Dreaming the Future Closer

The more I think about it, the less I feel like the world has qualitatively changed in the so-called digital revolution.  More than anything else, I feel like the rapid development of technologies just reveals more clearly the fundamental character of the world of social production. 

It seems that as soon as you zoom in on some feature of digital production (say the reproducibility of the photograph, the ease with which it can be manipulated, its separation, even, from an ‘original’ negative or print from which all others derive), that feature ends up being a more basic feature that has always been present just not so clearly seen. 

It feels sort of like the technological changes reveal properties of social ‘matter’ akin to the way a particle accelerator reveals properties of physical matter.  There’s a real change, but it’s a matter of degree rather than kind.