How does each chapter contribute to the argument?
The Interlude draws out the uncanny similarities between Daniel Paul Schreber’s paranoid hallucinations of 1903 and the high-speed networks of 2003. Schreber’s system—a communications network, which confuses “pictured men” with real ones, consisting of light rays and a “writing down system” that records everything—parallels our current fiber optic technologies. Rather than resting with this parallel, this interlude argues that this literalization and generalization of paranoia leads elsewhere. If Schreber’s paranoia stemmed from his realization of the rottenness at the core of power—of the disciplines as sustaining the liberties—ours’ blinds us to the transformation of discipline and liberty into control and freedom. The rest of the book elaborates upon this. Chapter 1 addresses the discontinuities between the Internet as TCP/IP, the Internet as popularly conceived as “cyberspace” and William Gibson’s fictional “cyberspace.” Arguing that the Internet has little to nothing in common wit
