Control of the Object

One may argue that Information may want to be free, but dissemination is not. Capital demands the control of the flow of resources to maximize productivity. And in a culture that is based on the production of signs, the key point is to control the flow of symbolic representation (cultural capital) to the proper consumers. As Barbara Kreuger wrote, "There's something about categorizing things, about putting things in their place. Maybe it's about a kind of comfort."[10]. The necessity for control is the illusion of the market's 'freedom' [11], as one is placed in a position of laissez faire, but only under the rules as defined by the oligarchic institutions of power. Seemingly 'free' services on the Net, such as a Geo Cities homepage, are automatically 'branded' (as is the user) with a small banner stating that this is a GeoCities website. The proliferation of branding thus propagates throughout the mediascape as a categorization and quantification of all symbolic relations for easy recognition and recoding into the program that is the cycle of production and consumption.