Digital Power and Politics

information within centralization and surveillance

By Max Smith
 Centralization

• What is it?

– “the concentration of administrative power in a

central government, authority, etc.”
(Dictionary.com)
 Middle Age Centralization
• Itinerant kingship
=
stressful & inefficient

To

• Bureaucratic rule
=
documentation and accountability

The term, "bureaucracy", basically means "rule by office." It derives from the
French word "bureau", meaning office or desk, and the Greek word "kratein",
meaning "to rule."
 Internet Centralization
• Your relationship to servers.
– ip addresses
(“AdExchanger.com forum”)

• Networks (e.g. CU’s campus network)

– Identikey identities
– VPN
• An Internet DMV?
(Internet Po: “Can I see you license and registration please?”)
 What do you think?
What is Government’s role on the internet?
– Legislation, etc.
– “The EU took an active stance on IP addresses in
2008, declaring IP addresses as personally identifiable
information (PII). ”
Panoptics
and
the Internet
 Foucault’s Panopticon
“It is polyvalent in its applications; it serves to reform prisoners, but
also to treat patients, to instruct schoolchildren, to confine the
insane, to supervise workers, to put beggars and idlers to work.”
“It is a type of location of bodies in space, of distribution of individuals in relation to one
another, of hierarchical organization, of disposition of centres and channels of power, of
definition of the instruments and modes of intervention of power, which can be
implemented in hospitals, workshops, schools, prisons.”
 Facebook Amuck
• The internet is considered to be largely de-centralized,
but is it already becoming a panoptic tool?

• How does social networking affect how we are

politically informed?

• When is information personal, and when is it public?

• Should corporations be regulated? (if not, what are

their limitations?)
 What would optimal internet
legislations/regulation look like for You