CyberOrient: Online Journal of the Virtual Middle East, Vol. 5, Nr. 1 (2011)

“The main purpose of this electronic journal is to provide a forum to explore cyberspace both as an imaginary forum in which only representation exists and as a technology that is fundamentally altering human interaction and communication. The next generation will take e-mail, websites and instant availability via cell-phones as basic human rights. Internet cafes may someday rival fast-food restaurants and no doubt will profitably merge together in due time. Yet, despite the advances in communication technology real people in the part of the world once called an “Orient” are still the victims of stereotypes and prejudicial reporting. Their world is getting more and more wired, so cyberspace becomes the latest battleground for the hearts and minds of people everywhere.”

Editor-in-Chief: Daniel Martin Varisco
Publisher: Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association and the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague
ISSN 1804-3194

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

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
Information Revolution and Global Politics series
ISBN 0262042576, 9780262042574
270 pages

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Mary Joyce (ed.): Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change (2010)

Citizens around the world are using digital technologies to push for social and political change. Yet, while stories have been published, discussed, extolled, and derided, the underlying mechanics of digital activism are little understood. This new field, its dynamics, practices, misconceptions, and possible futures are presented together for the first time in Digital Activism Decoded.

With contributions by Trebor Scholz, Dan Schultz and Andreas Jungherr, Brannon Cullum, Katharine Brodock, Tom Glaisyer, Anastasia Kavada, Tim Hwang, Steven Murdoch, Dave Karpf, Simon Columbus, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Sem Devillart, Brian Waniewski

Preface and Introduction by Mary Joyce
Published by International Debate Education Association, New York & Amsterdam, 2010
Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License US 3.0
ISBN 9781932716603
240 pages

interview (Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb)

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