IMAGINARY FUTURES - A presentation by Richard Barbrook

>
> Saturday April 23
> The Thing at Postmasters
> 459 West 19th Street
> 6:30pm
>
> 'Imaginary Futures.'
> A presentation by Richard Barbrook
>
> Respondent: Trebor Scholz
>
>
> In the modern world, our understanding of the present is often shaped
> by
> sci-fi fantasies about what is to come.
> Ironically, the most influential of these visions of the future are
> already decades old. We are already living in the times when they were
> supposed to have come true. In his presentations, Richard Barbrook will
> analyze the origins and evolution of three imaginary futures:
> artificial
> intelligence; the information society; and the gift culture. By showing
> that the future is what it used to be, he will argue that it is time
> for
> us to invent new futures.
>
> Dr. Richard Barbrook was educated at Cambridge, Essex and Kent
> universities. During the early-1980s, he was involved in pirate and
> community radio broadcasting. He helped to set up Spectrum Radio, a
> multi-lingual station operating in London, and published extensively on
> radio issues. In the late-1980s and early-1990s, Richard worked for a
> research institute at the University of Westminster on media regulation
> within the EU. Some of this research was later published in 'Media
> Freedom: the contradictions of communications in the age of
> modernity' (Pluto Press, London 1995). Richard is currently
> researcher-in-residence at the Institute for Distributed Creativity
> (http://distributedcreativity.org).
>
> Since the mid-1990s, Richard has been coordinator of the Hypermedia
> Research Centre at the University of Westminster and is course leader
> of
> its MA in Hypermedia Studies. In collaboration with Andy Cameron, he
> wrote 'The Californian Ideology' which was a pioneering critique of the
> neo-liberal politics of 'Wired' magazine. In the last few years,
> Richard
> has written a series of articles exploring the impact of the sharing of
> information over the Net, including 'The Hi-Tech Gift Economy' and
> 'Cyber-communism'. He is presently working on a book - 'Imaginary
> Futures'