From: Arun-Kumar Tripathi [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 11:32 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [NEW BOOK] Prof. Mark Poster on _What's the Matter with the
Internet?_


Dear Professor John Armitage,

((Hello, wishing you all the best and courtesy to Prof. Mark Poster --I
would like to forward the info about the new pub., thought might interest
you. The Book is about--A provocative investigation into the social and
cultural implications of the Internet by a leading cultural critic. Best
Regards.-Arun))
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What's the Matter with the Internet?
by Mark Poster

As the Internet has become more and more a part of our daily lives,
responses to its impact on culture and society have tended toward the
extremes, hopeful or pessimistic. Fears that the Internet undermines
community, inhibits social interaction, exacerbates economic and racial
divisions, and facilitates greater state or corporate intrusion into our
lives are balanced by excitement about the transformative qualities of the
new medium and its potential to stimulate individual creativity, inspire
new social forms, and further democratization.

In What's the Matter with the Internet?, leading cultural theorist Mark
Poster offers a sophisticated and astute assessment of the potential the
new medium has to redefine culture and politics. Avoiding the mindless
hype and meaningless jargon that has characterized much of the debate
about the future of the Web, he details what truly distinguishes the
Internet from other media and the implications these novel properties have
for such vital issues as authorship, national identity and global
citizenship, the fate of ethnicity and race, and democracy.

Arguing that the Internet demands a social and cultural theory appropriate
to the specific qualities of cyberspace, Poster reformulates the ideas of
thinkers associated with our understanding of postmodern culture and the
media (including Foucault, Deleuze, Heidegger, Baudrillard, and Derrida)
to account for and illuminate the virtual world, paying particular
attention to its political dimensions and the nature of identity.  In this
innovative analysis, Poster acknowledges that although the colonization of
the Internet by corporations and governments does threaten to retard its
capacity to bring about genuine change, the new medium is still capable of
transforming both contemporary social practices and the way we see the
world and ourselves.

Mark Poster is professor of history and director of the film studies
program at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of
Cultural History and Postmodernity (1997), The Second Media Age (1995),
and The Mode of Information (1990).

$17.95 Paper ISBN 0-8166-3835-7
$44.95 Cloth ISBN 0-8166-3834-9
232 Pages
1 black-and-white photo
5-7/8 x 9
May 2001
Electronic Mediations Series, volume 3
(University of Minnesota Press)

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