Putting the critique back into a Critique of Information: refusing to follow the order

Abstract

This paper argues that Scott Lash's Critique of Information is one of the most important works of the new informational order: the Order. However, despite its comprehensive and insightful analysis, it illustrates a common trend amongst theorists whereby the inherent pessimism of their arguments' logic tends to be replaced by an unwarranted optimism regarding their conclusions. This criticism is applied to Lash's critique, which is further supplemented by a rejection of Lash's argument that the transcendent perspective necessary for critical theory has been supplanted in the information age by an immanent all-at-onceness. The much more negative perceptions of the social and cultural effects of the Order to be found within literature and cultural history are defended as valuable sources of critical perspectives that may still help to aid theory as it struggles to keep up with the Order's discombobulating flows.

Keywords:

• Critique
• Lash
• Musil
• Order
• pattern recognition

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul A. Taylor

Paul A. Taylor is Senior Lecturer in Communications Theory at the University of Leeds with a particular interest in radical media theory. He is the Editor of the forthcoming International Journal of Žižek Studies, author of Hackers: Crime in the Digital Sublime (Routledge, 1999) and co-author of: Hacktivists: Rebels With A Cause (Routledge, 2004); Digital Matters: Theory and Culture of the Matrix (Routledge, 2005); and Critical Theories of Mass Media: Then and Now (Open University Press, forthcoming).