The comparative analysis is structured by way of the ... The critical political economy reading identifies a range ...... âFor the Good of the Net: The Pirate Bay as a.
REPRINTS AVAILABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE PUBLISHERS
PHOTOCOPYING PERMITTED BY LICENSE ONLY
© BERG 2010 PRINTED IN THE UK
Cyberlibertarianism 2.0: A Discourse Theory/Critical Political Economy Examination Lincoln Dahlberg Lincoln Dahlberg teaches and researches in the areas of media politics, critical theory, and digital democracy. He has published extensively in these areas, including coeditor of Radical Democracy and the Internet (Palgrave, 2007) and Discourse Theory and Critical Media Politics (Palgrave, forthcoming). He is currently a visiting research fellow in the media studies program at The University of Queensland.
Abstract Cyber-libertarian discourse has recently made a “come-back” in popular technology and academic discussions about the democratic potential of “Web 2.0.” Here, becoming a digital citizen means becoming an autonomous and creative “do-it-yourself citizenconsumer.” This paper identifies some of the limits of this “cyber-libertarian 2.0” discourse. It does so first by drawing upon post-Marxist discourse theory to outline the central elements of the discourse, and second by contrasting the cyberlibertarian understanding of “the situation” with a critical political economy reading that draws upon Debord’s theory of “the
CULTURAL POLITICS DOI: 10.2752/175174310X12750685679753
VOLUME 6, ISSUE 3 PP 331–356
331
CULTURAL POLITICS
LINCOLN DAHLBERG
spectacle.” The comparative analysis is structured by way of the normative categories “liberty,” “equality,” and “the demos,” which both discourses embrace in different ways when speaking of digitally enabled democracy. The critical political economy reading identifies a range of factors limiting the extension of democracy through Web 2.0, factors that are not taken into account by the cyber-libertarian discourse. Identifying such factors provides a starting point for a critical exploration of how democracy can be extended through the Internet. In conclusion, lines for such exploration are suggested, specifically in relation to a radical conception of democracy. KEYWORDS: cyber-libertarianism, democracy, discourse theory, critical political economy, spectacle, Web 2.0
Cyber-Libertarianism Past and Present
332
CULTURAL POLITICS
>
Time magazine announced its 2006 “Person of the Year” as “You,” the liberated and creatively empowered individual of YouTube, MySpace, and other new online digital networking technologies (Grossman 2006). Through these technologies, “You” are celebrated for “founding and framing the new digital democracy.” At the same time, influential media studies academic John Hartley (2006), in his keynote address to the 2006 Association of Internet Researchers Conference, sang the praises of new forms of digital interactivity for supporting the development of a “do-it-yourself” (DIY) digital citizenship and democracy free of old politics and old nation-state legal institutions. For Hartley, becoming a digital citizen means becoming an autonomous and creative producer–consumer (or prosumer in Alvin Toffler’s technofuturist and libertarian terminology). Time’s and Hartley’s rhetoric, while different in detail, in general can be read as exemplifying a cyber-libertarian discourse that can be found in recent pop-technology and academic discussions about the democratic potential of the “next generation” Web, more popularly known as “Web 2.0” (see, for example, Anderson and Gillespie 2006; Benkler 2006; Mangu-Ward 2007; The Reality Club 2006; Twist 2006). The “Web 2.0” celebrated here is an evolving signifier, but in general can be understood to refer to user driven, collaborative Internet-based networking and cultural production, including Web publishing and broadcasting (for example, Blogger, Wikipedia, and YouTube), integrated social networking services (for example, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, del.icio.us), and interactive digital gaming (for example, Second Life).1 This discourse parallels an earlier cyber-libertarianism.2 In the 1990s a group of North American commentators had a lot to say about the Internet as a space for democratic culture autonomous from state and other authoritarian forms of control. Through its mythological nonhierarchical network of free information flows, the Internet was seen as offering a perfect “marketplace of ideas,” a space for information exchange and individual decision-making free of bureaucracy,
333
administrative power, and other restrictions (bodily, geographical, cultural) of “real” space (see, for example, Barlow 1996; Dyson et al. 1994; Fiorina 2001; Gates 1999; Grossman 1995; Keyworth 1997; Leary 1994; Toffler and Toffler 1994). Democracy here is equated with the liberty of individuals to satisfy private interests through technologic ally mediated networking with (disembodied, abstracted) others. “Life in cyberspace,” Mitchell Kapor (1993) proclaimed, is “founded on the primacy of individual liberty.” For George Keyworth (1997), “cyberspace is the culture and society of people who are individually empowered by digital connection.” John Perry Barlow (1996) polemicized against government attempts to “ward off the virus of liberty,” declaring cyberspace a place of undistorted expression where “we are forming our own Social Contract” based on “enlightened self-interest.” This cyber-libertarian rhetoric was at its strongest in the mid-1990s when it seemed like the Internet could be a space governed by its own rules, free of government control and other impediments associated with offline communication. However, the increasing state regulation and commercial domination of online communication, together with the “dot.com bust,” put an end to much of this cyber-libertarian rhetoric, disarticulating cyberspace and individual liberty. By the beginning of the new millennium, the Internet was generally seen as part and parcel of “everyday life” – simply an extension of existing social systems, rather than being a revolutionary medium transcending offline political and economic constraints. Internet politics and society was deemed to be “normalized” (Davis 1999; Resnick and Margolis 2000). However, as noted above, a rearticulated cyber-libertarianism can now be detected in celebrations surrounding the democratic potential of Web 2.0. What I will refer to as “cyber-libertarianism 2.0” is a dis course that has expanded beyond the popular science and business commentary of the 1990s, and has been taken up by both mainstream academia and the mass media. This expansion might be put down to its more cautious tone, which makes it more palatable than the over-thetop rhetoric of earlier cyber-libertarianism. However, the central theme is much the same: cybernauts as DIY prosumers freed from external constraint, particularly from state regulation. Moreover, many of the earlier cyber-libertarians are still part of “the scene,” rearticulating their 1990s’ positions in relation to Web 2.0. For instance, Barlow (2006), reflecting on his 1996 “declaration of the independence of cyberspace,” concludes that despite a somewhat arrogant style, the content of his declaration was on the whole correct: the “Internet continues to be an anti-sovereign social space, endowing billions with capacities for free expression.” Here I examine this (new) cyber-libertarianism and its democratic claims with regard to emerging Internet technologies. It is important to undertake this examination not only given the strong nature of the claims but the fact that they will be persuasive in (and advance) a neoliberal-oriented world – there are already a raft of books, conferences, and professionals giving advice on how “you” can adapt
CULTURAL POLITICS
CYBER-LIBERTARIANISM 2.0
334
CULTURAL POLITICS
LINCOLN DAHLBERG
to and exploit Web 2.0 communications (see for example, Li and Bernoff 2008; Shuen 2008; Tapscott and Williams 2007). Moreover, this examination will provide direction for future critical analysis of the Web 2.0-democracy relationship. Cyber-libertarian 2.0 rhetoric emanates from a range of (mostly US) texts related to “next generation” Web developments including those of US futurist technology “gurus” and self-proclaimed intellectuals (The Reality Club 2006; Theil 2009),3 certain academics (Benkler 2006; Hartley 2006; Reynolds 2007), some social networking developers (Wales in Mangu-Ward 2007), Web 2.0 entrepreneurs and businesses aiming to seduce venture capital and clients (Barrett 2007; and see O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 conferences),4 e-government advisors (Williams 2008), and, subsequently, media reportage (Grossman 2006; Twist 2006). It is important to note that the discourse can be read from a combination of statements and practices, rather than from the specific positions of particular commentators or practitioners (who are subjects of multiple discourses). While many of the writers of the texts referenced here explicitly identify as cyber-libertarian, others may not be particularly aware of the discourse that they promote (for example, Grossman). Others still would not wish to be identified as cyber-libertarian. As a media studies academic more widely known for his interesting work on television and “creative industries,” John Hartley may not enjoy being referred to alongside right-wing libertarians. And while Benkler’s texts provide support for Web 2.0 libertarianism, they also draw upon liberal democratic and deliberative democratic themes. So I want to be clear that I am not positioning particular individuals as cyber-libertarian. Rather, my interest is in how the discourse develops and extends from a range of disparate sites and sources, not all of which may be explicitly cyber-libertarian. The texts explored in this paper have been chosen because they clearly explicate aspects of the discourse in relation to democracy. For instance, the texts of Hartley’s that I draw from offer a coherent articulation of a number of significant elements of (my reading of) cyber-libertarianism 2.0. Moreover, I want to be clear that this study does not examine Web 2.0 technology as such, nor Web 2.0 rhetoric in general, nor cyber-utopian discourse. Its focus is specifically on cyber-libertarianism 2.0 and democracy. Methodologically, I examine the (mostly US originating) texts cited above by drawing upon post-Marxist discourse theory and critical political economy. I first employ post-Marxist discourse theory so as to outline the general coordinates of cyber-libertarianism 2.0. I then deploy a critical political economy reading of Web 2.0 in relation to democracy, within a discourse theoretic framework, as a contrast to the cyber-libertarian discourse. For post-Marxist discourse theory, discourse refers to a socially contingent and taken-for-granted system of meaning defining a set of concepts, objects, and practices (Laclau and Mouffe 2001). This system is constituted through the articulation of a range of elements around a particular (tendentially empty) signifier that comes to represent a
335
shared positive identity, a closure of identity advanced through the naming of an explicitly excluded “antagonistic Other” or “enemy.” The representation of a total discursive system of explicit inclusion and exclusion obscures un-named elements – the “heterogeneous excess” (Laclau 2005; Thomassen 2005). Heterogeneity can never be fully captured, which ensures the ultimate failure of discursive suturing and thereby makes social change possible. This failure is also obscured in the attempt to secure discursive closure, a move which Laclau (1990) understands as the ideological aspect of discourse. Ideology here involves the process of naturalizing a certain social order, closing down disputation through obscuring the discursive basis of meaning and the excessive elements that escape closure. Ideology thus entails the attempt to institutionalize “closure,” “the fixation of meaning,” “the non-recognition of the infinite play of differences,” “the will to totality” (Laclau 1990: 92). This understanding of discourse enables me to suggest how part icular concepts, objects, and practices come together to form cyberlibertarianism 2.0, giving a particular meaning to “Web 2.0 democracy.” The result is the identification, and generalized mapping, of key signifiers of cyber-libertarianism 2.0 with respect to democracy. This is in contrast to more micro-textual discourse analysis (see Howarth 2000). Moreover, this discourse theoretic approach acknowledges the work of the researcher in the reading or reconstruction of discourse. As such, I put forward the work here as an initial reading, inviting others to contest and reformulate it. The particular meaning of “Web 2.0 democracy” given by cyberlibertarianism is illustrated not only by my reading of articulated sign ifiers but by contrasting cyber-libertarianism 2.0 with a critical political economy examination of “the situation”5 – Web 2.0 phenomena in relation to extending democracy. This critical political economy is deployed here as another discursive reading of “the situation” so as to point to the particularity and limits of the cyber-libertarian discourse and to identity some of the problems and alternatives for realizing democracy through digital communication, all of which the libertarian discourse obscures. More will be said below about the particular critical political economy approach that I take, as well as about the different understandings of democracy assumed by both critical political economy and the liberal discourse, understandings that will be further clarified when contrasting the discourses. In order to highlight the particularity and associated excess of the cyber-libertarian discourse clearly, I provide a strong representation of it, and contrast this with an equally strong critical political economy discourse. By strong, I mean readings that highlight key features of each. It is also important to note that we could identify and examine an excess associated with the strong critical political economy reading that I give. However, such an examination will not be undertaken as the focus here is upon the cyber-libertarian 2.0 discourse. I do, however, in conclusion, suggest some possibilities of how Web 2.0 may contribute
CULTURAL POLITICS
CYBER-LIBERTARIANISM 2.0
LINCOLN DAHLBERG
to the expansion of democracy, beyond the limits of the cyber-libertarian discourse.
336
CULTURAL POLITICS
Cyber-Libertarianism 2.0, a Discourse Theory Reading Evidence given in support of a new DIY digital democracy – “Web 2.0democracy” – focuses on the extensive online sites of user driven interaction, expression, collaboration, production, and consumption. These Web 2.0 sites are seen as providing a realm of individual freedom and creativity. This individual freedom and creativity is equated with democracy. As such, Web 2.0 is celebrated as an important basis for advancing democracy (Grossman 2006; Hartley 2006; The Reality Club 2006; Twist 2006). Significantly, Web 2.0 networking is believed to enable freedom from nation-state regulation: through digital media we are able to transcend the limits of geographically based paternalistic authority and make our own paths and choices un-headed (Theil 2009). Nationstate based citizenship is seen as regulated by passport controls, surveillance, behavioral regulation, taxation, and so on, producing compliant and de-motivated subjects. In contrast, the digital citizen is seen as transcending nation-state borders and regulations by means of transnational computer networks (Hartley 2006; Reynolds 2007). This negative freedom from constraint is complemented with a positive freedom: Web 2.0 enabling individuals to be freely choosing, self actualizing, creative beings (Grossman 2006). The cyber-libertarian discourse thus invokes a liberal-individualist (if “networked”) subject. Against the figure of the homogeneous and docile nation-state subject, the cyber-libertarian discourse posits a digitally enabled DIY citizen, individuals “doing-it” with digital media and without paternalistic authority (Hartley 2006). This subject knows their own best interests and enabled by “next generation” digital networking finds creative ways to pursue their choices and aspirations unheeded. Rather than a politically oriented citizen, digital networking is seen as supporting a creative prosumer or “interactive citizen-consumer” (Hartley 2005, 2006). As such, politics is privatized, individualized, and instrumentalized. We go beyond the old antagonistic politics of party solidarities and ideological conflict, “the enemy” in discourse theory terms, to a postadversarial, DIY citizenship. The vision that Hartley (2006) and other cyber-libertarians (The Reality Club 2006) give of “Web 2.0-democracy” is of a conflict-free arena, harmonized efficiently and strategically through networked private interactions, exchanges, and transactions. The resulting (post-political) DIY democratic citizenship is prefigured in other consumer culture developments, as Hartley explains: DIY citizenship is . . . the citizenship of the future; decentralized, post-adversarial, international, based on self-determination not state coercion right down to the details of identity and selfhood
CYBER-LIBERTARIANISM 2.0
. . . its manifestations include fan cultures, youth cultures, taste constituencies, consumer-sovereignty movements and those privatizations of previously ‘public’ cultures that succeed in democratization without politicization. (1999: 161; my italics) DIY is a term also associated with more radical democratic (anti-statist and anti-capitalist) traditions (Holtzman, Hughes, and Van Meter 2007; McKay 1998). However, given its privileging of autonomously acting self-creating individuals (Honeywell 2007: 251), DIY is readily linked to post-political prosumerist citizenship and cyber-libertarianism. Drawing from Laclauian discourse theory, “Web 2.0-democracy” can be understood here as a tendentially empty signifier. “Web 2.0democracy” is partially and temporarily emptied of meaning in the process of re-presenting and linking a set of elements, a process that not only alters the meaning of all articulated elements but (re-)signifies “Web 2.0-democracy.” Of particular importance in the constitution of this cyber-libertarian discourse, drawing on the above discussion, are the signifiers “digital networking,” “DIY,” “citizen-consumer/prosumer,” “choice,” “freedom/liberty,” “transcendence,” and “post-(antagonistic) politics.” The discursive system seemingly gains coherence and closure not only through all these elements assuming a shared relation to the empty signifier “Web 2.0-democracy,” but through the construction of a mutual opposition towards an explicit “enemy”: paternalisticauthoritarian systems, most readily represented by nation-state regulation. Against this discursively represented Other, the discourse is constituted as fully explanatory, masking the heterogeneous excess that escapes both the discursive articulation and the naming of “the enemy”. As such, cyber-libertarian “Web 2.0-democracy” becomes naturalized as an unquestioned universal truth and good, while certain (“enemy”) elements are explicitly excluded, which in turn occludes the heterogeneous excess. What specifically is this occluded heterogeneity? To explore this question I turn to a comparative analysis.
337
I have given a discourse theoretic reading of cyber-libertarianism 2.0 that highlights its politics, that is, highlights how the discourse is constituted through the recruitment and articulation of certain signifiers and the explicit exclusion or implicit occlusion of others. Here I want to examine further the politics of the libertarian discourse. More specifically, I want to identify what elements (concepts, practices, objects, and identities) the discourse obscures in attempting closure (its ideological moment), and as a result, to identify unarticulated problems and possibilities for the Internet advancing democracy. As noted earlier, in order to undertake this examination, I will contrast the libertarian discursive articulation with a (my) critical political economy reading of the “situation.” Critical political economy is chosen for this comparison because it gives a strongly contrasting reading, providing a social contextual perspective as against the
CULTURAL POLITICS
Exploring the Limits of Cyber-Libertarianism 2.0
338
CULTURAL POLITICS
LINCOLN DAHLBERG
libertarian discourse’s techno-individualist focus. Moreover, critical political economy is useful here as, like cyber-libertarianism, it affirms democratic norms while assigning different meaning to these norms, which again will be useful in demonstrating the particularity of the cyber-libertarian reading. Critical political economy comes in a range of forms (see Mosco 2009). Here I employ a broad definition. I follow Mosco (2009: 24–5) in understanding political economy as the study of the organization of human welfare through an extensive exploration of “the social relations, particularly power relations, that mutually constitute the production, distribution and consumption of resources,” and more generally, “the study of control and survival in social life.” I will include in this definition cultural Marxist political economy, such as developed by the “Frankfurt School” critical theory tradition and the “society of the spectacle” work of Guy Debord (1983). This cultural Marxism adds to the standard critical political economy focus on economic relations an emphasis on the importance of ideology, mass (and digital) media signification, and the constitution of consumer society in analyzing digitally extended capitalist commodification processes. Here I will draw specifically upon Debord’s notion of “the spectacle,” which I see as useful (when stripped of its essentialist baggage) for examining the political economy of Web 2.0.“Critical” here draws from critical theory traditions and as such signifies not only a concern for cultural politics, as I have just indicated, but (at least) two orientations to critique. First, reflexivity about the contingency and value imbuedness of all analysis, against the positivist claim to delivering objective truth. As such, critical political economy could be read in line with discourse theory’s “discursivity of the social.” However, I must emphasize that I am not attempting to articulate or make commensurable discourse theory and critical political economy. I believe that such an articulation is possible, ground for which has been prepared in work articulating political economy and cultural studies (see for instance Kellner 1998 and Peck 2006). However, it would constitute another major project, particularly given the antagonism that critical political economists and post-Marxist/structuralist discourse theorists have often displayed towards each other’s work (see Mosco 2009). Articulation is simply not needed here. My approach is rather to deploy my (strong) critical political economy analysis within a discourse theory framework, as another discursive reading of “the situation,” to provide a strong contrast with the cyber-libertarian discourse. It is the second orientation to critique that has more relevance here. This is that “critical” indicates an approach which not only acknowledges the normative basis of all knowledge, but explicitly embraces normative critique with an orientation towards promoting progressive social change. In relation to evaluating digital politics, critical political economy draws upon democratic traditions, which posit communication media as ideally supporting the expansion of a public sphere of liberty, equality, and democratic community (the demos). The libertarian discourse also invokes these normative ideals (Allen 2008), but offers a different
CYBER-LIBERTARIANISM 2.0
articulation of them (and thus of “democracy”) in relation to politics, power, subjectivity, corporate influence, technology, and geographical location, among other things. This different articulation leads to a different reading of Web 2.0 networking with respect to democracy. As such, liberty, equality, and the demos provide a useful framework for contrasting the libertarian and critical political economy readings, and thus for highlighting the libertarian discourse’s particularity and political operation, and for identifying some of the elements that are obscured in this operation.
339
A critical political economy of the Internet concurs with cyber-libertarians that the interactive and collaborative networking practices of Web 2.0 support an extension of participatory freedom and democracy, particularly in relation to the state and corporate colonized mass media. However, critical political economy analyses have for some time also pointed to significant limits upon online participatory freedom due to the increasing embeddedness of the Internet within state and (particularly) corporate systems (Fortier 2001; Hargittai 2004; McChesney 1999; Salter 2005; Schiller 1999). I have explored this embeddedness, or state-corporate colonization, elsewhere (see Dahlberg 2004, 2005). No more needs to be said here than that major (digital) media corporations (for example, News Corp, Yahoo, Google) are rapidly taking over “successful” Web 2.0 ventures and structuring their use to maximize profit, and thus extend relations of exploitation, while supported by states, which have on the whole relinquished ownership while maintaining a significant degree of population control through the adaptation of legal frameworks to digital communications systems (Fuchs 2009a, 2009b). Here I focus upon the limits, pointed to by critical political economy, of this ongoing systemic (state and corporate) colonization for Web 2.0 participatory freedom. These limits can be summarized in relation to two general areas: first, the limits to liberty due to prosumerist subjectivity and practice being framed within a capitalist cyberspectacle; and second, the limits to liberty due to the harvesting of online information for surveillance and control. In terms of the liberty of “prosumerism” in relation to consumer capitalism, the digital citizen-consumer is celebrated by libertarians as being freed from the repressive effects of one way, centralized mass media communication, and enabled to pursue their interests freely and creatively through Web 2.0 networking (Benkler 2006; Hartley 2006). In contrast, critical political economy analysis points to the extension through Web 2.0 technology of something in the order of spectacular capitalism, as described by Guy Debord’s (1983) “society of the spectacle.” As well as “more dynamic and creative construction of cybersituations,” Best and Kellner (1999) identified some time ago the production online of “manipulative and pacifying modes” of communication – “the cyberspectacle,” which “wraps subjects more insidiously within the tentacles of the consumer society.” Through
CULTURAL POLITICS
Liberty
340
CULTURAL POLITICS
LINCOLN DAHLBERG
Web 2.0 we can observe this cyberspectacle being expanded not only through user’s “creative prosumerism” massively linking to and reproducing consumer culture, following templates provided by commercial products and digital communication systems, but even more so through corporate (and many non-corporate) Web 2.0 services drawing upon mass media content and embracing advertising, extending the latter in ever more subtle ways into everyday life (Andersson 2009: 78–83; Clark 2009; Fuchs 2009a). Moreover, this Web 2.0 cyberspectacle also involves the extension of capitalist exploitation. While the corporate mass media may support the constitution of subjects as consumers, corporate digital networking systems go further and constitute subjects as both pliable consumers of the spectacle and active participants in its construction and in their own exploitation (Fuchs 2009a; Kleiner and Wyrick 2007; Lowenthal 2007; Wark and Patelis 2007).6 Users are now invited by Web 2.0 corporate sites not only to give their attention to advertisers but to give (in most cases without financial compensation) their creative labor for cultural production, which is then used by site owners to attract attention and in turn to realize advertising revenue and stock market values. This extension of the capitalist spectacle via corporate Web 2.0 networking means that liberty is increasingly being defined by free market consumer capitalism and an associated subjectivity: freedom to consume through financial payment or selling attention, and freedom to create through reproducing consumer culture and accepting exploitation of online labor. One of the most explicit examples of these cyberspectacle freedoms is the digitally simulated “world” Second Life. In this “world” participants “freely” create digital lives. “Freedom” here is situated within a realm of private ownership and capitalist market exchange, and creative prosumerism is a digital extension of consumer capitalism and the constitution of citizens as capitalist subjects. Against this critical political economy reading, cyber-libertarians understand Web 2.0 networking as liberating users from such spec tacular mediation, supporting the actualization of freely choosing, creative individuals (Benkler 2006; Hartley 2006). Digital media networking is understood as providing extensive choice as to what “you” decide to spend your time doing online, and therefore who “you” wish to sell your attention and labor to (Grossman 2006; Rheingold 2009). Even with targeted advertising “you” have the opportunity to decide whether to pay attention or not. Moreover, the harvesting of creative labor is not seen as an issue because “you,” with the support of the technology, are understood as knowingly and freely choosing to give away your labor to corporations in exchange for non-monetary opportunities and benefits, including being given tools to actively and freely produce and publicize identities and products. Thus, “you,” the prosumer, are not seen as trapped in a cyberspectacle and exploited, but in fact as enabled to freely act and autonomously create (Grossman 2006; Hartley 2006; Rheingold 2009).
341
Critical political economy analysis does not dispute the claim that corporate colonized digital networking supports and extends user self-understandings as autonomous citizen-consumers, but sees such self-understandings as themselves circumscribed by the spectacle that obscures the limits to freedom within capitalist systems. Jodi Dean (forthcoming) demonstrates how this obscuring is effected through Web 2.0 networking. Dean develops Žižek’s writings on cyberspace to argue that the joy experienced in the “freedom” of Web 2.0 infodownloading “ensnares” us in a “loop” of “passivity,” of endless surfing (even when this seems to be democratic or activist-oriented). Dean tells of how our enjoyment at being lost in these loops of information is being compared by cyberwriters to drug use, “users,” “using,” “Facecrack” (for Facebook), etc. This extends Debord’s (1983) metaphor of the spectacle as a narcotic, as “opium.” But unlike Debord’s largely mass mediated spectacle, Dean, together with Best and Kellner (1999), points out how the passivity of the cyberspectacle is induced through the very interactivity celebrated by cyber-libertarians and other digital democrats. Best and Kellner see cyberspace as contributing to a “new stage” of the spectacle, the “interactive spectacle,” in which our cyber-interactions can give an illusory sense of freedom and empowerment while extending “pacifying modes” of existence. “Creative” endeavors that seemingly escape and contest power through Web 2.0 DIY prosumerism can wrap users ever more into the spectacle, even absorbing potentially resistant energies in fantasies of action, putting such to use in the spectacle’s production and consumption. Thus, liberty may be (enjoyably) experienced as true and full within the spectacle, but this experience is (largely) that of the capitalist prosumer. This cyberspectacle subject corresponds to the libertarian liberal-individualist subject, a correspondence that libertarians fail to identify when proclaiming Web 2.0 freedom. Celebrations of digital prosumer liberty lose their basis once we disarticulate liberty and the technologically enabled liberal-individualist citizen-consumer and link liberty instead to a stronger notion of democratic subjectivity, such as the reflexive and intersubjectively constituted self, which critical political economists invoke by way of critical theorists such as Habermas. This latter conceptualization of the self and liberty is at odds with, and undermined by, the instrumentalstrategic practices of liberal-individualist prosumerism. By assuming, and indeed promoting, a liberal-individual version of the democratic subject and associated practices, Web 2.0 libertarianism obscures those limits to liberty associated with the capitalist spectacle. As such, cyber-libertarianism 2.0 provides ideological support for the corporate colonization of digital communications, as well as, more generally, for neoliberal capitalism. The second significant threat to Web 2.0 supported liberty due to systemic colonization, from a critical political economy perspective, is corporate data control and mining, which also enables the extension of state control and surveillance of digital communication. Considering
CULTURAL POLITICS
CYBER-LIBERTARIANISM 2.0
342
CULTURAL POLITICS
LINCOLN DAHLBERG
data control, what prosumers can actually do on corporate Web 2.0 sites, including what they can do with their own content, is increasingly determined by site owners through centralized systems, which are marginalizing decentralized peer-to-peer networking that offer more autonomous communication. Centralized corporate control is seen subtly in the coding and licensing of popular social networking sites like Facebook, where the “terms of use” agreements allow companies to control site design, advertising, and data collection and to define what users can and cannot do. In many cases, control extends to licenses over user-created content.7 The centralization of control is most explicitly seen where digital media corporations comply with nation-state censorship laws, as has been explicitly seen in the case of Google and Skype bowing to Chinese censorship demands (Human Rights Watch 2006). This centralization of Web 2.0 communication also enables the extension of corporate data mining and surveillance. Not only do Web 2.0 corporations require users to provide private information with registration, but many spaces construct user profiles by monitoring and aggregating the digital traces of Web 2.0 activities, including Web-based searches and purchases (Fuchs 2009c; Zimmer 2008). On many “terms of service” agreements the fine print allows this harvesting, and subsequent sale, of personal data. Massive amounts of data is being collected on millions of individuals, and then aggregated to (re-)construct user identities, mostly to enable ever more invasive forms of targeted marketing: usergenerated profiles have become the major commodity of Web 2.0 (Beer and Burrows 2007). Once more we see the celebrated interactivity of Web 2.0 enabling an extension of spectacular capitalism and placing “prosumer freedom” into question. The claim to Web 2.0 liberty is further problematized by the fact that stored information may also become part of state surveillance, as with Yahoo!, which has handed over user data to Chinese law enforcement officials that has led to the arrest and conviction of at least four “Internet dissidents” (Human Rights Watch 2006). Cyber-libertarians are generally very concerned about any limits placed upon digital communications by state surveillance and control, and can be found calling for legal protection of online privacy, despite the fact that such protection is largely nation-state based. Cyberlibertarians are more consistent when it comes to corporate control and surveillance, shying away from (when not outright hostile to) state regulation.8 Rather than nation-state law, they tend to put faith in the autonomy of the Web 2.0 enabled liberal-individualist citizenconsumer, in combination with global capitalist free markets. The cyber-libertarian hacker group Cult of Dead Cow, for instance, argues that creative digitally linked citizen-consumers can always “route” around state and other blockages to communication through clever computer use and programming.9 Alternatively, cyber-libertarianism sees citizen-consumers as freely choosing to accept certain levels of control, surveillance, and marketing, in exchange for certain services
CYBER-LIBERTARIANISM 2.0
(see, for example, Rheingold 2009). As such, the liberal-individualist subject of cyber-libertarian “Web 2.0-democracy” obscures the limits to online freedom of corporate and state control and surveillance. Again, the libertarian discourse stands as ideological support for the systemic (particular capitalist spectacle’s) colonization of cyberspace and for neoliberalism in general.
343
What about Web 2.0 equality? Critical political economists and cyberlibertarians generally agree about the need for participatory equality in the public sphere. Moreover, critical political economy analysis identifies certain equalizing aspects of Web 2.0 technology, including low cost, interactivity, and ease of use (Fuchs 2009a). However, critical political economy also points to a range of participatory inequalities overlooked by the cyber-libertarian discourse. These inequalities largely fall into two areas: first, inequalities in voice10 due to the unequal distribution of online attention, which includes attention to certain creative practices not just contents; and second, the unequal distribution of resources necessary to participate at all through digital networks. I will examine these two areas in turn, outlining my strong critical political economy reading and explaining how they come to be overlooked by the libertarian discourse. Critical political economy analysis shows that certain sites and associated practices are gaining significantly more attention than others; prosumers are in particular “choosing” to go in vast numbers to centralized corporate Web 2.0 sites for their services rather than to independent and decentralized (peer-to-peer) systems (Fuchs 2009a, 2009c; Hindman 2009). Cyber-libertarians accept this. However, they contend that “next generation” Web participation is driven by digitally enabled DIY citizen-consumer choice (Hartley 2006; The Reality Club 2006). Each user can decide, as a digitally empowered liberalindividualist subject, where to spend their participatory resources. As a result, there is a democratic determination of what is produced, distributed, downloaded, and reproduced. We cannot blame site owners for what becomes most popular. They simply provide the structure for prosumerist democracy, while production, distribution, and consumption is “user led” (Grossman 2006; Twist 2006). Critical political economy analysis similarly identifies extensive practices of, and democratic potential for, “user driven” Web production, distribution, and consumption (Fuchs 2009a). However, critical political economy also examines the context of this activity, which points to the limits to Web 2.0 “user driven” freedom. For a start, “choice” and “attention” are extensively structured by corporate dominated power relations that point users in certain (commercial) directions via (on- and off-line) marketing, design features, service offerings, slick applications, user recommendation systems, manipulation of search engine ranking, and so on. As a result, Web 2.0 “visibility” is very un even. Moreover, critical political economy alerts us to the fact that we
CULTURAL POLITICS
Equality
344
CULTURAL POLITICS
LINCOLN DAHLBERG
are not dealing with subjects making rational choices independent of particular socio-cultural positions. The liberal-individualist prosumer is in many cases very much constituted within spectacular capitalism, as a subject who “chooses” to (re-)produce and consume particular cultural contents, including themselves as spectacle. This results in the dominance of spectacular-oriented consumer voices within much digital social networking. The large majority of the most popular videos on YouTube, for instance, do not voice the positions of the socially excluded but those of the rich, powerful, and famous, even if these are “creatively” re-produced by digital prosumers.11 This partiality to the capitalist spectacle is encouraged by nearly all the dominant Web 2.0 services foregrounding commercial media content and advertising, positioning users evermore as consumers. Thus, drawing from a critical political economy reading, the inter pellation of users as subjects of the capitalist spectacle and the corporate structuring of much online experience towards commercially viable content, leads inevitably to inequality of voice, with certain (spectacleoriented) voices dominating. Based on this critical political economy reading, we are seeing the repetition and extension of corporate media history: the incorporation or marginalization of seemingly independent culture by capitalist media. An even starker problem than attention stratification for Web 2.0 based participatory equality is the failure of many to participate at all due to the political, economic, and cultural resources necessary simply to get online: the fact that much of the world’s population do not even have access to electricity, let alone the skills, time, and equipment required (Brabazon 2008). Where are the offline poor, displaced, and marginalized in the libertarian digital democracy discourse? They have no place, and are obscured: they take the role of the libertarian discourse’s and the cyberspectacle’s constitutional excess. The ideological obscuring of digital exclusions, which then become a hidden discursive excess, is illustrated by Louis Rossetto (1998), founder of the unapologetically techno-libertarian and determinist Wired magazine. Rossetto, over a decade ago, referred to the idea that there was “such a thing as the info-haves and have-nots” as an “utterly laughable Marxist/Fabian kneejerk.” On the one hand Rossetto was right to warn of the rhetoric around the digital divide, with the “haves” and “have-nots” binary continuing to be used for strategic purposes by certain political groups. However, even after a decade of decreasing costs and increasing distribution of digital technology, it is clear that there are digital divides however they are defined (Brabazon 2008; Downey 2007; Murdock and Golding 2004). Many cyber-libertarians do not go as far as Rossetto, admitting to some form of digital divide. Yet, they also resist regulatory intervention. The vision is of a “natural” overcoming of digital divides, a progression to full inclusion, will take place through inevitable technological innovation and diffusion (based on rapidly decreasing costs) from the “leading edge” to the masses, that relies on free markets and the ingenuity of digitally enabled individuals
CYBER-LIBERTARIANISM 2.0
(Barlow 2006; Benkler 2006; The Reality Club 2006). The general theme is that, through digital media each individual can (eventually) take hold of the means of communication, transcending any limits placed on them by social inequalities.However, from a critical political economy perspective, such an argument obscures the systemic bases of digital divides. The cyber-libertarian 2.0 failure to explore the politicaleconomic bases of exclusion can be highlighted by Time magazine’s December 2006 “Person of the Year.” As Time’s Lev Grossman (2006) enthuses:
345
Time magazine’s cyber-libertarianism fails to mention that this “you” is very select. Not only do many of the world’s population not have the resources to spend online, but a critical political economy approach points to the global divisions of labor and systems of exploitation that enables digital prosumerism in the first place. There is in fact, in the larger social context of digital networking, very little transcendent. To sustain “you” with the “energy” and “passion” to blog about your “state of mind,” many others in the world must work long hours laboring in factories (including in the production and recycling of digital technologies), cleaning streets and offices, plowing and picking fields, and so on. In other words, the cyber-libertarian prosumer, and associated libertarian discourse, presently relies on a global economic system that leaves millions locked in brutal conditions of material deprivation and exploitation. This exploitation now includes the outsourcing of microinformation tasks through global digital networking systems. While radically outside in terms of Web 2.0 prosumerism, the constitutive excess can be utilized, through digital media communications, as an extremely cheap and instantly accessible source of unregulated labor, especially for digital media corporations (for an example of such digital outsourcing, see Marwaha 2009). Cyber-libertarianism, as it was a decade ago, offers a citizenship of the young, educated, middle class consumer, those who have done alright, thank you, under neoliberal capitalist globalization, those who not only have the resources to fully participate online but whose voice and subjectivity is confirmed by the dominant culture of the cyberspectacle. “Web 2.0-democracy,” from a critical political economy reading, currently involves the inclusion and empowerment of the few, those who have passports to the digital city and the cultural and economic capital required to navigate the digital streets, suburbs,
CULTURAL POLITICS
Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I’m not going to watch Lost tonight. I’m going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I’m going to mash up 50 Cent’s vocals with Queen’s instrumentals? I’m going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion? The answer is, you do.
LINCOLN DAHLBERG
and institutions. But Web 2.0 participatory inequalities are obscured by a celebration of DIY democracy, with its technologically determinist and liberal-individualist promise of inclusion of all; everyone can “do it” equally through Web 2.0. Once again, we see cyber-libertarianism 2.0 operating ideologically in support of the corporate colonization of digital communications and of neoliberal global capitalism.
The Demos What then of the formation of “the demos,” the democratic community? Cyber-libertarianism 2.0 sees democratic community being built out of the myriad of private actions and interactions of individuals involved in the “next generation” Web. Democratic decisions are understood to evolve via this networking. In fact, some libertarians refer to a transcendent “group mind,” a pure rationality of millions, a networked intelligence replicating the Hayekian spontaneous ordering and decision making of free markets (The Reality Club 2006). This collective social networking is explicitly disarticulated from communalism, socialism, or social democracy, “the enemy” in discourse theory terms, repressing individual freedom and creativity (The Reality Club 2006). For instance, in 2006 the libertarian online publication Edge gathered multiple Netlibertarians together to comment on an article by cyber-libertarian Jaron Lanier that read digital collaborative networking (Wikipedia in particular) as a new form of “Maoism.”12 Respondents consistently argued that collective networking is the antithesis of a Marxist or Maoist “collectivism” (The Reality Club 2006). Howard Rheingold in his contribution to this debate wrote:
346
CULTURAL POLITICS
collective action is not the same as collectivism. Commonsbased peer production in Wikipedia, open source software, and prediction markets is collective action, not collectivism. Collective action involves freely chosen self-election (which is almost always coincident with self-interest) and distributed coordination; collectivism involves coercion and centralized control; treating the Internet as a commons doesn’t mean it is communist (tell that to Bezos, Yang, Filo, Brin or Page, to name just a few billionaires who managed to scrape together private property from the Internet commons). While Benkler wrote: Take Google’s algorithm. It aggregates the distributed judgments of millions of people who have bothered to host a webpage. It doesn’t take any judgment, only those that people care enough about to exert effort to insert a link in their own page to some other page. In other words, relatively ‘scarce’ or ‘expensive’ choices. It doesn’t ask the individuals to submerge their identity, or preferences, or actions in any collective effort. No one spends their evenings in consensus-building meetings. It merely produces a
CYBER-LIBERTARIANISM 2.0
snapshot of how they spend their scarce resources: time, webpage space, expectations about their readers’ attention. That is what any effort to synthesize a market price does. Anyone who claims that they have found transcendent wisdom in the pattern emerging from how people spend their scarce resources is a follower of Milton Friedman, not of Chairman Mao.
What then is the problem, for the expansion of “the demos,” of corporate interests being involved in the development of online com munity? From a critical political economy perspective, one needs to look at the corporate design and harvesting of community, and the cyberspectacular constitution of subjects involved. These put into question the extent that Web 2.0 community, and any associated “demos,” results from the voluntary networking of individuals. We must also question the type of democratic community that is invoked here.
347
Like the “framework for utopia” described in the libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Wikia maximizes the chance that people can work together to get exactly what they want, while still being part of a meaningful community by maximizing freedom and opportunities for voluntary cooperation.
CULTURAL POLITICS
Web 2.0 media is seen as enabling the loose networking of millions of minds that enhances individual “innovation,” “creativity,” “motivation,” “productivity” and “freedom,” and thus stands as the “polar opposite of Maoism” (The Reality Club 2006). As such, this networking supports individuals in cultivating their individuality free from authority, a noncredentialist system that allows individual expertise to come to the fore based on merit – a meritocracy in contrast to communism (The Reality Club 2006). Social networking is understood and celebrated as spontaneously organized do-it-yourself democracy, not communally or state based democracy. However, a critical political economy reading of Web 2.0 community indicates that online communities are not spaces free of authority, but strongly influenced by other users and by the profit interests of corporate site owners: Web social networking ventures (from Facebook to YouTube) are fostering social networking communities specifically in order to sell defined communities to advertisers. Again, within the libertarian discourse, such corporate colonization of online social networking goes largely unnoticed and uncritiqued. If anything, corporate networking is seen as supporting creative prosumerism. Take for instance Wikia. Wikia is the for-profit venture of Jimmy Wales, the Hayekian inspired founder of Wikipedia.13 Wikia sells “wiki communities” to advertisers, is pre-coded, and commercially structured, and yet it is celebrated by Katherine Mangu-Ward, an associate editor of the libertarian Reason magazine, as a “self-governed, spontaneously ordered,” “decentralized,” “anti-authoritarian” system. Mangu-Ward (2007) writes:
LINCOLN DAHLBERG
The demos of cyber-libertarianism 2.0 is simply about networking to achieve one’s own individual needs and interests, whether such networking is focused on identity construction and promotion, the development and sharing of digital and non-digital resources, or intimate communication. Democratic community here is at bottom the aggregation of the instrumentally oriented interactions of individual utility maximizers within and between like-minded interest group enclaves. Commitment need last only as long as a particular community is meeting one’s individual needs and desires. We are free to come and go from these networks at the click of a button. In contrast to much strong or radical democratic theory, there is no talk of “collective identity,” “solidarity,” “public sovereignty,” or “communal values.” These “outdated” notions are associated with paternalistic, state-centered, social systems, “the enemy” of the demos of cyber-libertarian “Web 2.0-democracy” (The Reality Club 2006). Moreover, as against (radical) democratic theory, democratic community is seen as developing from post-antagonistic relations (Hartley 2006). Conflict is limited to creative competition between prosumers. This vision of transcendence from (antagonistic and nation-state based) politics and the emergence of a prosumerist, post-antagonistic democratic community is celebrated as liberating. However, such celebration masks status quo power and the limits to democratic community through Web 2.0 prosumerism. As such, the cyber-libertarian 2.0 discourse once again provides ideological support for neoliberal discourse and the corporate colonization of the Internet.
348
CULTURAL POLITICS
Expanding Democracy through Web 2.0 Digital Media? The cyber-libertarian 2.0 discourse celebrates the technologically enabled autonomy and resourcefulness of a liberal-individualist DIY citizen-consumer whose digital networking is understood to constitute an egalitarian, conflict free realm transcending existing political institutions – that is, to constitute a libertarian “Web 2.0 democracy.” In contrast, the critical political economy analysis that I have given here provides a strikingly different reading of “the situation.” It rearticulates the terms of democracy (of liberty, equality, and the demos), changes the focus of analysis from individual-technological networking to broader social-political contexts, and renames “the enemy” global capitalism rather than “old nation-state politics.” As a result, a critical political economy analysis identifies the extension of capitalist relations of exploitation and spectacular consumption, which lead to a range of limits to democracy being extended through Web 2.0 systems, limits not identified in the libertarian discourse. Given its failure to account for such limits, and more directly its promotion of a liberal-individualist subject and associated practices, cyber-libertarianism 2.0 provides ideological support for neoliberal, consumer capitalism. However, this strong critical political economy analysis of “the situation” is itself another interpretation from which certain excessive
349
elements escape. In particular the cyberspectacle reading that I have given here is overly totalizing, not taking into account forms of digital politics that might subvert the spectacle, while assuming a transcendent position from which to tell the story. In contrast, Best and Kellner (1999) argue that the “interactive cyberspectacle” not only extends capitalist relations but contains possibilities for creative resistance and non-corporate alternative practices. Similarly, Andersson (2009) and Fuchs (2009a) argue that while dominated by capitalist interests, Web 2.0 technology does not offer an either/or scenario but rather involves a struggle between different systems of social organization. At the same time we should be very clear about the need for in-depth analysis of the extension of capitalist logics and spectacle through digital communications. Moreover, we should take into account Žižek’s (1989: 28–30) understanding, developing upon Peter Sloterdijk’s, of ideology now operating in terms of “cynical reason.” That is, rather than cyber-subjects understood as duped by a spectacle, we need to explore how to deal with users who very much know that they are operating within, and reproducing, an exploitative spectacle, but carry on anyway, compromising communicative ethics for instrumental goals (see, for example, Rheingold 2009). What we need to ask is how we might be able to identify modes of interaction that effectively resist domination, turning the spectacle on itself, and effecting substantive socio-political change, while at the same time taking into account the implication of our online practices within dominant social relations, particularly capitalist relations of exploitation. There is no space even to begin to explore this important and complex problematic here. I will simply suggest some possible lines of investigation. One obvious place to start, beyond simply acknowledging the cultural studies emphasis on semiotic openness and resistant read ings, is to investigate (further) the democratizing potential of the counter-hegemonic development and deployment of the medium. Here, we can think of electronic civil disobedience, online activist media, counter-surveillance and counter-censorship practices, and so on (see, for examples, Jordan 2007; Kahn and Kellner 2005, 2007; Wimmer 2008). We should also, no doubt, consider “autonomist” production, distribution, and consumption, based on peer-to-peer and open source/ copy-left networked communities subverting capitalist commodification (see, for instance, Dyer-Witheford 2006). There is clearly potential in the “new” Web 2.0 networking, partic ularly in that which is based on non-commercial peer-to-peer networks and open source software and Web platforms (like Wikipedia and Peercast), for supporting counter-hegemonic politics, as Stacey (2008) and Hall (2009) show in the case of wikis. However, research also needs to explore if and how commercially oriented corporate social networking can be (and is being) effectively appropriated for contesting and building alternative democratic communities.
CULTURAL POLITICS
CYBER-LIBERTARIANISM 2.0
LINCOLN DAHLBERG
We must also explore how alternative voices can resist neutralization or recuperation, to borrow again from Debord, within the cyberspectacle of information circulation. Such resistance may be supported by countersubjectivities, counter-discourses, and counter-productions being strategically networked. Exemplary for the “organized networking,” to borrow from Lovink and Rossiter (2005), of resistances are social movement networks facilitated by digital communications, although these too can be recuperated (see Dean 2007). Finally, in line with the work of critical political economists and cultural Marxists, we need to look for crises tendencies within global capitalism and the (cyber‑) spectacle, including fragmentations, dislocations, and antagonisms that can be taken advantage of by resistant forces. In all this we must take into account the pervasiveness of affect, mediation, conflict, exclusions, and social inequalities. Against the clearly ideological notion that we can wholly escape the spectacle, we must accept our implication in power, and that our communicative practices will be essentially political, contributing to the limits of liberty, equality, and democratic community. In other words, what is needed, to draw inspiration once again from the post-Marxism of Laclau and Mouffe, is the adoption of a radically democratic framework, radical first in the sense that it accepts and theorizes the failure of any particular political system, acknowledging that there will always be an excess that escapes (if ideologically hidden from) articulation (Laclau 2005; Laclau and Mouffe 2001; Mouffe 2005). This not only means that power and associated exclusion can never be finally eliminated, but also, and this is the second sense of radicalness, that there is always the potential for challenges to domination from counter-discursive articulations, challenges that effectively alter the constellation of power, including the relations of production and the coordinates of the spectacle, toward greater democracy. An appropriate radical democratic strategy is to encourage this challenge and rearticulation. We need to explore how democracy can be, and is being, advanced most fully online through the embrace of counter-hegemonic practices and activisms that contest domination and open space for excluded voices.
350
CULTURAL POLITICS
Acknowledgments My thanks to Johanna Niesyto and Sean Phelan for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper, and to the Cultural Politics’ reviewers for their insightful suggestions.
Notes 1. For more extensive definitions of Web 2.0, see Beer and Burrows (2007), O’Reilly (2005), and Web 2.0 in Wikipedia. A list of Web 2.0 applications can be found at http://www.go2web20.net/ (last accessed April 30, 2009). 2. For further on the genealogy of techno-libertarianism, see Barbrook (2007).
351
3. Peter Theil is the neoliberal/neoconservative and cyber-libertarian venture capitalist and futurist philosopher behind Facebook. See Hodgkinson (2008). 4. O’Reilly conferences are advertised at http://conferences. oreillynet.com/ (last accessed April 30, 2009). 5. By “the situation” I here refer to the broad constellation of social practices associated with the intersection between Internet and democratic politics. The term “situation” also associates my analysis with broadly cultural Marxist, critical political economy, and critical theory traditions. 6. Autonomist Marxist evaluations of corporate and state domination of digital communications parallel the analysis of critical political economists (see, for example, the work of Nick Dyer-Witheford and Tizzana Terranova). However, the autonomist approach draws on different theoretical traditions from those embraced by critical political economy (Italian autonomist rather than critical theory), which leads to a different understanding of the way in which democracy may develop in relation to digital networking. See, for example, Dyer-Witheford (2006). 7. See Hodgkinson (2008) for an outline of the control of user content that Facebook enforces. Even in the case of YouTube, which is seen by many commentators as relatively open, the “terms of use” agreement mean that, as Lowenthal (2007: 39) argues, “by uploading to YouTube you grant them the right to do near anything with your video, including modifying and selling it, as long as it stays on their site.” For a more general critical political economy of digital surveillance, see Andrejevic (2007). 8. For examples of Internet policy lobby work of libertarian groups working for privacy rights as well as deregulation, see The Progress and Freedom Foundation (http://pff.org) and the Cato Institute (http://www.cato.org/researcharea.php?display=12) (URLs accessed May 2, 2009). 9. Cult of The Dead Cow can be found at http://www.cultdeadcow. com/cms/main.php3 (accessed April 3, 2009). 10. “Voice” is referred to here to indicate the agentic aspect of discourse. In other words, it is used to indicate that in association with discourses there are subjects (enunciators) whose agency (voice) is circumscribed by their particular discursive location – their particular position in relation to systems of power, of inclusion and exclusion, advantage and disadvantage. 11. YouTube, as at April 5 2009, provides a ranking of its “most viewed” videos per week, month, and of “all time,” which clearly illustrate the extension of the “capitalist spectacle.” 12. Lanier’s naming of social networking as “digital Maoism” acts ideologically to obscure Lanier’s libertarian position, and the social inequalities of Web 2.0. The same can be said for Kelly’s (2009) association of Web 2.0 with “socialism.”
CULTURAL POLITICS
CYBER-LIBERTARIANISM 2.0
LINCOLN DAHLBERG
13. According to Wales, “One can’t understand my ideas about Wikipedia without understanding Hayek” (Mangu-Ward, 2007). Wikia hosts thousands of Wikis, using them (and the popularity of Wikipedia) to sell unique communities to advertises while selling itself to users as “part of the free culture movement,” a claim based on the fact that Wikia “is released under a free content license and operates on the Open Source MediaWiki software” (see http://www.wikia.com/wiki/About_Wikia#Wikia.2C_Inc, accessed June 10, 2009).
352
CULTURAL POLITICS
References Allen, M. 2008. “Web 2.0: An Argument against Convergence.” First Monday 13(3). Available at http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2139/1946 (accessed May 1, 2009). Anderson, C. and Gillespie, N. 2006. “Welcome to Niche Nation.” ReasonOnline, November. Available at http://www.reason.com/ news/show/38385.html (accessed May 1, 2009). Andersson, J. 2009. “For the Good of the Net: The Pirate Bay as a Strategic Sovereign.” Culture Machine 10: 64–108. Andrejevic, M. 2007. “Surveillance in the Digital Enclosure.” Communication Review 10(4): 295–319. Barbrook, R. 2007. Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Machine to Global Village. London: Pluto. Barlow, J.P. 1996. “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.” Available at http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html (accessed May 2, 2009). Barlow, J.P. 2006. “Reply to Lanier: Reaction Essay.” Cato Institute, January 17. Available at http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/01/17/ john-perry-barlow/reply-to-lanier-3/ (accessed May 2, 2009). Barrett, J. 2007. “Web 2.0: Democracy or Anarchy? Dallas.” Texas: Parks Associates. Available at http://www.parksassociates.com/free_ data/downloads/parks-Web2_0.pdf (accessed April 29, 2009). Beer, D. and Burrows, R. 2007. “Sociology and, of and in Web 2.0: Some Initial Considerations.” Sociological Research Online 12(5). Available at http://www.socresonline.org.uk/12/5/17.html (accessed September 1, 2009). Benkler, Y. 2006. The Wealth of Networks. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Best, S. and Kellner, D. 1999. “Debord, Cybersituationists, and the Interactive Spectacle.” Substance 28(3): 129–55. Brabazon, T. (ed.). 2008. The Revolution will not be Downloaded: Dissent in the Digital Age. Oxford: Chandos Publishing. Clark, E. 2009. “What Good is the ‘You’ in YouTube? Cyberspectacle and Subjectivity.” gnovis 9(1). Available at http://gnovisjournal. org/journal/what-good-you-youtube-cyberspectacle-and-subjectivity (accessed September 1, 2009).
353
Dahlberg, L. (2004). “Cyber-Publics and the Corporate Control of Online Communication.” Javnost—The Public 11(3): 77–92. Dahlberg, L. (2005). “The Corporate Colonization of Online Attention and the Marginalization of Critical Communication?” Journal of Communication Inquiry 29(2): 1–21. Davis, R. 1999. The Web of Politics: The Internet’s Impact on the American Political System. New York: Oxford University Press. Dean, J. 2007. “Feminism, Communicative Capitalism, and the Inad equacies of Radical Democracy.” In L. Dahlberg and E. Siapera (eds), Radical Democracy and the Internet: Interrogating Theory and Practice. London: Palgrave. Dean, J. forthcoming. “The Real Internet.” International Journal of Žižek Studies. Accessed from Author, July 16, 2009. Debord, G. 1983. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black & Red. Downey, J. 2007. “Participation and/or Deliberation? The Internet as a Tool for Achieving Radical Democratic Aims.” In L. Dahlberg and E. Siapera (eds), Radical Democracy and the Internet. Hampshire: Palgrave. Dyer-Witheford, N. 2006. “The Circulation of the Common.” Available at http://www.geocities.com/immateriallabour/withefordpaper2006. html (accessed September 2, 2009), Dyson, E., Gilder, G., Keyworth, G., and Toffler, A. 1994. “A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age.” The Progress and Freedom Foundation. Available at http://www.pff.org/issues-pubs/futureinsights/ fi1.2magnacarta.html (accessed April 20, 2009). Fiorina, C.S. 2001. “The Digital Renaissance.” Future Insight 8(1): 2–5. Progress and Freedom Foundation. Available at http://www.pff.org/ issues-pubs/futureinsights/fi8.1digitalrenaissance.pdf (accessed April 29, 2010). Fortier, F. 2001. Virtuality Check. London: Verso. Fuchs, C. 2009a. “Information and Communication Technologies and Society: A Contribution to the Critique of the Political Economy of the Internet.” European Journal of Communication 24(1): 69–87. Fuchs, C. 2009b. “Some Reflections on Manuel Castells’ Book ‘Communication Power’.” TripleC, 7(1): 94–108. Fuchs, C. 2009c. Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Society. Salzburg/ Vienna: Forschungsgruppe UTI. Gates, B. 1999. Business @ The Speed of Thought: Using a Digital Nervous System. New York: Warner Books. Grossman, L.K. 1995. The Electronic Republic. New York: VikingPenguin. Grossman, L. 2006. “Time’s Person of the Year: You.” Time, December 13. Available at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ article/0,9171,1569514,00.html (accessed May 1, 2009). Hall, G. 2009. “Wikination: On Peace and Conflict in the Middle East.” Cultural Politics, 5(1): 5–26. Hargittai, E. 2004. “The Changing Online Landscape: From FreeFor-All to Commercial Gatekeeping.” In P. Day and D. Schuler (eds),
CULTURAL POLITICS
CYBER-LIBERTARIANISM 2.0
354
CULTURAL POLITICS
LINCOLN DAHLBERG
Community Practice in the Network Society: Local Actions/Global Interaction. New York: Routledge. Hartley, J. 1999. Uses of Television. London: Routledge. Hartley, J. 2005. “Creative Identities.” In J. Hartley (ed.), Creative Industries. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Hartley, J. 2006. “Uses of Creativity: Creative Content and the Creative Citizen.” Paper presented at the Association of Internet Researchers Conference 6.0, Brisbane, September 28–30. Hindman, M. 2008. The Myth of Digital Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hodgkinson, T. 2008. “With Friends like These . . .” The Guardian, January 14. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/ 2008/jan/14/facebook (accessed May 10, 2009). Holtzman, B., Hughes, C., and Van Meter, K. 2007. “Do It Yourself . . . and the Movement Beyond Capitalism.” In S. Shukaitis, D. Graeber and D. Graeber (eds), Constitutive Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Oakland, CA: AK Press. Honeywell, C. 2007. “Utopianism and Anarchism.” Journal of Political Ideologies 12(3): 239–54. Howarth, D. 2000. Discourse. Buckingham: Open University Press. Human Rights Watch. 2006. “‘Race to the Bottom’ Corporate Complicity in Chinese Internet Censorship.” HRW18: 8(C). Available at http:// www.hrw.org/reports/2006/china0806/index.htm (accessed May 2, 2009). Jordan, T. 2007. “Online direct action: Hacktivism and Radical Demo cracy.” In L. Dahlberg and E. Siapera (eds), The Internet and radical democracy: Interrogating Theory and Practice. London: Palgrave. Kahn, R. and Kellner, D. 2005. “Oppositional Politics and the Internet: A Critical/Reconstructive Approach.” Cultural Politics 1(1): 75–100. Kahn. R. and Kellner, D. 2007. “Globalization, Technopolitics and Radical Democracy.” In L. Dahlberg and E. Siapera (eds), The Internet and Radical Democracy: Interrogating Theory and Practice. London: Palgrave. Kapor, M. 1993. “Where is the Digital Highway Really Going?” Wired 1(3): 53–59, 84. Keyworth, G.A. 1997. “People and Society in Cyberspace, the Shape of Things: Exploring the Evolving Transformation of American Life.” No. 1. Working paper from the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Kellner, D. 1998. “Communications vs. Cultural Studies: Overcoming the Divide.” Available at http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/ kell4.htm (accessed September 1, 2009). Kelly, K. 2009. “The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society is Coming Online.” Wired Magazine 17(6). Available at http://www.wired. com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism (accessed April 29, 2010). Kleiner, D. and Wyrick, B. 2007. “Info-Enclosure 2.0.” Mute: Culture and Politics after the Net 2(4). Available at http://www.metamute. org/en/InfoEnclosure-2.0 (accessed May 4, 2009).
355
Laclau, E. 1990. New Reflections on the Revolution of our Times. London: Verso. Laclau, E. 2005. On Populist Reason. London: Verso. Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. 2001. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, 2nd edn. London: Verso. Leary, T. 1994. Chaos and Cyberculture. Berkeley, CA: Ronin Publishing. Li, C. and Bernoff, J. 2008. Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Lovink, G. and Rossiter, N. 2005. “Dawn of the Organised Networks.” Fibreculture 5. Available at http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue5/ lovink_rossiter.html (accessed September 6, 2009). Lowenthal, A. 2007. “Free Beer vs Free Media.” In F. da Rimini (ed.), A Handbook for Coding Cultures. Sydney: d/Lux/MediaArts. Available at http://www.dlux.org.au/codingcultures/handbook.html (accessed May 6, 2009). Mangu-Ward, K. 2007. “Wikipedia and Beyond: Jimmy Wale’s Sprawling Vision.” Reason Magazine, June. Available at http://www.reason. com/news/show/119689.html (accessed May 2, 2009). Marwaha, A. 2009. “New Service is all in a day’s SMS.” BBC World Service, February 11. Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ technology/7881931.stm (accessed August 29, 2009). McChesney, R.W. 1999. Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. McKay, G. 1998. DIY Culture. Party and Protest in Nineties Britain. London: Verso. Mosco, V. 2009. The Political Economy of Communication, 2nd edn. London: Sage. Mouffe, C. 2005. On the Political. London: Routledge. Murdock, G. and Golding, P. 2004. “Dismantling the Digital Divide: Rethinking the Dynamics of Participation and Exclusion.” In A. Calabrese and C. Sparks (eds), Towards a Political Economy of Culture. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. O’Reilly, T. 2005. “What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software.” Available at http:// www.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/whatis-web-20.html (accessed May 2, 2009). Peck, J. 2006. “Why we shouldn’t be Bored with the Political Economy versus Cultural Studies Debate.” Cultural Critique 64(Fall): 92–126. Resnick, D. and Margolis, M. 2000. Politics as Usual: The Cyberspace “Revolution.” London: Sage. Reynolds, G. 2007. An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson. Rheingold, H. 2009. “Introduction re: ‘The Internet as Playground and Factory’.” iDC elist. June 5. Available at https://lists.thing. net/pipermail/idc/2009-June/003448.html (accessed August 27, 2009).
CULTURAL POLITICS
CYBER-LIBERTARIANISM 2.0
356
CULTURAL POLITICS
LINCOLN DAHLBERG
Rossetto, L. 1998. “Rebuttal of the California Ideology.” Almut: Bastion of Peace and Information. Available at http://www.alamut.com/ subj/ideologies/pessimism/califIdeo_II.html (accessed May 2, 2009). Salter, L. 2005. “Colonization Tendencies in the Development of the World Wide Web.” New Media and Society 7(3): 291–309. Scholz, T. 2007, 16 April. “What the MySpace Generation Should Know about Working for Free.” Re-public. Available at http://www. re-public.gr/en/wp-print.php?p=138 (accessed May 6, 2009). Schiller, D. 1999. Networking the Global Market System. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Shuen, A. 2008. Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide: Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media. Stacey, P. 2008. “‘Wikivism’: From Communicative Capitalism to Organized Networks.” Cultural Politics 4(1): 73–99. Tapscott, D. and Williams, A.D. 2007. Wikinomics: How Mass Collab oration Changes Everything. New York: Penguin. The Reality Club. 2006. “Responses to ‘Digital Maoism’.” Edge, 185, June 15. Available at http://www.edge.org/discourse/digital_ maoism.html (accessed May 7, 2009). Theil, P. 2009. “The Education of a Libertarian.” Cato Unbound. Available at http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peterthiel/the-education-of-a-libertarian/ (accessed May 5, 2009). Thomassen, L. 2005. “Antagonism, Hegemony and Ideology after Heterogeneity.” Journal of Political Ideologies 10(3): 289–309. Toffler, A. and Toffler, H. 1994. Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave. Atlanta, GA: Turner Pub. Twist, J. 2006. “The Year of the Digital Citizen.” BBC News International Online Version, 2 January. Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ technology/4566712.stm (accessed May 6, 2009). Wark, M. and Patelis, K. 2007. “McKenzie Wark: Gamer Theory for Collaborative Knowledge Production, an Interview with Korinna Patelis.” Re-public, 16 April. Available at http://www.re-public.gr/ en/?p=132 (accessed May 6, 2009). Williams, A. 2008. “How Web 2.0 Can Reinvent Government.” CIO Insight. Available at http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Latest-News/ Social-Network-Media-Firms-Seek-Deals-in-Downturn/ (accessed April 29, 2009). Wimmer, J. 2008. “The Publics Behind Political Web Campaigning: The Digital Transformation of ‘Classic’ Counter-Public Spheres.” In S. Baringhorst, V. Kneip, and J. Niesyto (eds), Political Campaigning on the Web. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. Zimmer, M. 2008. “The Externalities of Search 2.0: The Emerging Privacy Threats when the Drive for the Perfect Search Engine meets Web 2.0.” First Monday 13(3). Available at http://www.uic.edu/htbin/ cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2136/1944 (accessed May 2, 2009). Žižek, S. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.
