Abstract
Using Foucauldian discourse analysis, this paper examines five temporal regularities produced in emergent cyberculture discourse in the immediate post-WWII period in the United States. The construction of entropy as social; the understanding of systemic change in evolutionary terms; the embrace of the present as a revolutionary historical discontinuity; the adoption of a machine standard of condensed time; and the shaping of memory as a notion of performative efficiency, work to shape a particular vision of time and the future. The cybernetic futurology which emerges has continued power/knowledge effects within the discursive formation of cyberculture. Time is fast, chaotic, and unpredictable; history is no longer relevant for understanding the present or future; information technology forms an ubiquitous terrain upon which teleological cybernetic futurologies unfold; and the future becomes, not about its prediction, but about the control and management of the risks of the present.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
