Information, Images and Inequality

SOC 410

Review sheet for first exam

The exam will consist of 6 out of 10 short answers, worth 10 points each and one essay out of 4 worth 40 points.

Core issues from Castells: The Internet Galaxy, pp. 1-136 and 188-206

• Differerences between networks and bureaucracies.  The strengths and weaknesses of networks.

• Development of the internet – the history ARPANET, Unix, Stallman and GNU, Linus Torvald and LINUX, Berners-Lee and hypertext, html, and the world-wide web – culture and the structure of the web

• Culture of the internet: techno-elites and the meritocratic ideal; hackers and open source coding – combine joy of creativity with recognition – hackers vs. crackers – cyberpunks; vitual communitarians; entrepreneurs.  The tension between the meritocratic ideal of the hacker culture and the commercial interest of the entrepreneurs, i.e. Bill Gates’ “open letter to hobbyists.”

• E-business and network enterprises

-- characterized by internal decentralization and temporary, horizontal networks for flexible systems of cooperation

-- scalability, interactivity, management of flexibility, branding and customization

• “glocal” culture and the “culture of real virtuality” – simulacra

• multimedia and the internet: current technological limits, the tension between commercial interests and open access; the tension between interactivity and broadcasted – one-way flow- transmission.

Core issues from Stone: The War of Desire and Technology…, pp. 123-164 and 1-32

• technosociality, cyborg habitat and criteria for real interactivity: interruptibility, graceful degradation, limited look ahead, no default, impression of an infinite database.

-- what happened at Atari – clash between the “techno-elites” pursuit of interactivity and the commercial interest.

-- Wellspring as the “digital sweatshop,”  making games for the market.

• The self, cyborgs and communication technology as prosthesis

Core issues from Vaidhyanathan, Copyrights and Copywrongs all.

• Challenging the idea of intellectual property

• Forms of intellectual property – patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets

• Jefferson’s vision of ideas as property.

• The goal of copyrights and patent law as stated in the Consitution.

• Twain’s role in altering copyright legislation

• The tension between the idea and the expression

• Fair use, public domain and plagiarism in regard to copyright

• Performance rights, mechanical rights, composition rights

• Encryption and contractual requirements to protect from reproduction – pseudocopyright, paracopyright and metacopyright

Core issues from Barlow: “Selling wine without bottles: The economy of mind on the global net”

• Digitized property

• Jefferson on ideas as property -- “information wants to be free” Stewart Brand

• Information is an activity, information is a life form, information is a relationship.

Additional key ideas:

• Michael Shapiro and the tension between exchange systems and sovereignty systems

• Differences between “industrial” commodities and “information” commodities

Industrial Commodities—each item is produced:

1. value is depleted by use

2. size of market is limited by productive capacity

3. cost compensates for labor embedded in the produce.

4. product obtains value through the application of labor.

5. price of product is roughly commensurate with the labor embedded in the object.

Information Commodities – individual items can be reproduced:

1. value is not depleted by use; value can be reproduced at little or no cost.

    value often erodes due to rapid obsolescence

2. size of market is not limited by productive capacity.

3. cost is compensation for design

4. product retains value through a political process that creates scarcity and exclusivity

5. price of product bears little relation to the labor embedded in it.

• Thomas’s view of hackers as cybercriminals

• Hypothesis: information ownership and the growing inequality over the last 30 years.

Note: individual chapters in Gauntlett can be helpful as examples or to illustrate concepts discussed and presented from other sources.