TASK:
1. WRITE UP NOTES FROM EPISODE 1
2. ANSWER 2 QUESTIONS FROM BELOW
( approx 500 words for each answer)
1. Name some of the evidence from the programme that supports
Aleks Krotoski’s statements that the Internet is ““The seemingly unstoppable levelling of power, culture and values that is having such an impact on our daily lives” and is the “ultimate empowering tool.”
2. Do you agree with Al Gore’s statement that the Internet “…….is an empowering tool which has more potential than any other that human civilisation has ever developed.” Why?
3. It is stated in the programme that the web was created by “social misfits who wanted to go on to being misfits” and Andrew Keen comments that “The most concrete legacy of the counterculture libertarian dream was the Internet.”
How does the early history of the development of the web (Tim Berners Lee, The Well etc.) fit in with these the above two statements?
4. Who put forward the notion of the web as a medium for buying and selling into direct conflict with the notion, supported by Tim Berners-Lee and the people in the Well, that the internet was a medium for sharing? Do you think he was right to be so angry when it appeared that people were sharing his software?
5. Aleks also comments the web is “challenging business models and clashes with our innate desire to profit and control. How does the case of the Napster sharing music v. Music industry add to this debate?
6. The programme comments “The web was deliberately structured in a way to resist authority because it was designed to give all users equal access. ….. It is the ultimate leveller. No wonder it was set on a collision course with social order and hierarchy. ” What is the evidence for this?”
7. Consider this statement “The web is setting information free – it sets us all free. ……… ”
It comes from the Declaration of the Independence 
of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow, who is an ex-member of The Grateful Dead (a 60s American rock band) and a cyberlibertarian political acitivst. He was an early member of The Well and helped to start the influential Electronic Frontier Foundation.
of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow, who is an ex-member of The Grateful Dead (a 60s American rock band) and a cyberlibertarian political acitivst. He was an early member of The Well and helped to start the influential Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Does this statement still hold true?
8. Is John Perry Barlow more accurate when he states “You can control what they believe if you can control what they have access to. If you can control what they can know the rest is a very simple matter?”
After all Lee Siegel comments that the “Old hierarchies still there. They are just scrambling to adapt themselves to this new situation.”
- Do you think he is right?
- How does the case of the Huffington Post support this viewpoint?
- Do you know of any other evidence to support this view?
There is some additional summary of the programme on the following powerpoint: The Virtual Revolution
9. Make notes from David Chapman’s comments in the Open University links below about the tension the tension running thoughout the series between techno-utopianism and techno-dystopianism.
