Terminal Identity Quotes

“As yet, though we live in a culture in which images are the dominant currency of communication, we have been unable to form an adequate picture of the future. Despite the new electronic power to create instant image flow, the ability to see the more diffuse Postmodern connections . . . has become more difficult. . . . It is harder to visualize a multinational identity than a local entity. We can only see the world by forming a picture through various specialized mediations. . . . We now lack a convincing vision...”
― Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction

“In an early article Jean Baudrillard wrote: “It is useless to fantasize about state projection of police control through TV. . . . TV, by virtue of its mere presence, is a social control in itself. There is no need to imagine it as a state periscope spying on everybody’s life– the situation as it stands is more efficient than that: it is the certainty that people are no longer speaking to each other.”
― Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction

“The desire to become a cyborg connects to the new “eternal cycle” of consumerism and product circulation; one character predicts that, “In the future, shopping will become a major form of entertainment”. Obviously, this future is now, as afternoons at the mall and The Price Is Right and The Home Shopping Network make abundantly clear.”
― Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction

“Whether “cyberspace” is a real place or not, our experience of electronic space is a “real” experience. By distinguishing the constitution of being as an activity of interface, phenomenology suggests that the status of being is not an absolute condition, but one that changes relative to changes in the experience of the real.”
― Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction