|
Connectivity: |
Susan Hawthorne |
| EXTRACT |
Biography |
|
Cultural Practices of the Powerful Do you have a Power PC? A Power Mac? Are you connected to power? Do you have any power? The first two questions are power questions. They assume you are part of a culture, a race for power. They assume that you are connected to power, because even if you have a laptop, it needs recharging, and the batteries never last long enough to write anything of substantial length. If you say no to the first three questions, then chances are you don't have much power at all. Power is a practice. It takes on a variety of forms which range in effectiveness from the power of violence to the power of attitudes. Violence is a short-term and highly effective means of power, while attitudinal power is long-term, it is also effective, but only if it is not resisted. Violence is effective even with resistance. The question of power is critical to an evaluation of cyberculture. Analyses of power have been central to the development of feminist thought, and though these analyses have tended to be dismissed by the postmodern theorists, it is power which has brought us the digital revolution.
A new digital world, founded on a global information system run by American-based computer corporations, would seem to be the unstated goal of digital ideology. (Millar, 1998: p. 153) |
 "Premenstrual in a postmodern age No. 2", cartoon by Judy Horacek, copyright 1997 Not seeing The unmarked category is the identifying mark of the Powerful. He is the standard by which everything else is measured. The clearest example of this is Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, or his latest incarnation, Jobe Smith (Mitchell: 1995, p. 26) in Lawnmower Man. Judy Horacek's cartoon of "Vitruvian woman", complete with mirror writing, sends up the idea of man as the unmarked category. On the global scale this is well represented in the informational address structures of the Internet, where US addresses are unmarked. What is so clearly unmarked on the Internet, is less obviously marked in some other areas, but readily identifiable for anyone outside the category. |
|
 |
|