new media, old media: a history and theory reader edited by Wendy Chun and Thomas Keenan

Information, Crisis, Catastrophe     (Mary Ann Doane) 251-264

photography--- "that has been"   "pastness"
TV   "presentness"     The content of information is ever-changing but information, as a genre, is always there, a constant and steady presence, keeping you in touch.     p251

p252 "(t)elevision tends to blur the differences between what seem to be absolutely incompatible temporal modes, between the flow and continuity of information and the punctual discontinuity of catastrophe. Urgency, enslavement to the instant and hence forgettability, would then be attributes of both information and catastrophe."

information-disinformation     "Disinformation loses credibility, then, not only through its status as a lie but through its very directedness, its limitation, its lack of universal availability.... Disinformation abuses the system of broadcasting by invoking and exploiting the automatic truth value associated with this mode of dissemination- a truth value not unconnected to the sheer difficulty of verification and the very entry of information."

Hayles-- information-- decontextualization          
television could be seen as the textual technology of information theory.  television is the preeminent machine of decontextualization. The only context for television is itself--its own rigorous scheduling.
The simultaneous activation of different, incongruous spaces is suggestive of a writing surface and the consequent annihilation of depth.

P262  catastrophere as an ideology  "transforming a political act into something with the proportions of a monumental natural disaster"
representational obscenity--- the repetition of the absolutely unique      
  what is the stake in this continual technological celebration of instantaneity----It signifies social abjection of representation itself in a highly mediated society