The Post Fordist Social Machine

How post Fordism explains contemporary media, not vice versa.


Commercial television is just a staging post on the way to the real, joined-up, post Fordist communication machine, on the way to the 'infobahn' (the information super-highway) where all the functions anticipated from control over the information flow will find their true technological realisation. If one doesn't understand this one risks saying a lot of stupid things about the media and about the power of information. Certainly the media play a fundamental role in the matter but they are part of an entirely different series of links. In this new series of links we don't see the same television we used to see, we don't live the same set of media we used to live. It is the post Fordist social machine that explains the nature of the media, not vice versa.

(Maurizio Lazzarato: Lavoro immateriale, 1997)