yellowdaisy 4, poster

Reading Poster’s article about the internet made me interested in hearing on many different ways the internet has changed our lives since it first became available to the public. What was even more surprising was realizing, after Poster mentioned that President Clinton had commented on the internet’s problems, that the article had to be written in the mid 90s so it’s not even talking about the huge affect it has today. Poster started out explaining how the telephone was the big communications change in the 1800s because people were able to communicate over distances but then the internet came about and changed things even more drastically. What I found interesting was when Poster was talking about “the success of virtual communities as an indication that real communities are in decline.” This makes me think of how people today, years after this article was written, would rather communicate over websites like facebook or myspace with one another then actually meeting up with them or even calling them. Poster was actually correct when he said it was in the decline because through technology has definitely surpassed face to face communication especially with email and instant messages. Moreover, he goes on to discuss how important things like the newspaper were pre-electronically. I can connect this to how today if I want to see an article in the newspaper or even just know the weather; I automatically go on the internet instead of picking up a real paper. Additionally, it was intriguing to see how Poster connected his work with that of another theorist we studied being Lyotard. He discusses “the dangers of a generalized computerization of society in which the availability of knowledge is politically dangerous.” Lyotard and Poster are referring to how the internet makes information available to anyone which can have bad consequences because knowledge is power.