Targeting,Television and Networking

Abstract

In this interview, Samuel Weber discusses two recent books that explore issues of contemporary media and politics, Targets of Opportunity and Theatricality as Medium. Targeting is identified as a modality of conceiving the world that is as old as western thought but which assumes an increasingly pervasive character in the contemporary globalizing political and technocultural milieu. Mainstream and emerging representational and communications media are considered in this perspective for both their tendency to proliferate target thinking (Broadcast TV news, military management of the Gulf War campaign) and their potential to open other modes of being engaged. The predominant forms and ideas of the network (the internet, gamer networks, creative networks) are examined as particular kinds of netting and working that constrain and yet retain some of these other modes of intersubjectivity.