Prometheus Wired: The Hope for Democracy in the Age of Network Technology

Two claims have accompanied the emergence of digital computer networks as the definitive technology of late modernity. The first is that networks are the infrastructure of a democratic revolution that will fundamentally alter the terms of political life in any society where this technology presides. The second is that our existing and traditional reservoir of political thought offers few resources for thinking about and understanding the technology and the transformation it promises. In Prometheus Wired , Darin Barney rejects the second claim in order to investigate the first more fully. Barney maintains that the tradition of political thought provides us with considerable resources for specifying what is at stake in the politics of network technology. Drawing on five thinkers - Plato, Aristotle, Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger and George Grant - who have devoted attention to the relationship between technology and politics, he investigates the claims regarding the inherently revolutionary and democratic character of digital networks. Along the way, he provides fascinating insights into a wide range of issues including the digital economy, telework, electronic commerce, digital surveillance, privacy, community networks, teledemocracy and national sovereignty.