Lecture 8

This lecture was called Political possibilities. Stephen Stockwell first started by defining what Cyberpolitics is. He said it was the politics of the internet that existed predominantly on the internet. He also defined eDemocracy which was how the internet assists and controls real world politics that exist on the internet. He also talked about the issue of concentration, centralization, and commercialization of the mass media and how some avenues for democratic participation have been foreclosed. He suggested that the arena of deliberation may be extended via the application of new communication technologies and also shared the theory of the recreation of the public sphere.

Stephen also discussed free speech and the many strange turns that the battle between free speech and censorship had taken on the internet. There was also some talk about Hackers and how they tend to have bad reputations but they also free information by producing alternative routes and spaces for information.

Cyberpunk was also discussed. It is a science fiction genre based on the possibilities in computers, genetics and corporate development in the future. Cyberpunk also has the themes of technology and mythology, utopia and dystopia, cities as machines, technological change and modernism to postmodernism.