After reading Mark Poster’s article, “The Digital Subject and Cultural Theory,” it is evident that digital writing enables change in today’s society. According to Poster, the 1996 Geneva Conference of World Intellectual Property Organization aimed at reforming copyright laws in order to adjust laws in order to reflect the current computer communication technologies. However, the “Copyright Assembly” concluded that “there are no specific legislative proposals to tame the Internet, as sure sign that the great wealth of the Internet, a sure sign that the great wealth of the cultural industry is not enough to alter the basic architecture of cyberspace” (Poster 487). However, it is evident that content on the Internet is too vast to be controlled. Wikipedia is an excellent example of just one website that allows people throughout the world to post and edit pages on various topics of information. Many people argue that the information posted on Wikipedia, or other sources online, may not be as reliable as the content that is found in a book. According to Poster, Butler does not indicate how different body-text relations, in speech, in handwriting and in print, on the radio, in film, on television, and in cyberspace each configure the performative process differently and produce different incarnations on the subject” (491). In the past, authorship required a technology of the analogue; a conviction of what was printed in the book was a direct representation of an author’s intention, be it in the form of idea, style or rhetoric; in short that the book was an analogue representation of an original authentic author” (488). It is evident that people are able to write and express their personal opinions more freely as they have fewer restrictions on Internet than in a book, as they are free from the pressures and editing of publishing companies. Does context an author writes in a book take precedent over context written online? Do people trust one form of writing over the other?
– Katrina Goncalves