Abstract
This article examines how definitions of `healthy' and `unhealthy', `appropriate' and `inappropriate' computer use are produced and mobilized by and through very specific American cultural ideals and interests. Following Foucault (1978) and Rose (1990, 1998), this article explores how the discourse on pathological computer use functions as a normalizing discourse — and as an apparatus of governance — by mapping correlations `between fields of knowledge, types of normativity, and forms of subjectivity' in a particular context (Rose, 1998: 11). The article describes the historical management of computer fear and addiction, and the formation of the `computerphobe' and `computer addict' as products of a specific historical milieu. For example, the convergence of American (sub)cultures such as the drug counterculture, cyberpunk technoculture, and the `culture of addiction' functioned as the conditions of possibility for the cultural intelligibility of `computer addiction'. At the same time, the article illustrates how computer use pathologies have been produced and mobilized toward the production and management of people's developing relationships with this new media technology, even while it defines and produces — or governs — related definitions of `appropriate' and `inappropriate', or `normal' and `abnormal', social practice such as commercial property and labor efficiency.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
