Richard Barbrook
University of Westminster, Social Sciences, Faculty Member
- Labour activist and political theorist.edit
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At the end of the twentieth century, the long predicted convergence of the media, computing, and telecommunications into hypermedia is finally happening. Once again, capitalism's relentless drive to diversify and intensify the... more
At the end of the twentieth century, the long predicted convergence of the media, computing, and telecommunications into hypermedia is finally happening. Once again, capitalism's relentless drive to diversify and intensify the creative powers of human labour is on the ...
This paper is included in the First Monday Special Issue #3: Internet banking, e-money, and Internet gift economies, published in December 2005. Special Issue editor Mark A. Fox asked authors to submit additional comments regarding their... more
This paper is included in the First Monday Special Issue #3: Internet banking, e-money, and Internet gift economies, published in December 2005. Special Issue editor Mark A. Fox asked authors to submit additional comments regarding their articles. How has the hi-tech gift economy evolved since 1998, when the paper was written? This article was a product of its time. When I originally wrote The Hi-Tech Gift Economy, the Net was still a novelty for most people even in the developed world. Nearly 8 years later, using this technology is no longer something special. This means that it is impossible to understand my article without remembering the bizarre moment in the late-1990s when so many pundits believed that the Net had almost magical powers. Led by Wired, dotcom boosters were claiming that the Net was creating the free market only found up to then in neo-classical economics textbooks. Inspired by post-modernist gurus, new media activists were convinced that humanity would soon libe...
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I was a founding member of the Cybersalon team. We were based at the ICA and run monthly events from 1999 to 2003. Genesis. In March 1960 J.C.R. Licklider envisioned a network of computers connected together where human and machine would... more
I was a founding member of the Cybersalon team. We were based at the ICA and run monthly events from 1999 to 2003. Genesis. In March 1960 J.C.R. Licklider envisioned a network of computers connected together where human and machine would work together in intimate association. He prophesised that this era would be intellectually the most creative and exiting in the history of mankind. We are living in this time. Our group is a collective of people emerging from the human/computer interface who are engaged in digital practices and theories. As artists, practitioners and academics we have joined together to create the Cybersalon: live gatherings in the image of the new digital medium of the Net
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During the Sixties, the New Left created a new form of radical politics: anarcho-communism. Above all, the Situationists and similar groups believed that the tribal gift economy proved that individuals could successfully live together... more
During the Sixties, the New Left created a new form of radical politics: anarcho-communism. Above all, the Situationists and similar groups believed that the tribal gift economy proved that individuals could successfully live together without needing either the state or the market. From May 1968 to the late Nineties, this utopian vision of anarchocommunism has inspired community media and DIY culture activists. Within the universities, the gift economy already was the primary method of socialising labour. From its earliest days, the technical structure and social mores of the Net has ignored intellectual property. Although the system has expanded far beyond the university, the self-interest of Net users perpetuates this hi-tech gift economy. As an everyday activity, users circulate free information as e-mail, on listservs, in newsgroups, within on-line conferences and through Web sites. As shown by the Apache and Linux programs, the hi-tech gift economy is even at the forefront of s...
Fifty international contributors from various arts fields reflect on the meaning of the avant garde today.
Research Interests: Sociology of Culture, Music, Aesthetics, Art History, Theatre Studies, and 15 moreArt, Architecture, Art Theory, Literature, Contemporary Art, Avant-garde writing, Cultural Theory, Cinema, Art Theory and Politics, Visual Arts, Avant garde Poetry, European Avant Garde, Avant Garde, Avant Garde Music, and Avant Garde Cinema
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Winner of the MEA's 2008 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology.'A compelling, authoritative, and painstakingly documented narrative, Imaginary Futures traces the emergence of the computer era in... more
Winner of the MEA's 2008 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology.'A compelling, authoritative, and painstakingly documented narrative, Imaginary Futures traces the emergence of the computer era in the context of desperately competing ideologies, economics, and empires. This is a work of passionate and persuasive scholarship by a contemporary social theorist at the top of his game.'Douglas Rushkoff, author, Coercion, Media Virus, Get Back in the Box.'Imaginary Futures gives insight into how the dominant utopias of today were shaped in the time of the Cold War and served the ideological needs of the elites. While the Cold War West had a much better present, it was the Soviet East which had a vision of the future. The invention of a Western utopia became an important factor in the struggle for global power.'Boris Kagarlitsky, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Comparative Political Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences -- The future is now--Richard Barbrook argues that, at the height of the Cold War, the Americans invented a truly revolutionary tool: the Internet. Yet, for all of its libertarian potential, hi-tech science soon became a tool of geopolitical dominance. The rest of the world was expected to follow America's path into the networked future. Today, we're still told that the Net is creating the information society. Barbrook shows how we can reclaim its revolutionary purpose: how the DIY ethic of the internet can help people shape information technologies in their own interest and reinvent their own, improved visions of the future.
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Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron’s The Californian Ideology, originally published in 1995 by Mute magazine and the nettime mailinglist, is the iconic text of the first wave of Net criticism. The internet might have fundamentally changed... more
Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron’s The Californian Ideology, originally published in 1995 by Mute magazine and the nettime mailinglist, is the iconic text of the first wave of Net criticism. The internet might have fundamentally changed in the last two decades, but their demolition of the neoliberal orthodoxies of Silicon Valley remains shocking and provocative. They question the cult of the dot-com entrepreneur, challenging the theory of technological determinism and refuting the myths of American history. Denounced as the work of ‘looney lefties’ by Silicon Valley’s boosters when it first appeared, The Californian Ideology has since been vindicated by the corporate take-over of the Net and the exposure of the NSA’s mass surveillance programmes. Published in 1999 at the peak of the dot-com bubble, Richard Barbrook’s Cyber-Communism offers an alternative vision of the shape of things to come, inspired by Marshall McLuhan’s paradoxical ‘thought probes’. With the Californian Ideology...
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The liberty of the individual the liberty of the nation the liberty of the party the liberty of the many parties the liberty of the president the liberty of the cooperative the liberty of the corporation the liberty of the regulators.
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Learning in the Age of Digital Reason brings 16 in-depth dialogues between Petar Jandrić and leading scholars and practitioners in diverse fields of history, philosophy, media theory, education, practice, activism, and arts. The book... more
Learning in the Age of Digital Reason brings 16 in-depth dialogues between Petar Jandrić and leading scholars and practitioners in diverse fields of history, philosophy, media theory, education, practice, activism, and arts. The book creates a postdisciplinary snapshot of our reality, and the ways we experience that reality, at the moment here and now. lt historicises our current views on human learning, and experiments with collective knowledge making and the relationships between theory and practice. lt stands firmly at the side of the weak and the oppressed, and aims at critical emancipation. Learning in the Age of Digital Reason is playful and serious. lt addresses important issues of our times and avoids the omnipresent (academic) sin of pretentiousness, thus making an important statement: research and education can be sexy. Interlocutors presented in the book (in order of appearance): Larry Cuban, Andrew Feenberg, Michael Adrian Peters, Fred Turner, Richard Barbrook, McKenzie Wark, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, Siân Bayne, Howard Rheingold, Astra Taylor, Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak, Ana Kuzmanić, Paul Levinson, Kathy Rae Huffman, Ana Peraica, Dmitry Vilensky (Chto Delat?), Christine Sinclair, and Hamish Macleod.
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¼ is the impact of the ¼ information revolution on capitalism not the ultimate exempli® cation of ¼ Marx’s thesis that: `at a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces come into con¯ ict with the ...
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One point we have in common with the Third World is the tradition of talking. You have a lot of communities around the world, they don't know how to read and write, but they know how to talk and they have experience of talking to... more
One point we have in common with the Third World is the tradition of talking. You have a lot of communities around the world, they don't know how to read and write, but they know how to talk and they have experience of talking to transmit their experiences. I don't know the way ...
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At the beginning of the 21st century, the dream of artificial intelligence is deeply embedded within the modern imagination. From childhood onwards, people in the developed world are told that computers will one day be able to reason ...
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Why should radicals be interested in playing wargames? Surely the Left can have no interest in such militarist fantasies? Yet, Guy Debord – the leader of the Situationist International – placed such importance on his invention of The Game... more
Why should radicals be interested in playing wargames? Surely the Left can have no interest in such militarist fantasies? Yet, Guy Debord – the leader of the Situationist International – placed such importance on his invention of The Game of War that he described it as the most significant of his accomplishments.
Intrigued by this claim, a multinational group of artists, activists and academics formed Class Wargames to investigate the political and strategic lessons that could be learnt from playing his ludic experiment. While the ideas of the Situationists continue to be highly influential in the development of subversive art and politics, relatively little attention has been paid to their strategic orientation.
Determined to correct this deficiency, Class Wargames is committed to exploring how Debord used the metaphor of the Napoleonic battlefield to propagate a Situationist analysis of modern society. Inspired by his example, its members have also hacked other military simulations: H.G. Wells’ Little Wars; Chris Peers’ Reds versus Reds and Richard Borg’s Commands & Colors: Napoleonics. Playing wargames is not a diversion from politics: it is the training ground of tomorrow’s cybernetic communist insurgents.
Fusing together historical research on avant-garde artists, political revolutionaries and military theorists with narratives of five years of public performances, Class Wargames provides a strategic and tactical manual for overthrowing the economic, political and ideological hierarchies of early-21st century neoliberal capitalism. The knowledge required to create a truly human civilisation is there to be discovered on the game board!
Intrigued by this claim, a multinational group of artists, activists and academics formed Class Wargames to investigate the political and strategic lessons that could be learnt from playing his ludic experiment. While the ideas of the Situationists continue to be highly influential in the development of subversive art and politics, relatively little attention has been paid to their strategic orientation.
Determined to correct this deficiency, Class Wargames is committed to exploring how Debord used the metaphor of the Napoleonic battlefield to propagate a Situationist analysis of modern society. Inspired by his example, its members have also hacked other military simulations: H.G. Wells’ Little Wars; Chris Peers’ Reds versus Reds and Richard Borg’s Commands & Colors: Napoleonics. Playing wargames is not a diversion from politics: it is the training ground of tomorrow’s cybernetic communist insurgents.
Fusing together historical research on avant-garde artists, political revolutionaries and military theorists with narratives of five years of public performances, Class Wargames provides a strategic and tactical manual for overthrowing the economic, political and ideological hierarchies of early-21st century neoliberal capitalism. The knowledge required to create a truly human civilisation is there to be discovered on the game board!
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For decades, experts and entrepreneurs have predicted that the emerging information society would realise the most libertarian interpretations of the First Amendment. They have never doubted the eventual triumph of their hi-tech vision:... more
For decades, experts and entrepreneurs have predicted that the emerging information society would realise the most libertarian interpretations of the First Amendment. They have never doubted the eventual triumph of their hi-tech vision: one virtual marketplace for trading information ...
Un spectre hante le réseau : le spectre du communisme. Miroir de l'exubérance des nouveaux médias, ce spectre prend deux formes distinctes : d'une part l'appropriation théorique du communisme stalinien, et d'autre part... more
Un spectre hante le réseau : le spectre du communisme. Miroir de l'exubérance des nouveaux médias, ce spectre prend deux formes distinctes : d'une part l'appropriation théorique du communisme stalinien, et d'autre part la ...
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On 12 July 1989, the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) announced that the Greater London FM licence would go to London Jazz Radio (LJR). This franchise was allocated as part of the expansion of commercial radio in Britain. As in... more
On 12 July 1989, the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) announced that the Greater London FM licence would go to London Jazz Radio (LJR). This franchise was allocated as part of the expansion of commercial radio in Britain. As in most other countries, the British state owns ...
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One point we have in common with the Third World is the tradition of talking. You have a lot of communities around the world, they don't know how to read and write, but they know how to talk and they have experience of talking to... more
One point we have in common with the Third World is the tradition of talking. You have a lot of communities around the world, they don't know how to read and write, but they know how to talk and they have experience of talking to transmit their experiences. I don't know the way ...
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CYBER-DARWINISM This analysis is hardly new. Herbert Spencer argued for a similar form of 'Social Darwinism'. For him, the laissez-faire economic policies of late-nineteenth-century Britain reflected the 'tooth and... more
CYBER-DARWINISM This analysis is hardly new. Herbert Spencer argued for a similar form of 'Social Darwinism'. For him, the laissez-faire economic policies of late-nineteenth-century Britain reflected the 'tooth and claw' struggle for survival within the natural world. In his book, ...
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For decades, experts and entrepreneurs have predicted that the emerging information society would realise the most libertarian interpretations of the First Amendment. They have never doubted the eventual triumph of their hi-tech vision:... more
For decades, experts and entrepreneurs have predicted that the emerging information society would realise the most libertarian interpretations of the First Amendment. They have never doubted the eventual triumph of their hi-tech vision: one virtual marketplace for trading information ...
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During the late-1990s dotcom boom, experts claimed that the net was a global electronic mar-ketplace where every piece of information would be a commodity. Yet, one of the most striking features of the net is the ubiquity of its hi-tech... more
During the late-1990s dotcom boom, experts claimed that the net was a global electronic mar-ketplace where every piece of information would be a commodity. Yet, one of the most striking features of the net is the ubiquity of its hi-tech version of the gift economy. Information is ...
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204 Media, Culture and Society had been imported from Jacobin France during the struggle against the enforced political union of Britain and Ireland. For secular republicans, the democratic state could only be created through the consent... more
204 Media, Culture and Society had been imported from Jacobin France during the struggle against the enforced political union of Britain and Ireland. For secular republicans, the democratic state could only be created through the consent of its individual citizens. Therefore, the ...