Siva Vaidhyanathan - Digital Hegemony and Digital Sovereignty
Speaker
Siva Vaidhyanathan
University of Virginia
Host
Crystal Lee
Abstract:
Through the first 30 years of the development of the internet, we were promised a global “network of networks” that would offer free speech, democratic empowerment, and the spread of democracy. Leaders from Ronald Reagan to Margaret Thatcher to Barack Obama all promised that technology would unite and enlighten the world. Somehow it all went differently, and now we live in a world traversed by networks dominated by hegemons like the United States, Russia, and China. In this talk, Professor Siva Vaidhyanathan will explain the idea of “digital sovereignty,” the ways that a nation state creates and enforces its own sense of what should be allowed and watched on digital networks, resisting digital hegemony through strategies of digital sovereingty. There are many models of “digital sovereignty,” each offering a distinct set of value and opportunities, as well as methods of oppression. This talk will focus on how the Russian invasion of Ukraine exposes the dangers and necessities of digital sovereignty.
Bio:
Siva Vaidhyanathan is the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (2018), Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction (2017), The Googlization of Everything -- and Why We Should Worry (2011), Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity ( 2001), and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (2004). He also co-edited (with Carolyn Thomas) the collection, Rewiring the Nation: The Place of Technology in American Studies (2007). Vaidhyanathan is a columnist for The Guardian and has written for many other periodicals, including The New York Times, Wired, Bloomberg View, American Scholar, Reason, Dissent, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times Magazine, Slate.com, BookForum, Columbia Journalism Review, Washington Post, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The New York Times Book Review, and The Nation. He is a frequent contributor to public radio programs. And he has appeared on news programs on BBC, CNN, NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, ABC, and on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central. In 2015 he was portrayed on stage at the Public Theater in a play called Privacy. After five years as a professional journalist, he earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Vaidhyanathan has also taught at Wesleyan University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Columbia University, New York University, McMaster University, and the University of Amsterdam. He is a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities and a Faculty Associate of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. He was born and raised in Buffalo, New York and resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.
This talk will also be streamed over Zoom: https://mit.zoom.us/j/95568018736.
Through the first 30 years of the development of the internet, we were promised a global “network of networks” that would offer free speech, democratic empowerment, and the spread of democracy. Leaders from Ronald Reagan to Margaret Thatcher to Barack Obama all promised that technology would unite and enlighten the world. Somehow it all went differently, and now we live in a world traversed by networks dominated by hegemons like the United States, Russia, and China. In this talk, Professor Siva Vaidhyanathan will explain the idea of “digital sovereignty,” the ways that a nation state creates and enforces its own sense of what should be allowed and watched on digital networks, resisting digital hegemony through strategies of digital sovereingty. There are many models of “digital sovereignty,” each offering a distinct set of value and opportunities, as well as methods of oppression. This talk will focus on how the Russian invasion of Ukraine exposes the dangers and necessities of digital sovereignty.
Bio:
Siva Vaidhyanathan is the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (2018), Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction (2017), The Googlization of Everything -- and Why We Should Worry (2011), Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity ( 2001), and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (2004). He also co-edited (with Carolyn Thomas) the collection, Rewiring the Nation: The Place of Technology in American Studies (2007). Vaidhyanathan is a columnist for The Guardian and has written for many other periodicals, including The New York Times, Wired, Bloomberg View, American Scholar, Reason, Dissent, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times Magazine, Slate.com, BookForum, Columbia Journalism Review, Washington Post, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The New York Times Book Review, and The Nation. He is a frequent contributor to public radio programs. And he has appeared on news programs on BBC, CNN, NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, ABC, and on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central. In 2015 he was portrayed on stage at the Public Theater in a play called Privacy. After five years as a professional journalist, he earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Vaidhyanathan has also taught at Wesleyan University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Columbia University, New York University, McMaster University, and the University of Amsterdam. He is a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities and a Faculty Associate of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. He was born and raised in Buffalo, New York and resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.
This talk will also be streamed over Zoom: https://mit.zoom.us/j/95568018736.