Imaginary Futures | Dr. Richard Barbrook | Virtual Futures 2011
Channel: Virtual Futures
Date: 2012-02-02

Dr. Richard Barbrook - Imaginary Futures

Virtual Futures
University of Warwick, 18-19 June 2011
http://VirtualFutures.co.uk

Richard Barbrook is a senior lecturer in the Department of Politics & IR at the University of Westminster.

In the early 1980s, Richard was involved with pirate and community radio broadcasting, including helping to set up the multi-lingual Spectrum Radio station in London. Having worked on media regulation within the EU at a research institute at the University of Westminster, much of his material was published in his 1995 Media Freedom book. In the same year, Richard became the coordinator of the Hypermedia Research Centre at Westminster's Media School and was the first course leader of its MA in Hypermedia Studies. Working with Andy Cameron, he wrote The Californian Ideology which was a pioneering critique of the neo-liberal politics of Wired magazine. His other important writings about the Net include The Hi-Tech Gift Economy, Cyber-communism, The Regulation of Liberty and The Class of the New.

In 2007, Richard moved to Westminster's Politics & IR department and published his study of the political and ideological role of the prophecies of artificial intelligence and the information society: Imaginary Futures: from thinking machines to the global village. In 2008, Imaginary Futures was awarded the MEA's Marshall McLuhan prize for outstanding book in the field of media ecology. Translations of the book have also been published in Brazil and Poland. Richard is currently writing a book about the political and military lessons of Guy Debord's The Game of War.