Document Type
Editorial
Abstract
[First paragraph]
Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, the word "new" was persistently attached to the term "technology," a coupling intended to reference a vast range of phenomena -- computers, the internet, wireless telecommunications, satellite cinema and so on. Throughout this period, these technologies were widely heralded as global panaceas. In the pages of glossy hi-tech magazines and academic annals alike, the obliteration of racism, homophobia, sexism, and the great class divide became subjunctive to the problem of connecting everybody everywhere to emergent digital networks. Decentering old-world imperial powers and creating alternative cultural formations became battle cries for the new economy, the new world community and a new decentralized and democratized body politic. Instantaneous, immersive and transparent unions among people and places across politics and cultural difference pervaded corporate advertising, government policy documents and university budgets alike. These were, for many, exciting times. Indeed, the US economy witnessed unprecedented growth. Rhetoric about globalization promised to tear down previous barriers to world-wide prosperity, security and equality. On the surface, it seemed like a pretty good deal.
Repository Citation
Wasson, Haidee. "New and Now: A Plea for Historiography and Technology." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 4, no. 1, 2004, pp. 1–6. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol4/iss1/1