Virtual(ly) Universities? An examination of two digitally contextualised ‘Universities’

This paper considers how the traditional liberal university and, indeed, civil society are fundamentally changed by a semantic recasting of what constitutes 'knowledge' in an information age. Specifically, it will examine two relatively recent examples of digitally contextualised university structures, the Universitas 21/ Thomson Learning joint venture and the Malaysian Multimedia University (MMU). This is undertaken in the light of Jean-François Lyotard’s prophetic work on techno-science, performativity and global capital renewal.