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| Sally Wyatt |
| ASCoR - University of Amsterdam & |
| Virtual Knowledge Studio, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences |
| Politics and the internet: What can we learn from science and technology studies? |
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The development and use of the internet raises many interesting political questions. There are some obvious ones like what it means for the practice of traditional politics as well as for new forms of political mobilisation and action. There are less obvious issues surrounding the politics about the internet, including issues of regulation, censorship and security. The least obvious but perhaps most important questions are about the politics of the internet itself - its design has serious consequences for who is able to use the internet and for what.
In this lecture, I will draw upon my own work and that of others to look at all three types of questions mentioned above, but with particular emphasis on the latter. The second part of the lecture will be organised around seven more or less well-known aphorisms from (constructivist) social studies of science and technology (STS) as well as from media studies, cultural studies or sociology. These may be useful for thinking about how to analyse new technologies, such as the internet.I have deliberately chosen 'old' aphorisms in order to relativise not only the hype around the internet and new technology more generally, but also to relativise the hype around the claims to newness found in social science literature about the emergence of an information or network society and the development of cyberculture. The aphorisms themselves will be revealed during the lecture, but will include discussion of technological choices, the role of users (and non-users), path dependency, reflexivity and technological determinism. |
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