2. My University.com, My Government.com
Is the Internet Really a Blessing for
Democracy?
Cass R. Sunstein,
Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Harvard
Law School
18th Annual University of Michigan Senate’s
Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on
Academic and Intellectual Freedom
Thursday, December 4, 2008, 4:00 p.m.
Honigman Auditorium,
100 Hutchins Hall,
UM Law School.
3. SI 182 (Winter 09)
(Pre-req for Informatics concentration)
Building Applications for Information Environments
Prof. Paul Resnick
4. Final review session
Session 1
Friday, 6 - 8.30pm
260, Dennison
Session II
Monday, 6 - 8.30pm
260, Dennison
5. • What is ‘Cyberculture’?
• Some definitions
• Why ‘Cyberculture’?
• Impact of ‘Cyberculture’?
8. Impact of cyberculture
• Changes in technologies
• Identity (link to last week’s lecture on
privacy)
• New forms of sociability
• The Daily Me
• P2P democracy
9. Chronology of Computer-Mediated
Communication (CMC) Tech
Phase 1: Making the virtual
UseNet - Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) - Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs)
Phase 1I: Moving the real into the virtual
IM - email - videoconferencing - groupware
Phase III: Integrating the virtual and the real
SMS - Ubiquitous mobile computing - location awareness - mobile
broadband
13. Chronology of Computer-Mediated
Communication (CMC) Tech
Phase 1: Making the virtual
UseNet - Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) - Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs)
Phase 1I: Moving the real into the virtual
IM - email - videoconferencing - groupware
Phase III: Integrating the virtual and the real
SMS - Ubiquitous mobile computing - location awareness - mobile
broadband
15. • Changing technologies tend to move in
particular trajectories over time
• Recurrent themes surfaced by these
technologies - virtuality, cybernetics
• These changing technologies greatly impact
the ways in which we relate, communicate,
and socialize with each other - shapes
culture?
16. So what are the wider implications of these
changing technologies?
25. • The use of technology can mask our
identities as well as heighten them.
• There are profound implications and
possibilities with the ability to manipulate
and present one’s identity online.
26. “online communities are like the crowd outside the
building with the guy on the ledge ... They can
enable suicide or help prevent it.”
27. Does the use of technology result in new
forms of sociality or does it just replicate our
existing social relations?
33. “Most youth use online networks to extend the
friendships that they navigate in the familiar
contexts of school, religious organizations, sports, and
other local activities. ”
34.
35. • The structure of online social relations is
determined by the properties and dynamics
of networks
• Networked sociality can both result in new
forms of online relationships or extend
existing ones - dependent on technologies
used and the context of that use.
36. The Daily Me
- Nicholas Negroponte, 1995
Emerging technologies and the growing power of
consumers to filter what they see
39. “... the sheer volume of options, and the power to
customize, are sharply diminishing the social role of the
general interest intermediary.”
- Sunstein, 2000
40. P2P Democracy -
Cyberbalkanization?
“The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S.
Election: Divided They Blog”
- Adamic & Glance, 2005
42. • The power to filter information allows us
to cope with the information overload that
the Internet brings.
• However, this power has drawbacks as well
- creates an information space that is
maybe too homogenous.
43. Summing up Cyberculture
• Study of cyberculture still an emergent field
• Complex relationship between technology
and our use of it.
• Changing cultural landscape as a result of
this complex relationship
44.
45. Are we able to exist seamlessly between the real
and virtual worlds?
