{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age The Spirit of Networks","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781349379743","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","uuid":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age The Spirit of Networks","normalized_title":"mediaandnewcapitalisminthedigitalagethespiritofnetworks","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781349379743","isbns":["9781349379743","9780230106062"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":258,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Media%20and%20New%20Capitalism%20in%20the%20Digital%20Age%20The%20Spirit%20of%20Networks","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/search"},"page":{"printed_page":35,"pdf_page":41,"physical_index":41,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"32299ba3ce5674f592c22d7630865480b9528b85097774dad926476dd87e22f7"},"chapter":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","content":"the goal is ultimately to be able to answer the theoretical question regarding the legitimation role of technology in the political culture of advanced capitalist societies. The methodology of deciphering a dominant discourse through the reading of popular magazines has been extensively utilized in the social sciences. For example, Reading National Geographic (Lutz and Collins 1993) studied national, racial, gender, and geographical representations in the United States through a close textual analysis of the photography featured in the famous magazine. Edward Said famously studied how news outlets in the United States are Covering Islam (1981). And more recently, a group of scholars has offered an analysis of masculinity, capitalism, and consumption in contemporary Western society through reading and Making Sense ofMen’s Magazines (Stevenson, Jackson, and Brooks 2001). In this book, too, the analysis of the magazine takes on a supportive role to facilitate understanding of another, broader issue. Also, since the close observation of the case (Wired magazine) helps us understand an external phenomenon (the digital discourse), the case study does not have to be typical of other cases as long as it increases our understanding of the wider phenomenon (Stake 1994).\n\nWired was founded by American journalists Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe. It was a great success at its launch and was compared to Rolling Stone magazine for its innovation and cultural impact. It won five National Magazine Awards for General Excellence and three for Design (American Society of Magazine Editors n.d.). The magazine brought together a varied cadre of individuals, such as leaders from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (a techno-libertarian advocacy group), academics from the Stanford Research Institute, Nicholas Negroponte from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, and Kevin Kelly, editor of Whole Earth Review and author of Out of Control: The Rise of NeoBoiological Civilization (1995; Wolf 2003, 48, 50, 53). The company included not only the monthly magazine but also dozens of Web sites, a search engine (Hotbot), a blog, and a stock index. After a failed attempt to take the company public in 1997, it was sold off in pieces. Wired magazine was purchased by Advance Magazine Publishers, who assigned it to its New York subsidiary, Condé Nast. The editorial offices were kept in San Francisco, close to the epicenter of the digital revolution—Silicon Valley.\n\nWired perceived what was happening at that epicenter as the bedrock of a social revolution, a revolution that is ignored by mainstream media, which continued to concentrate on the old, industrial-era structures of power and social dynamics. The magazine’s goal was to register and articulate this new revolution and make sense of the new society to which it gives birth. Wired’s first issue makes explicit some of the motivations of the magazine’s introduction and some of the themes that will dominate it for years to come. The alignment around the axis of new media and technology was laid out in the magazine’s first words, taken from Marshall McLuhan’s 1967 book The Medium Is the Message:<sup>1</sup> “The medium, or process, of our time—electric technology—is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action, and every institution formerly taken for granted. Everything is changing: your education, your family, your neighborhood, your job, your relation to ‘the others.’ And they’re changing dramatically” (McLuhan 1967, cited in Wolf 2003, 71). In the next page of its inauguration issue, cofounder Louis Rossetto asserts why Wired is needed: “Because the Digital Revolution is whipping through our lives like a Bengali Typhoon—while the mainstream media is still groping for the snooze button. And because the computer ‘press’ is too busy churning out the latest PCInfoComputingCorporateWorld iteration for its ad sales formula cum parts catalog to discuss the meaning or context of social changes so profound their only parallel is probably the discovery of fire” (Wired, January 1993, cited in Wolf 2003, 71).\n\nContemporary Technology Discourse\n\n35","previous_page":34,"next_page":36}