This document discusses both utopian and dystopian perspectives on information. Utopian views see information and new technologies as enabling access to "all information for all people at all times," replacing existing industries with an information economy. However, the document also notes that information can "devour its own contents" and displace important social aspects. It argues that views of information involve fantasies of control and comprehensibility but also hide complex realities about knowledge and power in society.

2. The fetish of information.
How we believe that
information will save or
destroy the world
Nico Carpentier

3. Utopian perspectives
• CNC = broadcasting &
narrowcasting + interactivity +
low cost + accessibility
E.g., Negroponte
• Industry replaced by
information economy
• “all information for all people
at all times”

6. Rosenfeld and Morville
"Information Architecture for
the world wide web"

7. ‘information
devours its own
contents; it devours
communication and
the social’

10. Fetish
Substitute for, or condensation of,
desire in one object or situation
Freud (sexual fetish) and Marx
(commodity fetishism)
All the social condensed in
information – both dystopian and
utopian approaches

11. Different questions
Displacement.
Why?
At what expense?

12. Fantasies
• Predicting the future
• Maintaining the overview (Alexandria)
• Hypervisibility and tangibility of power
• Comprehensibility of the One structure
• Controlling (will to power)
Hiding & displacing
• Knowledge
• Complex power logics in society
(govermentality / empty seat of power /
hegemonies)