Thursday, September 21, 2000
5:00 - 7:00 p.m.

Bartos Theater
MIT Media Lab
20 Ames Street

A new generation of public intellectuals has emerged, at home with digital media, engaged in cultural and political debates central to the new communities of cyberspace. These new public intellectuals found their voices in the zines that appeared in the 1970s and 1980s, expressing the values of various subcultural communities. These new intellectuals have created Webzines such as Slashdot and Bad Subjects, which reach a global audience and enable immediate responses to political and cultural issues.

How Slashdot (Dys)functions
Jeff Bates will discuss the evolution of his geek-oriented Webzine Slashdot.

The New Public Sphere: Pillar of Democracy or Tower of Babel?
Stephen Duncombe will argue that new technologies of reproduction and dissemination -- from Xerox machines to the Internet -- have blown open the gates of public discourse, as ordinary people become information producers as well as consumers. But is this creating a new cadre of public intellectuals? Or is the sheer volume of commentators and their diverse concerns creating a public sphere that is Balkanized into interest ghettoes: a world where everyone speaks but no one listens? Choosing examples from the zine world as well as the Web, Duncombe will discuss the political ramifications of the explosion in do-it-yourself media.

Beyond the Valley of the Silicon: Cultural Debris and Revolt on the Internet
Annalee Newitz will offer part autobiography and part cultural analysis in her exploration of the ironic and neurotic relationship between the booming new economy and subversive communication on the Internet.

public intellectuals: the cyberspace generation    summary