Panoptic Pirates

Brazil is calling... The beautiful and warm country where I'll be confound to an internet free zone the next two weeks, not Terry Gilliam's dystopian movie of the same name. Though, who knows where we're heading. I'll be back just in time to see the whole shebang go up in flames November 2nd.

Some panoptic stuff to read in the meantime. From First Monday, a paper by Indhu rajagopal with Nis Bojin: Cons in the panopticon: Anti-globalization and cyber-piracy.

Here is the abstract:

Cons in the panopticon: Anti–globalization and cyber–piracy by Indhu Rajagopal with Nis BojinThis paper examines the paradox of the digital telecommunications revolution that augured the transcendence of big business and big government (Toffler, 1980), but also extended to the World Wide Web the processes of privatization and commodification. Instead of facilitating individuals to design, through interactive technology, their own media and directly express their will (Pool, 1983), the Internet has come to embody a panopticon that extends the reach of corporatists. We discuss the panopticon in the context of the globalizing cyber–technology, and argue that piracy is an anti–globalization movement.