Knowledge Consumption Paradox

Knowledge workers who manipulate sybols are the easiest to manipulate to consume symbols.

According to Poster (channelling Tapscott on page 41-2 of What’s the Matter with the Internet?) more and more of what we consume is digital or knowledgeware. These are objects that are the product of human art, invention and knowledge not the fashioning of raw materials. The paradox is that those who consume are knowledge workers who should be the least susceptible to manipulation by advertising and yet the postcapitalist system is based on producing consumers. The consumers produced by the system are exactly those that manipulate symbols who should, therefore, be the least susceptible. Instead we produce consumer/inventors who work hard inventing symbolic capital in order to consume it as directed by their own hype.