"Streaming" Capitalism
According to Benedict Anderson, it was the cultural technology
of "print capitalism"
embodied in the mass production
of newspapers and books which formed part of the
material basis
for the imagined community of the nation state.
The emergence of print-as-commodity,
the homogenization of localized
dialects and vernacular languages
into a singular, hegemonic linguistic style,
and the quotidian ritual of reading and disposing
of the daily newspaper,
all helped give
shape and coherency to the citizen-as-consumer
as the "real" subject
of nation-based capitalism.
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Following Anderson, it may be helpful to consider
virtual radio
and the World Wide Web as components
of a cultural technology
of "streaming capitalism". This
cultural technology engenders
what Bill Gates terms "friction free
capitalism."
This friction free zone is a smooth virtual space
of liquid capital
where there is a perfect articulation of consumer
desire
and the object of its fulfillment as all noise or
interference
between consumer and producer is
eliminated....
