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Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History
Tofts, Darren; Jonson, Annemarie; and Cavallaro, Alessio (Eds.). (2002). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Price: $32.95 cloth
Review by Paul Putman
Coordinator, Student Leadership Programs
Cleveland State University
p.putman@csuohio.edu
Prefiguring Cyberculture is an erudite exploration of technology and its ever-evolving role within existing and new human social and cultural contexts. This text is not some 30-page simplistic business parable, but a seriously engaging, holistic, intellectual discussion. The editors have included morsels that are not meant to be hastily consumed, but are best enjoyed with thorough mastication to savor every idea and connection.
For most student affairs practitioners, this book is not one that would be a quick read, nor is it a simple “how-to” list. The ideas presented certainly have relevant implications for working with an ever changing, increasingly technologically-savvy student population. Students (and indeed, faculty and staff) are using technology in such a way that it is becoming both ubiquitous and nearly invisible. Technology today often stands out more when it is absent than when it is present. It wasn’t that long ago that cell phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants, or palm computers) were not visibly attached to every ear or hand, and people did not regularly “google” topics of interest or each other.
In her foreword to the text, N. Katherine Hayles borrows from Damien Broderick’s included essay “Racing Toward the Spike” with this thought: “Whatever the future brings, we can be certain it will be different from how we imagine it now. All the more reason, then, to look to the past to understand in fuller, richer terms the possibilities of the present” (p. xiv). Prefiguring Cyberculture connects the present, past, and future of cyberculture, defined in an early essay by Darren Tofts as “the broader, epochal name that has been given to this process of becoming through technological means” (p. 3). He also makes the important addition that “the prefix ‘cyber’ has a more specialized and specific denotation [than computers] to do with the control and flow of information; or, to be even more specific again, with information as the common unit or element of organization within organic and inorganic systems” (p. 3).
The book divides its collection of essays into four sections or thematic modalities. Subjectivity is presented in Section One: I, Robot; spatiality in Section Two: Virtuality; and temporality in Section Four: Futuropolis. Section Three presents statements by artists. Their visual and written statements are a beautiful addition to the text. The cross-disciplinary approach serves the subject well, and the reader is presented with well-researched and conceptualized essays.
While Prefiguring Cyberculture is not an essential addition to the consummate student affairs practitioner’s library, the concepts presented do connect to aspects of student affairs work. For example, editors Jonson and Tofts raise the question, “In a world of increasing technological complexity, of multiple online personae and the notional distancing of our minds from our bodies, can we remain in control of ourselves” (p. 11)? This question raises further questions, for example, for any professional working with students who, as one colleague complained, send instant messages and emails to other students or anonymous entities while avoiding campus programs and events. How are these behaviors impacting their personal development and the overall campus culture? Is it really such a bad thing or is it simply the next incarnation of student life? Or perhaps even of life in general?
The intermingling of humanity and technology has both a long history and future. Prefiguring Cyberculture is an engaging, often mind-boggling read. For student affairs practitioners, as part of educational institutions existing largely as brokers of information, this text provokes us to contemplate an admittedly unknown future where cyberculture is not necessarily a Matrix-like Big Brother. This text is perhaps just the right catalyst for deeper exploration into the implications of technology and the work of Student Affairs.
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