Post Class Post and Example

In Tuesday’s class we discussed Poster and his ideas of cross connecting and how we prefer virtual reality to the real. We talked about the quote from Poster’s essay:

“What distinguishes the telephone from the other great media is its decentralized quality and its universal exchangeability of the positions of sender and receiver” (535).

In this quote, Poster is saying that when you are on the telephone, you don’t always know someone’s exact location. But you are still able to have that exchangeability without being there have a face-to-face conversation. An example of this is the opening scene in the movie Scream when Casey answers the phone and the serial killer is right outside her house. She doesn’t know his location (that he is outside her house) because they are on the phone and they are not face-to-face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFCStOMqpfk

I made the connection of this quote with Zizek’s idea of malignant properties. We used the example in class of a Real Coca Cola vs. Diet Coke. Coke loses its malignant properties to become Diet Coke. You still have the taste of real Coke, the caffeine, but without the calories. Relating this to the telephone quote, by using the telephone, we are able to have the same conversation with someone that we can have face-to-face just without the physical presence of the person being in front of you.