User:Wwestlin/The Politics Of Virtual Realities

The Politics of Virtual Realities is one of the first undergraduate courses in the US to investigate the political, legal, and normative implications of the Internet for liberal democracy. The course is taught at Middlebury College by political scientist Dr. Allison Stanger.

Development
Throughout the approximately three-year process of developing the course and seeking out relevant materials, Stanger met with representatives of Microsoft, Google, and other major players in the private and public spheres whose work touched on the relationship between the Internet and politics.

Course Content
How has technology changed our politics? Are those changes all for the good? In this course we will explore the political, legal, and normative implications of the Internet for liberal democracy. We start with the US Constitution and explore arguments that it cannot by itself prevent the Internet from becoming a domain of manipulation rather than of freedom. How can we uphold the ideals of liberty and equality? And, since cyberspace has no country, whose laws should govern it? Cases will include President Obama's campaign and governance strategies, Google's activities abroad, cybersecurity, virtual war, and the WikiLeaks controversy.

The Politics of Virtual Realities deals with the ways in which technology has changed American Democracy. The course first deals with the philosophical and political underpinnings of American democracy through analysis of the Federalist Papers and writings by John Stuart Mill. These readings deal with the meaning of Free speech and Privacy in early America, and with the philosophical ideals which drive them. The course then moves on to deal with the evolution of technology since the founding, in particular the development of the Internet, and the ways in which these technologies have changed American ideas about democracy. The course discusses the ideas of Lawrence Lessig and Cass Sunstein with regards to privacy, free speech, and the direction of control on the internet. After dealing with the more philosophical ramifications of the Internet, the course moves to talking about the practical implications of the Internet on the formation of social groups, dealing primarily with Clay Shirky's work Here Comes Everybody. The course then narrows in on the effects of particular technologies on Democracy and the American consumer, in particular Cloud computing, Wikipedia, and Facebook. Finally, the course deals with Cybersecurity and security incidents such as WikiLeaks.

Success
The Politics of Virtual Realities spring 2011 student evaluations were 4.88 out of 5 possible points. Spring 2012 were 5.0 out of 5 possible points.

Readings
The course involved students reading the following books:


 * Lawrence Lessig, Code 2.0 (New York: Basic Books, 2006)
 * Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game (Tor Science Fiction, 1994)
 * Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet -- and How to Stop It (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009)
 * Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (Penguin, 2009)
 * Cass Sunstein, Republic.com 2.0 (Princeton, 2009)
 * Debora Spar, Ruling the Waves: From the Compass to the Internet, A History of Business and Politics Along the Technological Frontier (New York: Harvest, 2003)

Instructor

 * Main article: Allison Stanger

Allison Katherine Stanger (born 1 September 1960) is a political scientist and professor at Middlebury College. In addition to her pedagogical work, she is also the founding director of Middlebury's Rohatyn Center for International Affairs. Since October 2009, she has been working as a part-time consultant to the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff.

Stanger graduated from Ball State University in 1982 with a B.S. in Actuarial Science/Mathematics. In 1983, she obtained a Graduate Diploma in Economics from the London School of Economics. In 1988 she earned an A.M. in Soviet Union Regional Studies from Harvard University where she completed her PhD in Political Science 1991.

In 1990-91, Stanger was a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Between 1995 and 1998, she was a Visiting Scholar at Prague's Charles University. Stanger has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 2004.

Links

 * Middlebury College
 * Stanger on Middlebury College's "Find an Expert" service
 * Online version of Lessig's Code 2.0
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