology on communication.

I am using Walter Ong’s book Orality and Literacy for two reasons. First, I wanted to bring some rhetorical theory into this paper. I feel that the split between Rhetorical Theory and Critical Theory to be an artificial one (though probably a necessary one). It seems to be a split between the practical or pragmatic (Rhetoric) and the philosophical or theoretical (Critical Theory). The split is unfortunate because the Rhetoric side (at least as I have experienced in the MAPW program) many times demonstrates the application of Critical theories without the background explication of the theories. I find Derrida and now Poster to be quite informative for my field, yet they are apparently taboo in my field.

Secondly, I think that Ong parallels Derrida in addressing issues of context. Ong, however, approaches the issue of context from a different perspective than Derrida. Ong notes that deconstruction would be impossible without the technology of print because it plays with the paradoxes of textuality alone and in historical isolation, as though the text were a closed system.[Ong89, p.169] To Ong, deconstruction is simply another effect of the change from oral to literate culture.

What seems remarkable upon reading Ong’s book is not simply that writing and print restructure the conscious (reconstitutes the self) but this restructuring has been occurring since the time of Plato. According to Ong, Plato had already internalized the technology of writing when he had Socrates criticize it as being inhuman.[p. 79] Ong notes that the same objections that are raised against computers and electronic technology (inhuman, unresponsive) were originally raised by Plato against writing. The irony or paradox is that in order to raise the objections, one must likely use the very technology (writing for Plato, computers or electronics today). As with the cri­tique of ideology, one must perform a critique of technology by using the very tech­nology one is critiquing.

I believe that on the issue of context, Ong and Derrida agree that there is no single, centered context but that there may be a multitude of contexts. However, Ong concentrates on how the lack of verifiable context affects both readers and writers.[p. 102] Derrida sticks to problematizing the iterability and citationality of written signs.[Derrida88, p9] Ong notes that the deadness of the text, its removal from the living human lifeworld, its rigid visual fixity, assures its endurance and its potential for being resurrected into limitless living contexts by a potentially infinite number of readers.[Ong89, p.102] This is comparable to Derrida’s statement that To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a sort of machine which is productive in turn, and which my future disappearance will not, in principle, hinder in its functioning, offering things and itself to be read and to be rewritten.[Derrida88,p. 8] I find it interesting that Ong considers the written text to be “dead” while Derrida considers it to be a machine. Both recognize that the text continually allows itself to be re-read and re-constituted by new readers. This issue of reconstitution ties together these three authors. In this age of the mode of information, subjects are reconstituted daily due the interactions made possible by electronic communication. No longer do we “hand in” papers, we send them to the professor. No longer are we authors or speakers but assumed originators of messages, messages which may or may not be truly from ourselves. We come into contact with people frequently who know something of ourselves though we do not know how much they know. Instead of the Superpanopticon, we have a multitude of panopticons or even simply opticons.

I say “opticons” because in several instances I believe the watchers do not have the “overseeing eye” required of a panopticon. Instead, they key in information into their databases without knowing or verifying that the information is correct. Thus we are reconstituted when a name gets chopped or a digit dropped in our credit reports. An opticon asks for and tracks information but limits its own context for knowing whether that information is (or can be) true. Thus an auto salesman checks off boxes on a form and sells a car to a student based on the student’s current job although the salesman and the student know that that job is temporary. There may be opticons and panopticons, but there is no superpanopticon.

In this final section, I want to discuss Poster’s theory in relation to “real” evidence I have “pulled off the net” over the past several weeks. In short, the issues raised in Poster’s book are at the forefront of several ongoing discussions on the internet/Usenet news conferences.

Poster noted that the difference between Foucault’s panopticon and Bentham’s concept lies in the perceptions each had of the task of the panopticon. Bentham’s panopticon served to make society better by reforming the criminal. Foucault’s panopticon endangers society because it imposes a structure of domination upon the prisoner. In the mode of information, we are all prisoners in a sense. We are all constituted in some form or another by our social security numbers, our credit card accounts, the information maintained in the databases.

I have clipped ten recent posts to several electronic bulletin boards that discuss issues related to Poster’s mode of information. They range from discussions of the databases maintained on people to the use of “massive computation” to improve people’s positions.

On databases, I found several discussions related to the banking of information on people and how it cannot be checked for correctness. Thus not only are we reconstituted daily by the information in the databases, the newly constituted subject may not truly represent ourselves—from the simplest error in a name to a mistake in retrieving the wrong record, we are at the mercy of the information in the database and the technocrat who uses it. In a slight twist on the power of databases and information brokers (those who literally buy and sell information in databases) comes word that databases in Britain must be registered with the government. Unfortunately the law is so vague as to not explicitly define what a database is. Hence system administrators are wondering if they must register their system password file (which is a database of users, basic information, and their encrypted passwords). In addition, other laws require that these databases be available for people to look at the data. In an effort to get around these laws (both in Britain and the U.S.), some institutions have resorted to maintaining paper databases. The information is processed on the computer but printed and stored in paper form.[Templeton, 14 May 1991]

Another twist on the mode of information is the use of computers to literally squeeze the last dollar out of airline flights. Apparently, airlines use programs which constantly calculate the minimum/maximum number of passengers needed on a give flight at a given rate in order to maximize their profits. In the past, airlines adjusted prices infrequently because there was not enough power to perform all the computations. Today, the airlines are able to change prices daily based on the wealth of information in their databases. While the consumer seems to be the loser in this case, travel agents have begun running their own software to find the discount seats and cheaper fares that result from the airlines’ tactics.[Leichter, 2 May 1991]

In the mode of information, there are opticons and panopticons. Mark Poster attempts to show that there are Superpanopticons—watchers who know and have access to everything. I do not think this is the case—not out of some idealistic belief in the goodness of the watchers—but simply because, at this stage, it is impossible. The opticons and panopticons each reconstitute subjects in the images necessary for their own success. The result is that there is mis-information and dis-information in the databases that cannot be corrected except at great cost to the subject. Instead, the subject continues to live on, perhaps foisting his or her own information/disinformation upon databases.

Poster’s position on the effect of the mode of information is unclear. In his chapter “The Family and the Mode of Information” in Critical Theory and Poststructuralism, Poster seems to accept the new epoch as something “good.” Yet, throughout that text and throughout The Mode of Information he seems to take an ambivalent attitude towards the subject. He does not address what happens to those who lack access to the mode of information—are they locked into the mode of production still or has that been displaced by the mode of information? Poster almost seems to fall victim to a sort of utopianism, he demonstrates some benefits and faults of the electronic age but makes few judgements. In the end, he seems to have totalized his theory of the mode of information (after noting the totalistic flaws in critical and postindustrial theory). That which he attempted to avoid he ends up doing.

I think that the mode of information is a good start for a critical assessment of this “new age.” I don’t believe that Mark Poster has created a sound theory but a sound basis for a new theory. Walter Ong’s text shows that the changes society is undergoing are a continuation of changes which began when people first started to write. It would seem that the commodification of language, its separation from author/speaker and reader/hearer, is inevitable so long as society continues to develop.

• [Derrida88] Jacques Derrida, “Signature Event Context” in Limited Inc, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988. pp. 1-23.
• [Leichter, 2 May 1991] Jerry Leichter, “Battle of the Computers”, a post to “inter­ net.risks” on the internet, 2 May 1991.
• [Ong89] Walter J. Ong Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, New York: Routledge, 1989.
• [Poster84] Mark Poster, Foucault, Marxism & History: Mode of Production versus Mode of Information, Oxford: Polity Press, 1984.
• [Poster89] Mark Poster, Critical Theory and Poststructuralism: In Search of a Context, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.
• [Poster90] Mark Poster, The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990.
• [Templeton, 14 May 1991] Brad Templeton, “Database Registration and privacy acts” a post to “netnews.comp.org.eff.talk” on the Usenet, 14 May 1991. Archive copy on Google Groups