Toward a Constructive Technology Criticism
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UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations
UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title A Web of Extended Metaphors in the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto of Aaron Swartz Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6w76f8x7 Author Swift, Kathy Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara A Web of Extended Metaphors in the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto of Aaron Swartz A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Education by Kathleen Anne Swift Committee in charge: Professor Richard Duran, Chair Professor Diana Arya Professor William Robinson September 2017 The dissertation of Kathleen Anne Swift is approved. ................................................................................................................................ Diana Arya ................................................................................................................................ William Robinson ................................................................................................................................ Richard Duran, Committee Chair June 2017 A Web of Extended Metaphors in the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto of Aaron Swartz Copyright © 2017 by Kathleen Anne Swift iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the members of my committee for their advice and patience as I worked on gathering and analyzing the copious amounts of research necessary to -
The Social Internet: Frustrating, Enriching, but Not Lonely
Public Culture The Social Internet: Frustrating, Enriching, but Not Lonely Zeynep Tufekci The “lonely world of cyberspace” is a curious example of the vast gap that every so often opens between an idea’s popularity among pun- dits (considerable) and its basis in empirical research (very little). In the past few years the New York Times has run multiple op- eds suggesting social media or our phones are eroding human connections (for example, Cohen 2012; Egan 2013; Foer 2013; Franzen 2011; Fredrickson 2013); the Atlantic ran a cover story ask- ing, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” (Marche 2012); Massachusetts Institute of Technology psychologist Sherry Turkle wrote a book titled Alone Together (2011) that is partly about social media damaging “real world” human connections; and Pope Benedict warned youngsters not to replace their real friends with virtual ones (Benedict XVI 2011, 2009). In the meantime, a growing pile of empirical research shows that, if anything, the relationship runs the other way — Internet users are more social and less isolated. This curious “Freddy Krueger effect” — the inability of data to kill the endur- ing attractiveness of a theme — deserves unpacking that goes beyond an indication of its lack of empirical basis and appeal to moral panic. The Internet’s integration into sociality happened with such impressive speed that it is at once mundane, all around us, and yet also barely examined. In addition, the Internet’s qualitative and subjective impacts are harder to measure than simple indicators like use or penetration. Further, a technology as multifaceted and complex as the Internet not only will not produce a “main effect” — a single, homogeneous impact that applies to everyone and every type of use — but it may well have different consequences at systemic, individual, and historical scales. -
T H E N E T D E L U S Io N E V G E N Y M O R O Zo V
2/C PMS (BLACK + 809) SOFT-TOUCH MATTE LAMINATION + SPOT GLOSS THE NET DELUSION EVGENY MOROZOV POLITICS/TECHNOLOGY $27.95/$35.50 CAN “ Evgeny Morozov is wonderfully knowledgeable about the Internet—he seems “THE REVOLUTION WILL BE TWITTERED!” to have studied every use of it, or every political use, in every country in the declared journalist Andrew Sullivan after world (and to have read all the posts). And he is wonderfully sophisticated and protests erupted in Iran in June 2009. Yet for tough-minded about politics. This is a rare combination, and it makes for a all the talk about the democratizing power powerful argument against the latest versions of technological romanticism. of the Internet, regimes in Iran and China His book should be required reading for every political activist who hopes to are as stable and repressive as ever. In fact, ALEXANDER KRSTEVSKI ALEXANDER change the world on the Internet.” —MICHAEL WALZER, Institute for authoritarian governments are effectively Advanced Study, Princeton using the Internet to suppress free speech, EVGENY MOROZOV hone their surveillance techniques, dissem- is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy “ Evgeny Morozov has produced a rich survey of recent history that reminds us inate cutting-edge propaganda, and pacify and Boston Review and a Schwartz Fellow that everybody wants connectivity but also varying degrees of control over their populations with digital entertain- at the New American Foundation. Morozov content, and that connectivity on its own is a very poor predictor of political ment. Could the recent Western obsession is currently also a visiting scholar at Stan- pluralism... -