When reading rushkoff’s article I found some of this later comments really interesting about the emails he received asking about p2p networks and the power of the government over the internet. What I found most intriguing (or ridiculous) was his answer to “could a government really just “turn off” the net? Yes. It’s true.” Obviously there has been a recent example of this with the Egyptian revolution however I was ignorant enough to think that it would never happen in Australia. I guess its true that ignorance is bliss.
Micropolitics seems to me to be more of a collaborative democratic network that lets people participate and voice their own opinions. Rushkoff’s article investigates the peer to peer networking within a contemporary society. He argues that nowadays the internet doesn’t fully allow people to express their own opinion, mainly due to restrictions by laws set up by the government. He also makes a point that society in its entirety should stop all communication with and surrounding the internet in order to force its shut down. He says this because he believes that we have begun to become controlled and even possessed by the internet and thus the major corporations and banks of the world. “we are witnessing the potential of a peer-to-peer networking become overshadowed by the hierarchies of the status quo” (2011). He also suggests that “we accept the fact that the internet is built on a fundamentally hierarchical architecture, surrender it to the corporations who run it, and consider building something else for ourselves”
The most latest example that we can see regarding to this, as I mentioned before, could be the corporate-government banishment of Wikileaks, as well as the shutting off its networks in attempt to stop a revolution in Egypt. Maybe we can say p2p network is still existing. A p2p network protected only by laws – that exists but for the grace of those in charge – but is this really a p2p network? It is a hierarchical network allowing itself to be used in a p2p fashion, when convenient to those currently in charge.
Rushkoff, Douglas (2011) ‘The Evolution Will Be Socialized’, Shareable: Science and Tech, Viewed on 2nd of May 2011 http://shareable.net/blog/the-evolution-will-be-socialized
