Richard Barbrook: Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Machines to the Global Village (2007)

“Cooperative creativity and participatory democracy should be extended from the virtual world into all areas of life. This time, the new stage of growth must be a new civilisation.

Richard Barbrook traces the early days of the Internet, beginning from a pivotal point at the 1964 World’s Fair, in what critics are saying is the most well-researched and original account of cybertechnology among contemporary works. He demonstrates how business and ideological leaders put forth a carefully orchestrated vision of an imaginary future, where robots would do the washing up, go to the office and think for us. With America at the forefront of these promises, Barbrook shows how ideological forces joined to develop new information technologies during the Cold War era and how what they created historically has shaped the modern Internet, with intended political consequences.

Crucially, he argues that had the past been different, our technological and political present would not be what it is today. Barbrook’s conclusions about the modern state of the Internet, puts forward a call for action in how the world’s most important tool of revolutionary politics should be approached.”

Key terms: Fordism, W.W. Rostow, Marxism, cybernetic, Bell commission, artificial intelligence, gift economy, Stalinist, Maoist, Cold War game, Trotskyist, information society, laissez-faire liberalism, soft power, Hard power, American empire, Tet Offensive, Unisphere, grand narrative, Cold War Left

Publisher Pluto, 2007
ISBN 0745326609, 9780745326603
334 pages

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Pekka Himanen: The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age (2001) [EN, DE]

“In The Hacker Ethic, Himanen is trying to understand the core of informationalism, the post-industrialist paradigm, extending the ideas of Manuel Castells’ Information Age. As an alternative to the industrial-capitalist protestant work ethic he proposes a hacker ethic as something like a cyber communitarianism. The structure of the information society is a web, which in contemporary business world manifests itself, for instance, in dynamic outsourcing and even cooperation with one’s competitors. The “knots” of such a web get activated according to the needs and opportunities.

According to Himanen, the three main features of hacker ethic are:
* enthusiastic, passionate attitude to the work that is enjoyed
* creativity, wish to realise oneself and one’s ability, often in teams that are formed spontaneously (project orientation)
* wish to share one’s skills with a community having common goals, along with the need to acquire recognition from one’s “tribe”; one is motivated by inner zeal rather than external awards: the fruits of one’s work are donated to everybody for their advances and further developments

Manuel Castells thinks that the innovations produced by hackers are the foundations of the development of the whole culture. According to Himanen, the social hackerism begins from such things as vegetarianism, whereas the opposite of it is represented by Microsoft and the licensing of computer programs. Himanen thinks that in the information society we need a radical lack of prejudice, such as he has met in philosophy lessons to children. A critical challenge of the Internet era is the ability to meet the other human being.”

Prologue by Linus Torvalds
Epilogue by Manuel Castells
Publisher Secker & Warburg, 2001
ISBN 0436205505, 9780436205507
232 pages

Wikipedia

The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age (English, 2001, no OCR, updated 2016-1-16)
Die Hacker Ethik und der Geist des Informations-Zeitalters (German, trans. Heike Schlatterer, 2001, updated 2016-1-16)

Scott Lash: Critique of Information (2002)

This penetrating book raises questions about how power operates in contemporary society. It explains how the speed of information flows has eroded the separate space needed for critical reflection. It argues that there is no longer an ‘outside’ to the global flows of communication and that the critique of information must take place within the information itself.

The operative unit of the information society is the idea. With the demise of depth reflection, reflexivity through the idea now operates external to the subject in its circulation through networks of humans and intelligent machines. It is these ideas that make the critique of information possible. This book is a major testament to the prospects of culture, politics and theory in the global information society.

Publisher SAGE, 2002
ISBN 0761952691, 9780761952695
234 pages

Key terms: phenomenology, Husserl, conceptual art, semiotic, information society, Heidegger, media theory, Derrida, Dasein, exchange-value, metanarratives, intellectual property, critical theory, dualism, intersubjectivity, ethnomethodology, ontological, reflexive modernization, dead zones, technoscience

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2013-4-16)