Jacques Derrida: Specters of Marx. The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International (1993/1994)

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Manuel Castells: End of Millennium, 2nd ed. (1998/2010)

18 May 2010, dusan

Filed under book | Tags: · culture, economy, globalisation, labor, network society, networks, politics, society, statism

This final volume in Manuel Castells’ trilogy, with a substantial new preface, is devoted to processes of global social change induced by the transition from the old industrial society to the emerging global network society.

* Explains why China, rather than Japan, is the economic and political actor that is revolutionizing the global system
* Reflects on the contradictions of European unification, proposing the concept of the network state
* Substantial new preface assesses the validity of the theoretical construction presented in the conclusion of the trilogy, proposing some conceptual modifications in light of the observed experience

With a New Preface
Volume 3 of The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture
Verlag Wiley-Blackwell, 2000
ISBN 978-1-4051-9688-8
488 pages

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Jacques Barzun: Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage, 2nd ed (1941/1981)

12 May 2010, dusan

Filed under book | Tags: · art, culture, darwinism, evolution, history, marxism, music, philosophy, politics, revolution, science

The nomination of Wagner rather than Freud in the trinity of emblematic modern minds is a sign of Barzun’s profound interest in music and the arts. He argued that these men achieved their reputations by catching the spirit of the age, like surfers on a wave, backed by the formidable public relations exercises mounted by their followers . This earned them the status of intellectual icons despite their lack of originality and the significant flaws in their systems. He described in some detail how all the leading ideas of evolutionary theory, socialism and the leading role of the artist were commonplace for decades before the big three started work.

Barzun was especially critical of the way that their adherents promoted determinism and scientism, with truly disastrous political consequences in the twentieth century. In addition to the shortcomings of their systems, two of the three titans were monstrously egocentric and unprincipled exploiters of their friends and denigrators of their enemies. These personal characteristics became prominent in the modus operandi of their followers, setting the tone for bad manners in transactions between intellectuals that have persisted to the present time.

Second Edition with a new Preface
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
ISBN 0-226-03859-9
373 pages

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Caroline Cahm: Kropotkin. And the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism, 1872-1886 (2002)

11 May 2010, dusan

Filed under book | Tags: · 1870s, 1880s, anarchism, communism, politics, revolution, socialism

This major study of Peter Kropotkin sets him firmly in the context of the development of the European anarchist movement as the man who became, after Bakunin’s death, their chief exponent of anarchist ideas. It traces the origins and development of his ideas and revolutionary practice from 1872 to 1886, and assesses the subsequent influence of his life and work upon European radical and socialist movements. Dr Cahm analyses Kropotkin’s role in the transformation of Bakunin’s anti-authoritarian socialism, and shows how two principal types of revolutionary action emerge from anarchist efforts to develop clear alternatives to the parliamentary strategies of social democrats; one based on the activity of individuals and small groups, the other related to large-scale collective action.

Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2002
ISBN 0521891574, 9780521891578
388 pages

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Manuel Castells: Communication Power (2009)

6 May 2010, dusan

Filed under book | Tags: · business, communication, global warming, internet, mass media, network society, neuroscience, politics, technology, youtube

We live in the midst of a revolution in communication technologies that affects the way in which people feel, think, and behave. The mass media (including web-based media), Manuel Castells argues, has become the space where political and business power strategies are played out; power now lies in the hands of those who understand or control communication.

Over the last thirty years, Castells has emerged as one of the world’s leading communications theorists. In this, his most far-reaching book for a decade, he explores the nature of power itself, in the new communications environment. His vision encompasses business, media, neuroscience, technology, and, above all, politics. His case histories include global media deregulation, the misinformation that surrounded the invasion of Iraq, environmental movements, the role of the internet in the Obama presidential campaign, and media control in Russia and China. In the new network society of instant messaging, social networking, and blogging–”mass self-communication”–politics is fundamentally media politics. This fact is behind a worldwide crisis of political legitimacy that challenges the meaning of democracy in much of the world.

Publisher Oxford University Press, 2009
ISBN 0199567042, 9780199567041
Length 571 pages

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Petra Jelečková: Facebook a politické jednání: Kdo, proč a k čemu využívá prostředí Facebooku v rámci politicky orientovaných aktivit? (2010) [Czech]

24 April 2010, dusan

Filed under thesis | Tags: · facebook, politics, web 2.0

Bakalářská práce se zabývá politicky a společensky zaměřenými projekty, které jsou prezentovány v rámci online sociální sítě Facebook. Cílem práce je poznat zakladatele politicky a společensky zaměřených celků prezentovaných v rámci Facebooku a zjistit, z jakých důvodů a k čemu toto prostředí v rámci svých aktivit využívají. Výzkum je zpracován kvalitativně, dle metody zakotvené teorie. V jeho rámci proběhly rozhovory s deseti respondenty, tyto rozhovory pak byly podrobeny analýze. Analýza dat ukázala, že zakladatelé politicky a společensky zaměřených celků se zajímají o politické a společenské dění a tento zájem může vyústit v další aktivity v podobě členství či činnosti v rámci oficiálních organizací. Tito lidé se rozhodli využít Facebook pro možnosti, které nabízí. Tyto možnosti dle uživatelů tkví v množství důvěryhodných kontaktů, technickém zázemí Facebooku a některých jeho „speciálních rysech“. Na základě popsaných „speciálních rysů“ jsem zjistila, že tito uživatelé Facebook vnímají nejen jako nástroj, který lze použít v rámci politického jednání, ale zároveň mu přiznávají schopnost ovlivňovat společnost a její politické jednání. Bylo také zjištěno, že prostřednictvím Facebooku chtějí zakladatelé politicky a společensky zaměřených celků působit na společnost. V rámci jeho prostředí reagují na konkrétní činy veřejných osob a pro svoje aktivity pak hledají podporu. Jeho prostřednictvím také informují svoje podporovatele o daném problému, aby je poté případně mohli přimět k akci. Získané výsledky jsou uvedeny do souvislostí s dosavadními poznatky, které se týkají problematiky internetu a jeho vlivu na politické jednání.

Klíčová slova: Facebook, politika, sociální sítě, social web, online sociální sítě, kvalitativní výzkum, zakotvená teorie, politics, social networks, online social networks, qualitative research, grounded theory

Bakalářská diplomová práce
Masarykova Univerzita, Fakulta sociálních studií, Mediální a komunikační studia/Mediální studia a žurnalistika
Vedoucí práce: Mgr. Jakub Macek
Brno: FSS MU, 2010

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Access Denied. The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering (2008)

14 April 2010, dusan

Filed under book | Tags: · blogging, censorship, human rights, internet, internet filtering, journalism, politics

Many countries around the world block or filter Internet content, denying access to information—often about politics, but also relating to sexuality, culture, or religion—that they deem too sensitive for ordinary citizens. Access Denied documents and analyzes Internet filtering practices in over three dozen countries, offering the first rigorously conducted study of this accelerating trend.

Internet filtering takes place in at least forty states worldwide including many countries in Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. Related Internet content control mechanisms are also in place in Canada, the United States and a cluster of countries in Europe. Drawing on a just-completed survey of global Internet filtering undertaken by the OpenNet Initiative (a collaboration of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, and the University of Cambridge) and relying on work by regional experts and an extensive network of researchers, Access Denied examines the political, legal, social, and cultural contexts of Internet filtering in these states from a variety of perspectives. Chapters discuss the mechanisms and politics of Internet filtering, the strengths and limitations of the technology that powers it, the relevance of international law, ethical considerations for corporations that supply states with the tools for blocking and filtering, and the implications of Internet filtering for activist communities that increasingly rely on Internet technologies for communicating their missions.

Reports on Internet content regulation in forty different countries follow, with each country profile outlining the types of content blocked by category and documenting key findings.

Contributors: Ross Anderson, Malcolm Birdling, Ronald Deibert, Robert Faris, Vesselina Haralampieva, Steven Murdoch, Helmi Noman, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, Mary Rundle, Nart Villeneuve, Stephanie Wang, and Jonathan Zittrain

Edited by Ronald J. Deibert, John G. Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski and Jonathan Zittrain
Publisher MIT Press, 2008
Series: Information revolution & global politics
ISBN 0262541963, 9780262541961
Length 449 pages

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Tim Jordan: Activism! Direct Action, Hacktivism and the Future of Society (2002)

6 April 2010, dusan

Filed under book | Tags: · activism, culture jamming, direct action, disobedience, hacktivism, politics

Many schools of thought assert that Western culture has never been more politically apathetic. Tim Jordan’s Activism! refutes this claim. In his powerful polemic, Jordan shows how acts of civil disobedience have come to dominate the political landscape. Because we inhabit such a quickly changing, high-tech and fragmented culture, the single-issue political movements and stable, conservative authorities of the past are continually being questioned. Traditional political battles have been replaced by the popular, collective practices of a new political activism. From Europe to the USA, from Australia to South America, from the Left to the Right, Jordan introduces us to the citizens who make up DIY culture: eco-activists, animal liberators, neo-fascists, ravers, anti-abortionists, squatters, hunt saboteurs and hacktivists. In his view, activism comprises a new ethics of living for the 21st century.

Publisher Reaktion Books, 2002
Series: Focus on Contemporary Issues
ISBN 1861891229, 9781861891228
Length 164 pages

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Manuel Castells: The Power of Identity: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture, 2nd ed. (2009)

29 March 2010, dusan

Filed under book | Tags: · economy, globalisation, identity, information society, network culture, networks, politics, social movements, technology, terrorism, women

In this second volume of The Information Age trilogy, with an extensive new preface following the recent global economic crisis, Manuel Castells deals with the social, political, and cultural dynamics associated with the technological transformation of our societies and with the globalization of the economy.

* Extensive new preface examines how dramatic recent events have transformed the socio-political landscape of our world
* Applies Castells’ hypotheses to contemporary issues such as Al Qaeda and global terrorist networks, American unilateralism and the crisis of political legitimacy throughout the world
* A brilliant account of social, cultural, and political conflict and struggle all over the world
* Analyzes the importance of cultural, religious, and national identity as sources of meaning for people, and its implications for social movement
* Throws new light on the dynamics of global and local change

Publisher John Wiley and Sons, 2009
Information Age Series, Manuel Castells
ISBN 1405196874, 9781405196871
Length 584 pages

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Slavoj Zizek: Mluvil tu nekdo o totalitarismu? (2007) [Czech]

26 March 2010, dusan

Filed under book | Tags: · ideology, philosophy, political theory, politics, totalitarianism

Kniha si neklade za cíl podat další systematický výklad dějin pojmu totalitarismus, spíše se pokouší filosoficky sledovat pohyb jeho významu. V několika oddílech autor zkoumá mýtus a jeho proměny, moc bezmocných, melancholii a čin….Slavoj Žižek je slovinský filosof, sociolog a kulturní teoretik levicového zaměření navazující na dílo francouzského psychoanalytika Jacquese Lacana. Působí na lublaňské univerzitě a na dalších akademických pracovištích.

Translated by Martin Ritter from “Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?”
Publisher: tranzit.cz, 2007
ISBN: 80-903452-8-X, EAN: 9788090345287
272 pages

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Sarai Readers 01-07 (2001-2007)

24 March 2010, dusan

Filed under book | Tags: · city, community, community art, everyday, human rights, india, media, network society, politics, public domain, technology, urbanism

Sarai Reader 07: Frontiers, 2007

Frontiers considers limits, edges, borders and margins of all kinds as the sites for declarations, occasions for conversations, arguments, debates, recounting and reflection. Our book suggests that you consider the frontier as the skin of our time and our world and we invite you to get under the skin of contemporary experience in order to generate a series of crucial (and frequently unsettling) narrative and analytical possibilities.

We have always viewed the Sarai Reader as hospitable to new and unprecedented ideas, as a space of refuge where wayward reflections can meet half forgotten agendas. we hope our text this year sets the stage for a productive encounter with the demand for an account of the boundaries, parameters and verges of our times.

Editors: Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Jeebesh Bagchi, Ravi Sundaram
Associate Editor: Smriti Vohra

Sarai Reader 06: Turbulence, 2006

Sarai Reader 06 uses ‘Turbulence’ as a conceptual vantage point from which to interrogate all that is in the throes of terminal crisis, and to invoke all that is as yet unborn. It seek to examine ‘turbulence’ as a global phenomenon, unbounded by the arbitrary lines that denote national and state boundaries in a ‘political’ map of the world. It wants to see areas of low and high pressure in politics, economy and culture that transcend borders, to investigate the flow of information and processes between downstream and upstream sites in societies and cultures globally.

Editors: Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Ravi Sundaram, Jeebesh Bagchi, Awadhendra Sharan + Geert Lovink
Associate Editor: Smriti Vohra

Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts, 2005

‘Bare Acts’ looks at ‘Acts’- at instruments of legislation, at things within and outside the law, and at ‘acts’ – as different ways of doing things in society and culture. The Reader foregrounds explorations of borders, surveillance, claims to authority and entitlement, the legal regulation of sexuality and trespasses of various kinds.

Editors: Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Jeebesh Bagchi + Geert Lovink
Guest Editor: Lawrence Liang
Associate Editor: Smriti Vohra

Sarai Reader 04: Crisis / Media, 2004

The 2004 Reader produced by Sarai, is devoted to the dual themes of crisis reporting in the media, and the crisis within the media when it comes to the reportage of violence. Crisis pervades the times we live, and becomes palpable entity in itself. To acknowledge the pervasiveness of the crisis in our times, is also to engage with the media through which crisis, and the representation of crisis, become the ’substance of our morning’s meditations’.

Editorial collective: Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Monica Narula, Ravi Vasudevan, Ravi Sundaram, Jeebesh Bagchi & Awadhendra Sharan [Sarai] + Geert Lovink

Sarai Reader 03: Shaping Technologies, 2003

“Shaping Technologies ” sets out to ratchet our engagement with the contemporary moment a notch higher, in directions that are sober, exhilarating and discomfiting, all at once. The book brings to the fore a series of situations and predicaments that mark the encounter between people and machines, between nature and culture, and between knowledge and power.

Editorial collective: Ravi Vasudevan, Ravi Sundaram, Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta [Sarai], Geert Lovink, Marleen Stikker [Waag]

Sarai Reader 02: The Cities of Everyday Life, 2002

This year’s Sarai Reader brings together a range of critical thinking on urban life and the contemporary, marked by spreading media cultures, new social conflict and globalisation. Scholars, media practitioners, critics and activists use a flow of images, memories and hidden realities to create a fascinating array of original interventions in thinking about cities today. In the context of India, where a large part of this reader has been edited, this is significant, given the frugality of writing on city life in this part of the world.

Editors: Ravi Vasudevan, Ravi Sundaram, Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, Geert Lovink, Shuddhabrata Sengupta

Sarai Reader 01: The Public Domain, 2001

Sarai Reader 01, (which is the first of what we hope will be more such collections) can be seen both as a navigation log of actual voyages and a map for possible journeys into a real and imagined territory that we have provisionally called the “Public Domain”. This republic without territory is a sovereign entity that comes into being whenever people gather and begin to communicate, using whatever means that they have at hand, beyond the range of the telescope of the merchant, and outside the viewing platform of the microscope of the censor.

Editors: Raqs Media Collective (Sarai) + Geert Lovink (Waag)

Produced at the Sarai Media Lab, Delhi

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Steven Levy: Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government. Saving Privacy in the Digital Age (2002)

14 March 2010, dusan

Filed under book | Tags: · cybercrime, hacker culture, hacking, politics, privacy, security

Crypto is about privacy in the information age and about the nerds and visionaries who, nearly twenty years ago, predicted that the Internet’s greatest virtue–free access to information–was also its most perilous drawback: a possible end to privacy. Levy explores what turned out to be a decisive development in the crypto wars: the unlikely alliance between the computer geeks and big business as they fought the government’s stranglehold on the keys to information in a networked world. The players come alive here in a narrative that reads like the best of futuristic spy fiction. There is Whit Diffie, the long-haired Newton of crypto who invented the astounding “public key” solution; David Chaum, whose “anonymous digital money” actually threatened the global financial infrastructure; and “cypherpunks” like Phil Zimmermann, who freely distributed military-strength codes under the nose of the U. S. government. There is also the first behind-the-scenes account of what the secretive National Security Agency really had in mind when it created the controversial “clipper chip”–and how the Clinton administration bungled the operation. Sure to appeal to everyone who kept David Kahn’s sweeping The Codebreakers in print for more than thirty years and readers who are making Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, Mark’s Between Silk and Cyanide, and Singh’s The Code Book bestsellers, Crypto will soon be the new classic of its subject. Crypto is a bestselling book and winner in the category of best Non-Fiction eBooks for the International eBook Award Foundation 2001 eBook awards ceremony in Frankfurt, Germany.

Publisher Penguin, 2002
Series: Penguin Press Science Series
ISBN 0140244328, 9780140244328
Length 356 pages

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Jean Noël Jeanneney: Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View From Europe (2007)

6 March 2010, dusan

Filed under book | Tags: · archives, google, internet, library, politics, search

The recent announcement that Google will digitize the holdings of several major libraries sent shock waves through the book industry and academe. Google presented this digital repository as a first step towards a long-dreamed-of universal library, but skeptics were quick to raise a number of concerns about the potential for copyright infringement and unanticipated effects on the business of research and publishing.

Jean-Noël Jeanneney, president of France’s Bibliothèque Nationale, here takes aim at what he sees as a far more troubling aspect of Google’s Library Project: its potential to misrepresent—and even damage—the world’s cultural heritage. In this impassioned work, Jeanneney argues that Google’s unsystematic digitization of books from a few partner libraries and its reliance on works written mostly in English constitute acts of selection that can only extend the dominance of American culture abroad. This danger is made evident by a Google book search the author discusses here—one run on Hugo, Cervantes, Dante, and Goethe that resulted in just one non-English edition, and a German translation of Hugo at that. An archive that can so easily slight the masters of European literature—and whose development is driven by commercial interests—cannot provide the foundation for a universal library.

As a leading librarian, Jeanneney remains enthusiastic about the archival potential of the Web. But he argues that the short-term thinking characterized by Google’s digital repository must be countered by long-term planning on the part of cultural and governmental institutions worldwide—a serious effort to create a truly comprehensive library, one based on the politics of inclusion and multiculturalism.

Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2007
ISBN 0226395774, 9780226395777
Length 92 pages

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Laura Denardis: Protocol Politics: The Globalization of Internet Governance (2009)

6 March 2010, dusan

Filed under book | Tags: · arpanet, intellectual property, internet, internet governance, open standards, politics

The Internet has reached a critical point. The world is running out of Internet addresses. There is a finite supply of approximately 4.3 billion Internet Protocol (IP) addresses—the unique binary numbers required for every exchange of information over the Internet—within the Internet’s prevailing technical architecture (IPv4). In the 1990s the Internet standards community identified the potential depletion of these addresses as a crucial design concern and selected a new protocol (IPv6) that would expand the number of Internet addresses exponentially—to 340 undecillion addresses. Despite a decade of predictions about imminent global conversion, IPv6 adoption has barely begun. IPv6 is not backward compatible with IPv4, and the ultimate success of IPv6 depends on a critical mass of IPv6 deployment, even among users who don’t need it, or on technical workarounds that could in turn create a new set of concerns.

Protocol Politics examines what’s at stake politically, economically, and technically in the selection and adoption of a new Internet protocol. Laura DeNardis’s key insight is that protocols are political. IPv6 serves as a case study for how protocols more generally are intertwined with socioeconomic and political order. IPv6 intersects with provocative topics including Internet civil liberties, U.S. military objectives, globalization, institutional power struggles, and the promise of global democratic freedoms. DeNardis offers recommendations for Internet standards governance, based not only on technical concerns but on principles of openness and transparency, and examines the global implications of looming Internet address scarcity versus the slow deployment of the new protocol designed to solve this problem.

Publisher MIT Press, 2009
Series: Information Revolution and Global Politics
ISBN 0262042576, 9780262042574
Length 272 pages