The critique of essentialist critique of cyberculture

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze the critical perspective of cyberculture from the discussion on the essence of technology. The article revisits the classic discussion about the essence of technology and updates it from the visions of the new critics of digital culture. The central argument is that traditional critical perspective (fundamentalist or pessimistic) fails to address the phenomena of digital culture by essentialist bias. It proposes an analysis of cyberculture by Actor-Network Theory (ART) since a focused view, stucked to the constituent networks of technical phenomenon, and attached to social associations may offer a solution to the empirical failure of criticism.