Exploring New Configurations of Network Politics

In continuation to some points concerning virality, network culture, evil media and spam as important "objects" or themes to understand network politics, I shall post this;
 

Definitely one of the most debated issues during the past weeks has been Net Neutrality. First the speculation about a possible Google and Verizon deal to come up with a solution to guarantee quicker delivery for contentproviders who can pay -- then the actual proposal for a policy for the future Internet.
 

With media archaeological methods and interest of knowledge, early forms of media art-activism can be rewired as part of contemporary concerns.
 

Politics of networks are to a large extent politics of security. However, security should not be seen in terms of ontological negativity, but as a mode of production; a production of worlds, of networks of standardized actions, tracked patterns, followed and guarded subjectivities. Security is aesthetic - security is aesthetico-political in the Guattarian sense.
 

This is the catalogue entry for my book, @ is for Activism: Dissent, Resistance and Rebellion in a Digital Culture, should be in the Pluto Press Autumn catalogue, just the slight matter of finishing it in the next week...! 

@ is For Activism examines the transformation of politics in and through digital media (including digital television, online social networking, mobile computing). 

Management of life -- in terms of processes, decisions and consequences -- is probably an emblematic part of life in post-industrial societies. Increasingly, such management does not take place only on the level individuality, but dividuality -- i.e. managing the data clouds, traces, and avataric transpositions of subjectivity in online environments. This is the context in which J.

Anglia Ruskin and ArcDigital had the pleasure of hosting (with the support from CoDE-institute) yesterday a guest talk by professor Richard Grusin. Co-author of Remediation, Grusin has since been a key name in terms of media theory of the various logics of mediations that form the core of media cultural aesthetics and politics. With affinities to the field of media archaeology, the notion of remediation became a key way to understand that creative use of past media as a framework for the hypermediacy of new media.

This just to flag an interesting research project worth checking out. It revolves around similar themes as ours, working through network platforms/CMS to support new forms of collaboration (and collaboration as a method), and focusing on the topic of rearticulations of politics. A short blurb from their website:
 

As Joss already flagged in his blog post, the new RFC postings by Professors Terranova and Thacker offer intriguing perspectives to network politics.