Introductions

The site has been live for a few weeks now, so it’s time to be a bit clearer about how JPDGP is going to run. The first issue will be released in the first week of Janu­ary 2011. It will be free, and avail­able in digital and prin­ted edi­tions. I admit, it’s a bit odd for the Journal of Post-Digital Geo­pol­it­ics to have a dead-tree edi­tion, but there are two reas­ons for this. The main one is that we will be using News­pa­per Club, which is an awe­some ser­vice that we love. The other is that we’re just that gen­er­ous — some prefer print, and it will be free as well, includ­ing post­age (although it will have a lim­ited print run).

Of course, a journal needs writers and read­ers. If you would like to receive a copy, prin­ted or digital, enter your details on the sub­scrip­tions page here. If you are inter­ested in writ­ing some­thing for us, email your thoughts to contributions@jpdgp.org.

In the mean­time, we will post links to inter­est­ing and rel­ev­ant art­icles here irreg­u­larly, but every week at least.

By the way, I’m James. I’ll be help­ing Ben with run­ning JPDGP. If you want to talk to me about any­thing, I’m james@jpdgp.org.

Update
We’re now on Twit­ter. Fol­low @JPDGP for the latest news.

Published:
August 4, 2010 – 8:41 am
Author:
James Berrill
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U.S. Promoting Internet Freedom

In a meas­ured edit­or­ial today, the Wash­ing­ton Post charts the increased focus of the U.S. State Depart­ment on global inter­net free­dom. It con­cludes that,

A cyber­space without walls or bar­ri­ers, where people can assemble and express them­selves freely, without fear of cen­sor­ship or impris­on­ment, will make the world safer for the United States and for demo­cra­cies every­where. Con­tin­ued public-private part­ner­ship, pri­or­it­iz­a­tion of Inter­net free­dom in dip­lomacy and the wise deploy­ment of alloc­ated funds will move this ideal closer to reality.

The full art­icle is here.

Published:
July 21, 2010 – 3:38 pm
Author:
James Berrill
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Tricia Wang on China and Neo-Informationalism

In the dec­ade or so since Gold­man Sachs gave a good acronym to the BRIC coun­tries, many of us have sat through count­less meet­ings, listen­ing to pun­dits make wild gen­er­al­isa­tions and call it wis­dom: mainly that the cit­izens of these fine four coun­tries desire our products, ser­vices, and cul­ture like a man in the desert wants water. This is espe­cially true about the inter­net and China. The Chinese wait­ing for X, or the Chinese will do Y online being almost as good for the mor­ale of West­ern indus­tri­al­ists as the x-hundred-million New Con­sumers Yearn­ing for Your Product story. Tak­ing Face­book to China is told like we’re tak­ing Levis into East Germany.

Of course, it’s non­sense. The Chinese inter­net is just as mature and soph­ist­ic­ated — if not more so — than it is in the West. We just don’t have the report­ing to know it, or per­haps the will to under­stand, say, the size of QQ or RenRen.

Hap­pily, Tri­cia Wang’s writ­ings on the Chinese inter­net are dif­fer­ent to most — they’re based on actual eth­no­graphic research, on the ground. As they with­drew earlier this year, one of Wang’s older blog posts did well to cut through a good deal of the assump­tions made in the anglo­sphere about Google’s place in the Chinese internet.

Now that Google has returned to China, her latest, is longer, and very much worth the read.

What’s emer­ging is a new rhet­oric of devel­op­ment and glob­al­iz­a­tion in what I am call­ing neo-informationalism: the belief that inform­a­tion should func­tion like cur­rency in free-market cap­it­al­ism —  border-less, free from reg­u­la­tion, and mobile. The logic of neo-informationalism rests on an moral frame­work that is tied to what Mor­gan Ames calls “inform­a­tion determ­in­ism,” the belief that free and open access to inform­a­tion can cre­ate social change. This moral frame­work of neo-informationalism is so nat­ur­al­ized that Google and like-minded com­pan­ies work their way around the world unques­tioned for their pos­i­tion on open information. Phrases such as “inform­a­tion wants to be free” reflect the techno-anthropomorphizing of inform­a­tion, a neces­sary step in nat­ur­al­iz­ing any neo-informationalist agenda.

The full speech, from which the blog post is derived, is here.

Published:
July 14, 2010 – 8:53 am
Author:
Ben Hammersley
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Bookmarks for July 13th

Links for July 12th

Published:
July 14, 2010 – 8:27 am
Author:
Ben Hammersley
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Bookmarks for July 12th

Links for July 12th

Published:
July 13, 2010 – 3:39 am
Author:
Ben Hammersley
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First Post

A new pro­ject, then.

There are two dates, very close, that will fight in his­tory to be the most import­ant for their gen­er­a­tion. Which you think is the most import­ant may be a test one day: Novem­ber 9th 1989, the Ber­lin Wall falls. Christ­mas Day 1990, the first web-server, goes live.

Their rel­at­ive import­ance is a point of view that, I think, is start­ing to split the intel­lec­tual frame­works through which our rul­ing classes see the world. On the one hand, inter­na­tional rela­tions based on the old ideas: coun­tries, bor­ders, secur­ity by stand­ing armies, of geo­pol­it­ical power and nation-state act­ors. On the other, a world soon to be dom­in­ated by the more slip­pery: of inform­a­tion, money, power and con­trol unres­tric­ted by the phys­ical, of land­less states based on ideas and cul­ture, of total inform­a­tion par­ity, of nimble­ness over artil­lery. We are enter­ing a world of post-digital geo­pol­it­ics.

From Al-Qaeda online to 4Chan, from M-Pesa to Skype, the inter­net is chan­ging the world in a way fun­da­ment­ally at odds with the think­ing that we cur­rently use to run the planet. That these new con­di­tions are con­fus­ing isn’t sur­pris­ing. We have lost track of the num­ber of indus­tries already eaten by the inter­net, so why shouldn’t the next be inter­na­tional rela­tions, secur­ity, and the rest? Why indeed, should we trust our lead­ers to run our future, when they are so obvi­ously con­fused by the present?

As Wil­liam Gib­son is so often quoted, the future is already here, just not evenly dis­trib­uted: parts of post-digital geo­pol­it­ics are, of course, already stud­ied. But while eco­nom­ists are busy pre­dict­ing six of the forth­com­ing four reces­sions, and gen­er­als are plan­ning to fight the last war once again, it comes to oth­ers, to us, to try to tie things together as a whole. This is the point of the Journal of Post-digital Geo­pol­it­ics. This is why we’re here. It should be interesting.

Published:
July 11, 2010 – 6:30 pm
Author:
Ben Hammersley
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