Physical appearance

Immersed in societies that thrive on and reciprocally feed mass media communication, we have been living in an "information age" for decades.

But the label has only recently been applied to contemporary society, in response to the rapid integration of computer technology into practices of communication and production, and fails to indicate the extent to which computerized technologies impact our culture in unique and significant ways when compared with the technologies which preceded it. Computerized networking offers an era of rapid information exchange-of an interpersonal dialectic-which is continually modified and updated, all according to a variety of languages at play. An individual's physical appearance is neither implied nor relevant in the computerized network environment which defies those spatial and temporal laws of nature which govern our physical bodies. Language is exchanged unhindered by the usual distractions of physical appearance, gesture, and tone of voice, which are only rarely avoided in other communication technologies such as television, radio, and telephone.

text from Rhizome