on the self in the net

reblog of slavin:

P012209PS-0541 (via The Official White House Photostream)
from my conclusion to Networked Publics: “Under network culture, then, the waning of the subject that began under postmodernism grows ever greater. But whereas under postmodernism, being was left in a free-floating fabric of emotional intensities, today it is found in the net. The Cartesian “I think therefore I am” dissolves in favor of an affirmation of existence through the network itself, a phantom individuality that escapes into the network, much as meaning escapes into the Derridean network of différance, words defined by other words, significance endlessly deferred in a ceaseless play of language. The division between the self and the net that Castells observed a decade ago is undone.”