Optimists and pessimists share this fantasy of abundance.11 Those optimistic about the impact of networked communications on democratic practices emphasize the wealth of information available on the Internet and the inclusion of millions upon millions of voices or points of view into "the conversation" or "public sphere:' Pessimists worry about the lack of filters, the data smog, and the fact that "al kinds of people" can be part of the conversation.12 Despite their difering assessments of the value of abundance, both optimists and pessimists characterize networked communications in terms of exponential expansions in opportunities to transmit and receive messages.
The fantasy of abundance covers over the way facts and opinions, images and reactions circulate in a massive stream of content, losing their specificity and merging with and into the larger flow of data. Any given message is a contribution to this ever-circulating content, a drop in the ocean of cultural and political stuf engulfing us. This morphing of message into contribution is a constitutive feature of corimunicative capitalism.
One of the most basic formulations of the idea of communication is as a message and the response to the message.13 Under communicative capi� talism, this changes. Messages are contributions to circulating contentnot actions to elicit responses. The exchange value of messages overtakes their lise value. So a message is no longer primarily a message <sup>fr</sup>om a sender to a receiver. Uncoupled from contexts of action and application-as on the Web or in print and broadcast media-the message is simply part of a crculating data stream. Its particular content is irrelevant. Who sent it is irrelevant. Who receives it is irrelevant. That it need be responded to is irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is circulation, the addition to the pool. Any particular contribution remains secondary to the fact of circulation. The value of any particular contribution is likewise inversely proportionate to the openness, inclusiveness, or extent of a circulating data stream: the more opinions or comments that are out there, the less of an impact any given one might make (and the more shocking, spectacular, and new a contribution must be in order to register or have an impact). In sum, communication functions symptomatically to produce its own negation.
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