[governance] Re: [ciresearchers] Dan Schiller: The Communications Revolution

[Garth Graham]

On 17-Dec-09, at 2:23 AM, Michael Gurstein wrote:
> I'm not sure about all the details but an interesting brief global  
> overview of the political economy of ICTs
>
> http://www.counterpunch.org/schiller12162009.html
>
> MBG
>
> The Communications Revolution
>
> It's a Wired World
>
> By DAN SCHILLER
>
> Profit-seeking investment flooded into ICTs and the idea that we  
> were transitioning into a benign information society was the new  
> common sense. .....  and, so far, the leading role has been taken  
> not by popular social movements but by capital. Oppositional  
> impulses have only occasionally become organized at a politically  
> meaningful level.
>

I think it's short-sighted to state that, "Oppositional impulses have  
only occasionally become organized at a politically meaningful  
level."  For example, consider this expression of another facet of  
the same gem:

> Because informational power has altered the materials,  
> rules,institutions, ideas, and symbols that are the means by which  
> other forms of power are exercised, a new type of system, the  
> informational state, has emerged. Information policy is thus key  
> both to understanding just how this change of state has come about  
> and to analyzing how the informational state exercises power  
> domestically and around the world. Information policy is the  
> proprioceptive organ of the nation-state, the means by which it  
> senses itself and, therefore, the medium through which all other  
> decision-making, public or private, takes place. ...... The study  
> of information policy as a coherent body of law and regulation  
> introduces the meso-level and lets us answer the real question:  
> What are we doing to ourselves?  (Sandra Braman.  Change of State:  
> Information, Policy, and Power. MIT Press, February 2007. pp. 4-5.  
> <http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262025973chap1.pdf> )

Meaningful opposition at the political level has already occurred,  
just not among us "voters!"

GG


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20091217/e3a62a4f/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance