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54 Steve Jones

a global electrical network to facilitate communication. Tesla be-
lieved that anything could be coded into electrical impulses and
transmitted via electricity. In that sense he presaged the current
trend toward digitization. But one might say that he also foresaw
the postmodern shift from meaning to Deleuze and Guattari’s (1980)
concept regarding flow, from a social space within which signs took
shape, metamorphosed, disappeared and reappeared, to a space
where meaning shifts while signs remain. Meaning itself is fluid,
mobile, and nothing should have meaning for long.
Another reason I find our use of the highway metaphor unfortu-
nate is that it leaves aside the issue of power: it focuses our attention
on the road, the infrastructure, and away from the people and “ve-
hicles” that traverse it, away from the road-side, away from the in-
teraction of road and place. It focuses our attention away from the
gaze of others, the sense that we are as surveilled as we are social
(Foucault 1977). We are led to believe we are in power, we are the
ones “surfing,” or “using,” and others cannot see us, just as we can-
not be seen when we watch television. The seeming absence of the
other focuses away from economic and political issues, and directs us
toward ourselves.
But there is evidence of the “other” on-line. Perhaps a metaphor
from boating would serve better than on based on automobile trans-
port. As we travel along an information “path,” we leave behind a
wake, though we may not leave behind tangible and permanent
markers. One of the earliest discoveries in electromagnetics was
that as an electrical current flows in a wire a magnetic field is gen-
erated around that wire at a right angle. The forces not only inter-
act, they are dependent on each other, and the wire’s “content,” the
movement of electrons through it, creates a “field” of force around it.
The creation of those fields is itself dependent on movement. Such
may be the case with messages we send via Internet (or for that mat-
ter via other media as well); they travel from place to place but also
create a “field” of influence and meaning around themselves.
Many others (McLuhan 1965; Carey 1989; Ong 1982; Eisenstein
1979; Goody 1986) have assayed this territory, but perhaps it is nec-
essary to do so again, as we have become far more savvy media users
and producers. McLuhan’s once oft-repeated phrase “the medium is
the message” contains a new twist. We are not interested in the mes-
sage per se; we are interested in getting the message across. We have
less interest in what we mean and more interest in how we mediate
what we say. What medium shall I use, and what will the conse-
quences be of my choice?