Machine-Space

a hypertext project by Mae Saslaw, December 2007.

Out of the postmodern re-conceptualization of space come spaces that are illegible by design, built to instill a feeling that one is nowhere. The same postmodern common intellect has produced a representation of the machine as an extension of human prowess that, for its magnum opus, created the Internet. The Internet is both machine and space, unclaimed for any one political purpose but used as a tool for both capitalism and revolution. Following a history of machines and spaces from the modern forward, it is easy to see why the Internet is inevitable as the ultimate intersection of the two. Computers have an untold power to render individuals from all classes alienated from the products of their labor. At the same time, the Internet has the capacity to create new modes of discourse, to allow for the generation of ideas that could not exist under late capitalism deprived of such unprecedented connectivity.

Bibliography.

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