Vol 32, No 2 (2013)

This article, as part of a larger study on the role of war as the primary and primordial formative
mechanism of human thought and communication, investigates the functions of war in the
thinking of postmodern philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard. It is argued that the central idea
that provides the structuring framework for Lyotard’s theory of communication is the concept of
agonistics that is derived from Heraclitus’ assertion that war is the father of all things. Against
the prevailing hegemony of the pacifist bias in poststructuralist social theories, Lyotard returns
language to its pragmatic origin in the war-like agonistic and combative social reality. Lyotard’s
insight that acts of speaking in society resemble fighting facilitates a better understanding of the
contemporary postmodern global world that resembles a return of the neomedieval condition,
which was characterised by perfect communication and warfare.

In ‘The Rise of the Network Society’ (2010), Manuel Castells elaborates on what today is common
knowledge, namely the notion of a society that is characterised both by networks of electronically
mediated communication and by networks undergirding economic exchanges worldwide. In
this article, I explore a dissonance issuing from a feature of the network society, namely what
Castells calls the ‘transformation of space and time in the human experience’. In this context,
he distinguishes between ‘the space of places’ and ‘the space of flows’, with the former referring
to the historically familiar sense of space as a material precondition of social interaction and
of architectural modulation into ‘place’, and the latter to a novel form of spatiality, one that is
related to social interaction that has been fundamentally modified by advanced communication
technologies and is characterised by simultaneity, regardless of physical distance. This, in turn,
is related to what Castells labels ‘timeless time’, which is noticeable where customary time
sequences are blurred in certain contemporary practices, such as virtually instantaneous financial
transactions, ‘instant wars’ and virtual communication. This contrasts with both ordinary, ‘human’
time and also with evolutionary ‘glacial time’ – a notion operative in the ecological movement
and one that increasingly clashes with the demands of ‘timeless time’ in the network society. The
article reconstructs Castells’s comprehensive vision and points to the relevance of the conflict
between these respective notions of space and time for contemporary communication practices.
It also engages critically with the social implications of the dominant modes of space and time.

This study seeks to shed some light on the types, usage and availability of information and

communication technologies (ICTs) in four selected government departments in the KwaZulu-
Natal government in South Africa. To achieve the stated aim, the study posed and then answered

the following research questions: What types of ICTs are available in government departments?
What is the purpose of using ICTs in government departments? What are the benefits of
using ICTs in government departments? What are the ICTs that civil servants consider to be
effective in improving work productivity in government departments? What are the civil servants’
recommendations for improving ICT usage in government departments? The study was informed
by the diffusion-of-innovations theory. Government departments considered to be central to service
delivery were targeted by means of a survey. To obtain a representative sample, a systematic
sampling method was applied. The collected data were analysed using thematic categorisation
and tabulation, and the findings were presented descriptively. The results indicate that a variety
of ICT tools and services have been adopted in the government departments included in the
survey so as to facilitate information sharing and improve communication. All the civil servants
surveyed indicated that they used ICTs to communicate with fellow colleagues and to disseminate
departmental information. The most popular recommendations included the need for sufficient
and coherent government policies to regulate the training of staff in the utilisation of ICTs in the
sector. Detailed recommendations for further study are provided.

Narcissism is increasingly being regarded as one of the most serious sociocultural problems
of the contemporary era. Indeed, recent studies by Baldwin and Stroman (2007) and Buffardi
and Campbell (2008), among others, have advanced the opinion that new media technologies
– particularly social networking websites – have significantly exacerbated the rise and spread of
narcissism in contemporary society. Based on this premise that social media provide the perfect
platform for the promotion of self-infatuation, this research paper provides a critical analysis of the
potential influence of social media in the development of a widespread narcissistic sociocultural
condition. In this regard, claims that increasingly consumerist, individualist and media-saturated
societies are nurturing a culture of extreme narcissism, vanity and entitlement are examined in
relation to an increase in the use of consumer-orientated new media technologies. In particular,
by examining the structural components of the popular social networking site, Facebook,
this research highlights the connection between the use of this form of new media and the
engenderment of an acutely consumerist and narcissistic subjectivity. That is, the role of new
media technologies in the promotion of narcissistic identity construction is examined as a factor of
particular significance in the formation of contemporary subjectivity. In relation to this, the impact
of online narcissism on the perpetuation and propagation of capitalist isolation, alienation and
insecurity is investigated before some remedial measures ‒ which co-opt rather than negate such
social media ‒ are proposed.