Epistemology in ruins: the implosion of communication theory in the cyberspace experience

Abstract

The recent historical emergence of cyberspace, its technical mode of being and its accelerated expansion and social consolidation bring significant implications for the Theory of Communication. More than the old-age spirit of the technological society of the end of the century, marked by an excess of communication never seen and by the crisis of knowledge in general - of which epiphenomenon is disbelief in relation to meta-narratives (religious, philosophical or political) and their Teleologies, as well as in relation to the fable of technological progress and its promises of emancipation of humanity - is the cyberspace that, in the wake of computer technologies, imposes to this theory an ultimatum, inviting it to make a hard proof of the real.