ABSTRACT
This advertisement for Cisco Systems – the world’s primary supplier of network solutions for the Internet – suggestively illustrates the new economic imaginary linked to information and communication technologies (ICTs) and to the emergence of a ‘global information society’. Such ads suggest that ICTs will create a new, inclusive networked world in which everybody can become ‘celebrities’ through online self-broadcasting. They will also make capitalism more ‘human’ and will empower individuals in the face of institutions like the state, which we are told possess excessive power. We will thus enter a ‘brand newworld’, a global information society, networked in form, where social problems will be resolved through improved communication.
