Prometheus wired, the hope for democracy in the age of network technology

grantor: University of TorontoTwo 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 win fundamentally alter the terms of political life in any society where this technology presides. The second claim asserts that our existing and traditional reservoir of political thought offers few resources for thinking about and understanding this technology and the transformation it promises. In this dissertation, I reject the second claim in order to more fully investigate the first. I assert 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 a range of thinkers who have devoted attention to the relationship between technology and politics, I argue that claims regarding the inherently revolutionary and democratic character of digital networks are overstated. The dissertation begins with an examination of the claims being made about network technology, and situates these in the context of the history of technology. Chapter II constructs an approach to technology and politics by reviewing the contributions to the philosophy of technology made by Plato, Aristotle, Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger and George Grant. Chapter III gives an account of the technical development of digital computers and networks. Following this, a series of chapters brings the philosophical approach elaborated in Chapter II to bear on various aspects of the politics of network technology. Chapters IV and V consider the political economy of network technology. Chapter VI examines the ontological consequences of an existence mediated by digital instruments. Chapter VII investigates the impact proliferating network technologies have on political sovereignty. The dissertation concludes that the economic, ontological, and political properties of networks suggest they are unlikely to be the technology of a fundamental democratic revolution.Ph.D