Communication in Modern Social Ordering History and Philosophy [Paperback]

Communication in Modern Social Orderinginvestigates the modern history of communication in relation to the thinking of the political community in the United States. By illustrating the intertwining of the technological developments in communication methods and its community-building effects, the different representations of society and their political implications are examined against the development of communication systems from the telegraph, to the telephone, to computer networks. It was the telegraph that made communication a continual process, thus freeing it from the rhythmical motion of the postal service and from physical transportation in general, and provided both a model and a mechanism of control. Using the theories of both Foucault and Heidegger to provide a lens for new investigation, the author studies not the meanings of communication and its logic as such but rather the conditions and structures that allow meanings and logic to be formulated in the first place.
The book offers an original combination of historical analysis with an ontological discussion of the evolution of telecommunications in the U.S. as a phenomenon of modern social ordering.

In this wide-ranging and insightful study of the role of communication in modernity, Kai Eriksson continues the grand tradition of critique in the highest and best sense -- that of exploring potentials and tracing limits. What is at stake is not simply a philosophy of communication or an analysis of the technological, economic, and social systems with which it is associated, but, crucially, a study of the forms of community that these thwart and enable. Communication in Model Social Ordering is a formidable and fascinating work of scholarship: an apt demonstration of the sparks of illumination that result from the collision of theory and history. Mark Andrejevic, Research Fellow at the University of Queensland's Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies

Communication in thelã¤