SOURCE: “‘Games of Perfect Information’: Computers and the Metanarratives of Emancipation and Progress,” in Sub-Stance, Vol. XXV, No. 79, November, 1996, pp. 24-45.

In the following essay, Porter contests the feasibility and the desirability of Lyotard's idea that a complete computerization of information would supply a democratically available resource, arguing—aside from the resulting information overload—that the language needed for such an enterprise would be the sort of “totalizing” grand narrative Lyotard condemns.

In The Postmodern Condition, Jean-François Lyotard argues that “knowledge has become the principle force of production” in the modern world. Because information is indispensable to productive power, it “will continue to be … a major—perhaps the major—stake in the worldwide competition for power.” Consequently, “it is conceivable that the nation-states will one day fight for control of information … and afterwards for control of access to and exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor” (5, original...