Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 140

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Popular Culture Review

(enabled with the synth-senses formed by means of smart technologies); and
cybernetics, namely second-order cybernetics, establishing founding principles for
the world of the artificial.
The world of techno spawned the technoculture. This arose when technology
became cultural in itself, that is, when its “basic units” (devices, machines,
processes) gained exhibition and communication values above and beyond their
purely practical values. All of a sudden they were unveiled and claiming their
stake in the mass-media society and the sphere of cultural values. Today, it is popular
culture above all that takes place in a technocultural form due to its inclusion in the
world of high-adrenaline technologies, special effects and high-tech and highdefinition devices. Theme parks with the hip roller-coaster simulators, VRenvironments and bungy jumping devices, digital game-arcades, rave parties and
parades, DJ-culture, Internet culture with nuiding, hacking and cracking and
shopping mall subcultures are new forms of a popular culture which are especially
connected to the use of advanced technologies.
It is of great significance that with these new forms of popular culture we are
not merely entering a world of heightened fascination with special effects nor by
any