Reformatting Politics: Information Technology and Global Civil Society

Three years ago i wrote an essay about how organizations which are created over the internet develop a different kind of internal structure and political form in comparison to offline or pre-networked organizations. The essay has been on this blog since then, Network Technology and Networked Organizations, but now it’s part of a book.

Reformatting Politics: Information Technology and Global Civil Society is a collection of essays edited by Jodi Dean, Jon W. Anderson, and Geert Lovink. It says it was published in May 2006, but i’m just getting my copy now. The editors have a blog, ReformattingPolitics.wordpress.com which i kind of followed when it came out, but apprently hasn’t been kept up much lately. I’m particularly excited to have my little essay printed along side Clay Shirky’s Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality and an introduction by Saskia Sassen.

Seeing the book in print reminds me of how much needs to be said about politics which is emerging from and made possible by a networked society.

This weekend i’m going down to Los Angeles to the Annenberg Center for Communication at USC to participate in a conference about “The Global Rise of Horizontal Communication: Social Networks, Civil Society and The Media”. I’m going to be on the business panel because of my work on odeo and in the podcasting space. If you’re around LA and want to hang out, or crash the conference, drop me a note, evan at protest dot net.