1. Can we apply Lacan’s discussions of topology in psychoanalysis to social and cultural considerations?
2. "The time for petty politics is past: the very next century will bring with it the struggle for mastery over the whole earth" Friedrich Nietzsche 1886.
3. Once our authoritarian technics consolidates its powers, with the aid of new forms of mass control, its panoply of tranquilizers and sedatives and aphrodisiacs, could democracy in any form survive? -- Lewis Mumford
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8. It is this (arguably undemocratic) cultural context of globalisation with the decentralisation of power, mass mobilisation of peoples, demise of the public space (to name only a few features) that is drastically changing our lives. We hear the familiar utopian discourses for the information technologies contrasted with the harsh reality of systems of power and domination that squash these aspirations of democracy, freedom of speech and the betterment of all societies. As Howard Rheingold (2000, p. 298) warns, “Whoever gains the political edge on this technology will be able to use this technology to consolidate power”.
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10. As Lee Salter suggests, “if one rejects the view that the Internet can be thought of as a public sphere in itself, we might come to regard it as a supporting foundation upon which public spheres can be built”. So not to look at the Internet as a totalising space, but as a tool that can be utilised to re-establish community groups and reinvigorate the public sphere. This is what Habermas means by the lifeworld and communicative action.
11. Now we must politicize cyberspace by creating possibilities for new relations of force, that change the face of power, "showing its potentialities no less than its dangers". To say that cyberspace is just a residue of the late capitalist economy…or on the other hand, if we consider cyberspace as a flow of unrestricted desires or unconscious, where one can build a cyber-society without power and domination, we put ourselves into another trap: it implies that to "avoid reality of power" (which is bad and polluted) is to "get free" from it in virtual reality, which is good and innocent, that corresponds to libertarian utopia. Thus, sooner we understand that we cannot "avoid" power relations in cyberspace, sooner we start using it for our purposes. We must try and reduce the potential of domination implied in power relations, and employ it as a means for inventing new forms. Irina Aristarkhova http://www.heise.de/tp/english/pop/topic_3/4126/1.html#14
