The world of communication today has advanced in leaps and bounds thanks to the intense growth of technology.

The world has come closer and communication tools like the television, internet, mobile phones etc., have facilitated the process of communication. For any media student, studying the field of communication is always incomplete without studying its contributors and the theories originated by them. This project has given me the opportunity to study one such contributor named Arthur Kroker. Who is Arthur Kroker? Born on 27 August 1945, Arthur Kroker is a Canadian writer and editor. He is also the Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture and Theory and Professor of Political Science at the University of Victoria, Canada. CTheory (an academic journal) is co-edited by him. Besides, he is the Director of the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture. He and his wife Marilouise Kroker are known as the hipsters of Canadian media theory. They have written and held various lectures on the topics of technology and contemporary culture. The media loves them for their urbane and adaptable style of presentation. The journey The 1960s saw Marshall McLuhan put Canada on the modern intellectual map with his penetrating analysis of communications technology. His definitions of "hot" and "cool" media, medium is the message and his concept of the "global village" made him the communication guru of that time. After completing his Ph.D. (Political Science) from McMaster University, Ontario in 1975, Arthur Kroker went ahead expanding that legacy - much as the internet has continued and expanded the cultural network created by television and the movie industry. He and his wife have gained popularity for their stand on technological advancement, both as academics contributing to scholarly theory and as cyberpunk performance artists. The explosion of the internet and the rapid growth of the World Wide Web gave them plenty to take on. After moving to Manitoba he and his wife founded a critical journal, Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, on theory, technology and culture. Decades later, the electronic journal, now called Ctheory, is popular in more than 100 countries around the world. The Krokers then moved to Montreal in 1981 and expanded their publishing activity with their own book imprint, New World Perspectives. One early title was a study by Arthur called Technology and the Canadian Mind (1984), which he calls his intellectual autobiography. Arthur has been the prolific author of dozens of publications which include Life In The Wires (2004), The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism: Heidegger, Nietzsche and Marx (2004), Digital Delirium (1997), Hacking the Future (1996), Data Trash (1994) and Spasm (1993).

His writings have been translated into Japanese, Italian, Dutch, French, German and Russian. He has lectured and performed at sites around the world, including the ICA, Whitney Museum of American Art, Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley, San Francisco Art Institute, Banff Centre for the Arts, the Multi-Media Centre at the University of Cologne, and in performance spaces in Vienna, Venice, Hamburg and Zurich. His teaching experience includes seminars and lectures in educational institutes like Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Concordia University, University of Winnipeg and University of Victoria. His theories Arthur has always stressed that many of his theories concern the attempt to take over the internet by powerhouse suppliers of technology, like MicroSoft, Compuserve, America on Line, and so on. Like TV's power-brokers, they want to reduce the content to the advertiser. They try to control net behaviour, to shut down its flexibility; they try to impose policies; they are obsessed with security devices; they create panic about freedom of information. Here are some of his important theories: Arthur Krokers Spasm: Virtual Reality, Android Music, Electric Flesh (1993) studies the impact of technological change on subjectivity. It alters the language used to think about technology; it continues a critical and distinctly creative reflection on technology. The principal object that Arthur addresses in Spasm is virtual reality: an electronic communications space with an infinite number of possibilities for manipulating the reality. In his words, where digital reality actually comes alive, begins to speak, dream, conspire and seduce. The key component in Arthur's rewriting of the language of technology and subjectivity is "crash aesthetics.'' The crash theory focuses on the interaction and repercussions between technology and culture. As examples, he uses Michael Jackson and Madonna. Both of them are popular culture spectacles. While Madonnas music videos and images appealed to diverse audiences, Michael Jackson's media machine employed the best production, marketing, and public relations personnel. Both Madonna and Michael Jackson reached superstardom during the era when MTV and music videos became central in determining fame within the field of popular music and arguably became popular because of their look and spectacular presentations in expensive music videos with exceptionally high production values. Arthur urges us to notice how our direct experience is replaced by substitutions for reality. He uses imaginative ascriptions such a "cold sex" (Madonna mutant), "pure sex" (Michael Jackson) and "dead sex" (Elvis) to show a devaluing of any intimacy not mediated or initiated by machines.

In Data Trash (1994), a book that he co-authored with Michael Weinstein, Arthur spoke about the theory of Virtual Class. He explores our obsession with cyberculture and our fascination with the disappearance of the human body in virtual reality. Data Trash takes a hard look at the political and cultural impact of virtual

reality. Employing an analysis of "event-scenes" such as advertising, the birth of hightech research labs, and the explosive growth of the Internet, Kroker and Weinstein map the political economy of cyber-culture and tracing the "will to virtuality" that has become the obsession of today's new technological class. To exemplify, Arthur talks about CNN beaming out the pulsar code of America to the colonial cultures of the world; the virtualization of fashion as, for example, Benettons colour and style of clothing into a designer Internet, producing surplus-virtualized exchange (for itself) by transforming the "The United Colors of Benetton" into a digital sequencer, linking child labour in the slaved- nations with the high-intensity market setting in the master triad (Japan, Europe, and America). Another example of virtual culture is from the United States, and may be connected with the military, and he refers to the military-entertainment complex. Not only is the virtualization of military culture under way, but the colonization of the globe is achieved by downloading American culture into the expectant orifices of local territorial space. It is not only the technological class that is against the working class, but a universal media class that is arrayed against local populations. However, there are limitations to this theory. How extensive are the issues and society of Kroker's analysis? Virtual reality and cyberspace are extensive, but less than half of Canadian households have computers. Besides, Arthurs analysis postmodernism is more about consumption than about production. Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Krokers edited book Hacking the Future (1996) and Digital Delirium (1997), talk about informational superhighway. With an Information Superhighway you just plug in your modem and roll your data out onto the ramp and into the data flow where it zips along the freeway until it hits the appropriate off-ramp. Finding data is the same its all nice straight data-lanes with on and off ramps and well-banked curves. The book also talks about how the internet has turned us into passive consumers. The whole discourse of the information superhighway is to shut down people, this fledgling populous knowledge of ourselves as users of a new electronic media, the consequences of which are unpredictable. The capacity of the Net to hold information is virtually infinite and, with the inevitable advances in microprocessors, its capacities to gather, combine, and relay information will be equal to any demand for access. Besides you can interact with other individuals creating a society in cyberspace. Examples given are of Microsoft, Compurserve and McCaw Cellular who developed a global multimedia network of satellites for downloading and uplinking the archival record of the human experience into massive, centrally controlled data bases. They sell their products and we buy them trying to link ourselves to global communication. The best way to exemplify this theory in todays times would be search engines like Google, AOL, etc which give us the power to access information. Similarly, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook allow us to create a society in cyberspace.

To conclude Arthur Kroker may be the most interesting thinker about culture and technology that Canada has produced since Marshall McLuhan. Through his works the author has contributed majorly to understand the dynamics of the communication field. In the years to come, we can surely expect Arthur to come up with interesting theories that explain how technology continues to impact communication in startling ways.

Please note: The sources of references that I have used are mostly website and online books. I believe they are credible since they are official websites of the author. Besides, I have also used the document sharing website Scribd which is trusted as far as original information is concerned. Lastly, there is nothing from Wikipedia. Below are references that have been used: http://krokers.net/ http://ctheory.concordia.ca/krokers/cv_a.html
http://www.innovation.cc/book-reviews/interpretation-technology.htm

http://ctheory.concordia.ca/krokers/hacking.html
http://www.cjsonline.ca/articles/pinter.html http://uregina.ca/~gingrich/kintvw.htm http://www.scribd.com/doc/52234993/HACKINGTHEFUTURE (Scribd.com)

Spasm: Page 15 by Arthur Kroker (Google Books)