Od społecznych technoutopii do posthumanizmu. Wybrane strategie narracyjne nowych technologii komunikacyjnych
From Social Techno-utopiasto Posthumanism. Selected Narrative Strategies of New Communication Technologies

Summary/Abstract: The article presents an attempt at analyzing selected narratives concerning the new media, seen as new communication technologies. We look at the construction of statements popular in social research -including statistical and prognostic research as - well as those carried out in the interactionist paradigm. We indicate their limitations, in particular their utopian and conservative approach manifest in the concept of the information society, which has been dominant in the reflection on the new technologies. The conservative approach indicates the use of available dictionaries and concepts, which results in leaving significant elements influencing social life unnoticed, while considering only those secondary in relation to broader social processes (the new technologies are not the cause of these processes but their expression). On the other hand, we treat the utopian approach as one which unreflectively assumes a positive influence of these technologies on social life. In the second part of the article we refer to selected passages of the post-humanist narrative, treated as the basis for indicating other possibilities of problematizing the influence of the new communication technologies on social life. We put forward a cautious thesis that the modes of both thinking and writing about new technologies popular in the sociological narratives we have pointed out overlook the key transformations which have been taking place in the social field influenced by their developments. And these concern the change in the definitions of both the human and the social field.

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