Lecture Notes Week 11

Cyberpolitics

Digital divide

-> the major issue in all cyberpolitics issues. How can everybody’s interest be represented in on-line debate? Solution: cheaper computers and internet time and more public access.

Online democracy

Distinguish between idealist and the democratic way of use the internet. Cyberdemocracy not very evident in organised hierarchical lines and commercial purposes.

Defining democracy

Francis Fukuyama concludes that from the dissolution of communist totalitarianism that the current practise of liberal democracy is "the end of mankinds ideological evolution (and) the final form of human government"
Simple definitions of democracy: the rule of the many, the rule of the majority and "government of the people, by the people, for the people".
The last 200 years democracy have both broadend and narrowed. Representative democracy as we know it today can be said to be the product of the nations of the industrial age.

Around 80% of adults in Australia and the USA says they have an interest in politics. Half of the adult American follows public affairs and vote where its voluntary. Australia 40% and only 5 % in elections. Summing this up it is a major lack of faith in the process of democracy.
The definition of democracy may never be concluded and itshard to complete, but its no reason to abandon it.

Gaps in the mass media

The growing concentration, centralisation and commercialisation of the mass media seems to have foreclosed avenues for democratic participation in the existing representative democracy. It is suggested that there can be ways in which the area of deliberation may be extended by the application of new communacation technologies.
Marshall McLuhan-> electricity does not centralise, but decentralises.
Hans Magnus Enzensberger-> propose to place the technical means of media production in the hands of ordinary people.
john Fiske-> viewers appropiate media output for their own purposes. Citizens allowed to produce their own "semiotic democracy".
John Hartley-> systematises the political import of audience reception-> Popular reality

Free speach and censorship

Key attributes of democracy-> Deliberation and discussion
Democratic activity-> Talk most improtant
Conflict Free speach<->Copyright

Citizen-Hacker: Doing Global Democracy

Hackers do not think its wrong to break into to look around and understand because they see computer system as a part of the common wealth.

1986-> The hackers manifesto-> command and control and the rule of corporations.

"Hacking" have many meanings; cutting through thick foliage and managing or coping with a difficult situation, often with an appropriate application of ingenuity or a creative practical joke. Can you hack it?

Developed beyond its anti-social and avant garde origins to incorporate any approach to any media that seeks to use hidden potentialities and anomalies in that media to open interpretation and debate.

Hackers are playing a part in extending the opportuneties for democratic deliberation by

1) providing access to debates for a multitude of voices that could never be heard through existing mainstream, broadcast media,

2) creating a greater quantity of available information that increases the level of transparency over political debate generally and above all

3) allowing people the opportunity to fiddle, improvise and 'kludge' their own communication solutions.

Primer and the Pre-history of Time Travel

Time-> somtimes described as fourth dimension.

Some Methods of Time Travel from fictionThe Time Machine

Wormholes
Faster than light time warp
The body as device
Third party phenomena
Tachyon messages

Black holes

Theoretically possible to slow time down, but never reverse it.
Black holes-> gravity dilates time.

Another possibility
Memories do not fade in a virtual mind. Therefore time never passes-> Link memory by means of a device which triggered all senses you can relive past experiences as constantly new, constantly present.