>> LECTURE & PANEL PARTICIPATION:
THU.25.10.2007 @ DOM IM BERG

Lecture: "Imaginary Futures"

Dr. Richard Barbrook will be talking about how the 20th century dreams of electronic democracy, virtual communities and cybernetic communism can contribute to the practical task of building of libertarian social democracy in the 21st century.

Dr. Richard Barbrook is the author of Pluto Press’s Spring 2007 release Imaginary Futures and has also written a number of highly influential essays on the clash between commerce and cooperation within the Internet, including ‘The Hi-Tech Gift Economy’, ‘Cyber-communism’, ‘The Regulation of Liberty’ and, with Andy Cameron, ‘The Californian Ideology’, published in 1995 it was a controversial critique of the neo-liberal politics of Wired magazine.

He has recently published a book on the social groups shaping the information society, The Class of the New (2006). During the early 1980s, he was involved in pirate and community radio broadcasting and helped establish Spectrum Radio, a multi-lingual station in London, and published extensively on radio issues. Between 1995 and 2005, he coordinated the pioneering Hypermedia Research Centre at the University of Westminster and was course leader of its MA in Hypermedia Studies, the first of its kind on offer in Britain. Educated at Cambridge, Essex and Kent Universities, Barbrook is currently a Senior Lecturer of Politics at the University of Westminster.

“There is an urban guerrilla feeling and tone to this book with an ambitious message to point out. It is fantastically radical, because it reminds us of what could have been and what may still happen…Many Net writers adopt an a-political stance, but Richard shows it is the opposite – and that the most important political issues of our time are tied into the Net.” –Simon Schaffer, Cambridge University Professor and BBC Presenter

>> www.imaginaryfutures.net