Richard Barbrook

Senior lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages at the University of Westminster.

Richard studied for a BA in Social & Political Science at Downing College, University of Cambridge, before moving on to Essex and Kent universities. In the early 1980s, he got involved with pirate and community radio broadcasting. Helping to set up the multi-lingual Spectrum Radio station in London, he published extensively on radio issues during this period.

Having worked on media regulation within the EU for some years at a research institute at the University of Westminster, much of his material was published in his 1995 Media Freedom book. Then he became the coordinator of the Hypermedia Research Centre at Westminster's Media School and was the first course leader of its MA in Hypermedia Studies.

Working with Andy Cameron, he wrote The Californian Ideology which was a pioneering critique of the neo-liberal politics of Wired magazine. His other important writings about the Net include The Hi-Tech Gift Economy, Cyber-communism and The Regulation of Liberty.

In 2007, Richard moved to the Social Sciences School of the University of Westminster and published his study of the political and ideological role of the prophecies of artificial intelligence and the information society: Imaginary Futures.