Understanding New Media Rupture-Talk

The next speaker at AoIR 2015 is Michael Stevenson, whose focus is on what he calls new media "rupture-talk". The idea here is to take what we often refer to as "mere talk" more seriously. Michael points to John Perry Barlow's "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" as an example of this – new media as a radical break from the past.

The concept of cyberspace has been on the decline since its heyday in the mid-1990s, even in major booster publications like Wired. But other rupture-talk concepts, such as MOOCs or the "social graph" have emerged, and are also used to signify a radical break from the immediate past. Such terms are often understandably criticised as hype (Evgeny Morozov's The Net Delusion is an obvious example).

New media rupture-talk is hyperbolic: it presents exaggerated claims that ultimately can be easily debunked, based often on existing (for example libertarian and free-market) ideologies. It is also imaginative: it presents a set of ideas that position information as separate from and more essential than matter, and thus formalisable and quantifiable. It is historical: it places new media in the context of historical precedents. And it is situated: there are different notions for what new media could be, which compete for control of rupture-talk definitions.

What rupture-talk does is to obscure: it flags certain desired properties by hiding others that are far less obvious. It restricts and privileges: it favours certain courses of action while making others appear a great deal less desirable. It inscribes: it positions certain metaphors and models as central. And it animates: it points to specific courses of actions that should be taken. For a richer discussion of new media history, we need to investigate the role of rupture-talk much further, then.