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public talk by Darin Barney

I’ve met Prof Barney recently - first in Ottawa at the Parliamentary conference and then at the Gilberto Gill - Media@McGill thing. He was really exciting to talk with. I think I’m going to attend this lecture even though it’s a redo of his Hart House lecture last year and I’ve already had the chance to read and discuss it.

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One Nation Under Google: Citizenship in the Technological Republic

A public talk by Professor Darin Barney
Canada Research Chair in Technology & Citizenship, McGill University.

Friday, March 14, 2008
Arts W-215, 853 Sherbrooke Street West, McGill University
18h30, free

Does more technology equal more freedom? While the nuts and bolts of technological progress - computers, cellphones, internet access wired and wireless - become accessible to more and more people, the promise of increased civic engagement enabled by these gadgets seems to have eluded our wired society. There’s a lot more to technology, and to democracy, than wires and buttons, and it has a much deeper affect on our lives than simply being tools we can use well or badly.

In Dr. Barney’s words, “technology is, at once, irretrievably political and consistently depoliticizing. It is at the centre of this contradiction that the prospects for citizenship in the midst of technology lie.” Presenting a range of examples from YouTube to the hidden networks of food production and government bureaucracy, Barney contests the common notion that technology necessarily leads to enhanced freedom and improved civic engagement. One Nation Under Google examines the challenge of citizenship in a technological society, and asks whether the demands of technology are taking over the practice of democracy.

Presented in collaboration with CKUT 90.3FM

About Professor Darin Barney
Darin Barney is a professor of Communication Studies at McGill University where he holds a Canada Research Chair in Technology and Citizenship. Working at the crossroads of social sciences and the humanities, Barney’s interdisciplinary research focuses on the relationship between technology and citizenship.He is the author of The Network Society (Polity Press 2004), Communication Technology: The Canadian Democratic Audit (UBC Press 2005), and Prometheus Wired: The Hope for Democracy in the Age of Network Technology (UBC/University of Chicago Press/University of New South Wales Press 2000).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 8:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

12 Responses to “public talk by Darin Barney”

MK Says:
March 5th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Mike,
Ever since you left Facebook, I keenly feel the fact that you are no longer receiving my fascinating status updates, and so to make a connection between us I have resorted to leaving nonsense comments on your blog.
Like this one.
xMK
P.S. Darin Barney seems like a swell chap, but what’s going on with you? This used to be the Mike L. gossip rag… at least tell us about your contact dancing class (cluck, cluck)
Michael Lenczner Says:
March 5th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Your brilliant status updates were the one thing that tempted me to stay with FB. That and the the fact that it was really nice to have a local calendaring app with my community’s events on it.

I’m less into the “get your red-hot Mlenc news right here” type blogging. So sorry :-\ You’ll have to come back to montreal and hang with me.

anyways - no good gossip recently (that’s the real reason).
mir Says:
March 6th, 2008 at 3:55 am
I have to concur with Mike MK, we had dinner the other evening and his gossip was stone-cold. It was like, “uh I got this really neat 3 colour pen”.
Michael Lenczner Says:
March 6th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
That’s right! THREE!!!

yeich…. I need a life.
Steven Mansour Says:
March 8th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Three colors? IN THE SAME PEN?!?
Steven Mansour Says:
March 8th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
This is madness.
alison Says:
March 10th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
i heard there is no gossip because all that has been happening in montreal for the last 8 months is snow.

after that much whiteness, i bet 3 color pens are even more exciting than contact dancing . . .

(or maybe MK it’s just that we’re not there ;-). See you soon in london-town for some gossip. bring your pens.)
mir Says:
March 11th, 2008 at 12:13 am
I for one, no longer refer to it as winter, I call it the hellmouth.

As in;

I went out into the hellmouth to try and buy a three colour pen in which one of the colours was a dark violet and one was black. I had no preference as to the third.

The shopkeepers all informed me that they were sold out of goth-pens so I returned home through the hellmouth.

It just feels more accurate to use that phrasing.
Michael Lenczner Says:
March 11th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
okay you freaks. go skulk around someone else’s blog. You’re driving down the property value.

;-)
Steven Mansour Says:
March 13th, 2008 at 1:10 am
“okay you freaks. go skulk around someone else’s blog. You’re driving down the property value.”

Just wait until I start selling crack from the corner of one of your older, seedier posts.
mir Says:
March 13th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Even the fact that you got Udell on one of your upper stories can’t erase the fact that you got us chumps wearing red suspenders, talking smack, and hosing down our sidewalks on your ground floor.

Suck it up Mike, you can’t gentrify, we’re your roots.

Steven, don’t sell crack.
Michael Lenczner Says:
March 14th, 2008 at 12:19 am
9..1..1..
“….. Hello, Officer McWhitey? Theres a dark-skinned man selling crack outside my house. And I’m pretty sure that woman is his accomplice. I heard them talking about hating capitalism, too.”

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public talk by Darin Barney

12 Responses to “public talk by Darin Barney”

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