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Footnote

Connected not only poses the "problem of connection," but also seeks, through Shaviro's scattered mode of critical analysis, to pose new ways of intervening in and viewing connections of all sorts. It does not work. Most of the time, Shaviro's efforts to il illuminate the "connections" never rise above a random, technophilic pastiche, lacking any powerful synthesis but often overflowing with the academic version of New Age babble. (It is ironic that Shaviro is concerned with the "problem of connection," because Connected is largely inaccessible to readers who have not read the novels of Samuel Delany, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, and several other science fiction novelists, or seen the films in The Matrix series.) For example, Shaviro thinks that everything "flows." He writes: In postmodern society, everything flows. There are flows of commodities, flows of expressions, flows of embodiment, and flows of affect. The organizing material of each flow is a universal equivalent: money, information, DNA, or LSD. But how are these flows related among themselves? Strictly speaking, they should interchangeable. All the equivalents should themselves be mutually equivalent. (p. 193) This is, of course, patent nonsense. More to the point, it is one of many passages in Conneeted that has the ring of authority, but little else. In the midst of rising concerns over computer security, personal privacy, and freedom of expression, how much significance should we assign to Shaviro's assertion that the user's relationship to the network is like the junkie's need for heroin, as described by William Burroughs in The Naked Lunch? Or the claim that Microsoft's design for the "Horne of the Future" is part of a middle-class plot to repress itself sexually? Or the recommendation that a novel of the future in which copyright violators are put to death is a harbinger of things to come? In the end, a generous reading might conclude that Connected is an experimental meditation an the relevance of science fiction, whereas a less generous view would be that the author's misguided preoccupation with literary effect resulted in a book that never makes an effective case for the writers we are supposed to take so seriously."