Lecture 7 - Political Possibilities (by Stephen Stockwell)

Today we were exposed to the roles NCT plays in contemporary politics

- How NCT interacts with politics
- 2 ways interaction between politics and NCT
1. Cyberpolitics the politics of the internet that exists predominantly on the internet
§ How is the internet organized eg. the Internet Society (naming conventions – (the digital divide approx. only 10% of the worlds pop has access to technology)
§ Second Life – How people act out real life in Second Life – How hierarchies are setup, who controls these hierarchies. E.g. real estate.
§ FaceBook friends connections – empowering others in relationship to themselves.
These are all examples of cyberpolitics.

2. eDemocracy - the internet's intervention in and contribution to real world politics that exists predominantly off the internet
· How people use the internet to intervene in standard politics – e.g. people emailing their opinions to local member.
· ETS – Liberals changing policy of liberals due to emails of opinions by constintuents. Not waiting for opinion polls. Organized mass mailing changing policies or parties.

America use of internet to encourage voting in the elections (Voting isn’t compulsory in America – hence this attempt to encourage voting by bogus email from CNNBC. I think this highlights the way ethics of advertising / promotion is changing due to the net. Obama campaign 2007 played a role convincing young people that Obama is hip through use of YouTube. Kevin Rudd and John Howard used social networking site in 2007 election campaign. But people can also utilise the internet to interfere in real politics e.g. the Godwin Gretch email scandal. The internet also provides a danger in misrepresentation of opinion by the acceptance of a non-random selection of people. These emailed opinions can be accepted as fact. There is a difference between a scientific opinion poll and non-scientific (Non - scientific – not a random selection of people therefore not a useful indicator of popular opinion.) In this way there is a danger of people affecting the political process.


One of the jobs of democracy is to improve the quality of democracy. John Stuart Mills – 1860’s make a strong argument for the education of the citizen: to be able to make informed decisions about democracy. What skills will the citizens of the future require – literacy of the internet, how to find info, how to affect political opinion through the Internet. Many have a vision of large participation in the political process via the internet. New communications technologies (NCT) such as Twitter can lead to higher levels of transparency in the political process. In the last week we have seen a breaking down of the convention of non-use of mobile phones to Twitter from the party room the Liberals. NCT allow normal people to get through the media – political nexus to get there opinions out. This can be seen in the skills of the hacker. Hackers were very formative in the way computers were utilized. Working thru the problems of computers and the internet creating citizens of the future.

Use of email address by normal people to mass mobilize people (Steve Stockwell’s Friends of Burleigh example).

Citizen Hacking: Doing Global Democracy – Can anyone exercise free speech in the emerging information regime? Use of NCT (such as blogs etc.) in Iran to disseminate information when the government attempts to censor information.

One of the interesting things of NCT is the way things work. For example the Internet is many points of origin to many points of arrival. Unlike cable TV - one source many destinations.

Cyberpunk
This genre studies the political possibilities inherent in cyberspace which is unlike ‘space opera’ (Star Wars, Issac Assimov). CP can be described as the mental space produced by computers and people engaging with computers. The connections between technology and mythology. Cyberpunk sought to demythologise technology but effectively predicted / created the WWW and so CP has in ways to re-mythologised technology.

Utopia and Distopia
Technology that we hope will liberate us becomes the very thing that is used to control us / monitor us.

Cities as Machine
Gold Coast has a reputation as a city built from a swamp.

Technological.
Centralized dissemination / decentralized interaction (success of YouTube)

Shift from modernism to post modernism
Modernism Post Modernism
Design Chance
Creation Deconstruction
Depth Surface
Type Mutant

But who controls the switches? Do states still control the ideological agenda?