LightningBolt, Poster

While reading Poster’s article I couldn’t help but to take the date into consideration. If I am not mistaken the article was written in 1995. Although Poster discusses the change the internet has brought and the development of mass media communication into the 90’s, I feel that communication has drastically changed since 1995. While Poster rivals at the change the internet has brought, I wonder what he could have to say about text messaging. I would say that text messaging fits into the structure of “postmodern culture.” Poster states that “postmodern culture is often presented as an alternative to existing society which is pictured as structurally limited or fundamentally flawed” (532). Text messaging is a alternative to, what is already postmodern, talking on the phone or emailing. These two forms of communication may be seen as limited because a phone call requires focused time, with a lot of fluff in-between, and email requires someone to be sitting down at their computer. A text message allows a message to be sent with out actual focus or a person being in a certain location besides near their phone.

At first though one may not thing that text messaging fulfills Poster’s description of, “a broad and extensive change in the culture, in the way identities are structured” (532). At a deeper look, text messaging is done by everyone I know, including my parents. I have gone from talking to people on the phone on a regular basis to text messaging with them. This change causes me to rarely hear their voice. I would argue that this changes the way that identities are structured. More specifically than identities, relationships. Some people have entire relationships based off of text messaging. This is becoming the main form of communication in many people’s lives. I believe that Poster would have taken text messaging into consideration had he written this article ten years later.