It is valuable to investigate the often tacit politics of a wide variety of emergent movements around technology. I have mentioned the community networking movement, which has extraordinary potential as both a political movement in its own right and as an infrastructure for democratic activity more generally. Another movement is the world of discourse in MUD’s and IRC and the like … As emergent forms of group activity and social imagination, they are inherently political at some level, in some way. Most likely they are internally diverse, in which case we can set about articulating points of agreement and disagreement, shaping agendas that afford shared action, and get about the hard work of building democracy.
Predictor: Agre, Phil
Prediction, in context:The August 1994 issue of The Network Observer, an online newsletter, carries an article titled “The New Politics of Technology in the U.S.” by Phil Agre, TNO editor, who was, at the time, working in the Department of Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. Agre writes:”It is valuable to investigate the often tacit politics of a wide variety of emergent movements around technology. I have mentioned the community networking movement, which has extraordinary potential as both a political movement in its own right and as an infrastructure for democratic activity more generally. Another movement is the world of discourse in MUD’s and IRC and the like, in which individual and group identities are explored and reconfigured on a daily basis in incorporeal ‘places’ and ‘spaces’ whose construction routinely encodes elaborate commentaries upon the places and spaces of the rest of social life. Yet another is the explosion of affinity groups organized around mailing lists, from people living with a common illness to people sharing a particular professional specialty … As emergent forms of group activity and social imagination, they are inherently political at some level, in some way. Most likely they are internally diverse, in which case we can set about articulating points of agreement and disagreement, shaping agendas that afford shared action, and get about the hard work of building democracy.”
Biography:Phillip E. Agre was an associate professor of information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has been the author of research studies on the Internet. He edited The Network Observer, an online newsletter on Internet issues. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Global Relationships/Politics
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: The Network Observer
Title, headline, chapter name: The New Politics of Technology in the U.S.
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/tno/april-1994.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne