WEEK 8 LECTURE

STEPHEN STOCKWELL.
DIGITISED READINGS:

• Mark Poster's 'Cyber Democracy'

• Stephen Stockwell and Adam Muir 'The Military-Entertainment Complex: A New Facet of Information Warfare', Fibreculture Journal 1(1), 2003.

1. INFORMATION WARFARE: facit of warfare since ancient times.
   

• Stephen Stockwell We’re all hackers now: Doing global democracy, CreateWorld, AUC-Griffith University, 7-10 December 2008

1. The nature of democracy is changing.
2. As a shift occurs to global media apparatus - it creates next level of political institutions
3. GLOBAL SCALE: individuals involve themselves.
   

• William Gibson's 'Burning Chrome' from the short story collection Burning Chrome. The book is in the GU library and there is a link to the full-text of the book is at the bottom of this webpage. 'Burning Chrome' is the last story in the collection.

1. "CYBER PUNK:" literary genre - around growth of computers.
2. Political formation generated by New Communication technologies.
   

• Allegory of Plato's cave - written almost two and a half thousand years ago, this account of people watching flickering on the cave wall and trying to discern the truth has a contemporary ring to it!

FOUND OUT WE MUST READ ALLEGORY OF PLATO's CAVE -> QUESTIONS ON IT IN THE EXAM.

CYBERPOLITICS: Politics of the internet that exists predominantly on the internet.
> ICANN - voluntary society controls protocols and data which internet operates

E-DEMOCRACY: Internets intervention and contribution to real world politics that predominantly exists off the internet. Generally covers everything from political campaigning and the governments use of the internet to raise awareness and debate on issues

GAPS IN THE MASS MEDIA: THE PUBLIC SPHERE
With the increasing "control" the mass media has over society, avenues for democratic participation in existing representative democracy have become scarce.
A number of theorists have argued that there is the potential to remake what Habermas calls 'the public sphere': the domain of social lift in which 'public opinion' forms.

"Habermas argues that commercialisation of the press in the nineteenth century saw the transformation of the public sphere, and its newspapers in particular, from the journalism of private persons to 'the consumer services of the mass media' which privileged the private interests of owners and advertisers. Nevertheless he sees some potential for the recreation of the public sphere as 'a public of organized private persons' engaged in the rationalisation of social and political power through mutual control of rival organisations which exhibit 'publicness' in their internal structure and in their dealings with the state and each other."
> Mark Posters developed an argument layed out by Marshall McLuhan, and claims that we are witnessing the development of THE SECOND MEDIA AGE which is the substitution for the first media age of centralised broadcast media orginating from minimal sources to a number of consumers. The second media age is characterised by decentred media systems with global reach that will eventually be readily accessible to all and so produce a new politics based on the communication of many to many.

FREE SPEECH AND CENSORSHIP
The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it
The ability to convince and the willingness to be convinced are to elements that provide the give and take that makes democracy something for all citizens, but with all that, access to free speech is required.
Is free speech a basic right? Up until recently we didnt have anything which remotely replicated free speech. The High Court found that free political expression was implied by the constitution. We might view free speech as a self-correcting mechanism = in using free speech, people make democracy happen.
Free speech and censorship on the net has taken many strange turns.
> Many would argue that these two ideas are contradictory - to censor the internet would be to remove the notion of "free speech." But as previously stated, free speech is not a constitutional right for us, so therefore anything explicit or otherwise can be censored.

CYBERPUNK:
Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre based in the possibilities inherent in computers, genetics, body modifications and corporate developments in the near future. The word comes from the merger of Cybernetics (the study of communication, command and control in living organisms, machines and organisations) and Punk (a style of fast, loud, short rock music with an anarchist political philosophy and DIY, anti-expert, 'seize the day' approach to life).

The term cybernetics comes from the Greek kybernetes which means steersman or pilot. Punk was represented in the music of bands such as Sex Pistols, Clash and Black Assassins.

Cyberpunk developed as a reaction against the over-blown and predominantly safe stores of 'space opera' such as Star Wars. Common themes include hackers vs corporations, artificial intelligence and cities out of control and post-industrial dystopias dissected with film noir sensibility.

QUOTE: The internet "the place where pedos hang out."
+ the internet is about alot more than social networking sites, and search engines. Politics and other media issues are there but rarely accessed. Its full of information and forums and applications but nobody has the time to explore it all.