Week 8 summary

Week 8 summary.
It was hard to summarise this week's lecture content because there was so much of it and it wasn’t really explained because there was no lecture. In the tute however, Dan turned it around and gave us an overview of it which was very handy. The lecture was about Cyber politics and eDemocracy. Cyber is a Greek word that means to steer or navigate. It has ties to the word Cyberspace which is a mathematical realm or virtual world that is pure structure with no colour or tone. It involves computers and the internet and everything inside of them. Cyber politics is the politics and laws of Cyber space. eDemocracy is the use of political debate and campaigning on the internet. It’s no secret that politicians are using technology to promote themselves and persuade the public these days. An example is the America president appearing on David Lettermen:



Democracy is a political system that places the public first. It’s about free speech and equality. But what happens when the government wants to censor the means of the publics’ speech- the internet? I can understand why someone would want to shut down a site that promotes rape or has child pornography on it, but when does it stop? A free country, like Australia or the USA, could become a communist country like North Korea by censoring Digital technology that has opened a new world inside the world. People don’t need to march in a protest anymore; it’s as easy as going to a website. By censoring this land of free speech, politics is clashing with the internet and not in a good way.