The object of Wikileaks is to dismantle the conspiracies that, according to its founder, rule the world. But what is a conspiracy and are you part of one? According to Assange, it’s possible to be a member of conspiracy without even knowing that you are. This week, we look at Julian Assange’s political philosophy and his view of the world as a network of conspiracies.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2011/3145329.htm
This week Jaron Lanier — composer, performer, computer scientist, philosopher and pioneer of virtual reality — gets seriously sceptical about somebody a lot of people think of as a hero: Julian Assange. The Internet, according to Lanier, was influenced in equal degrees by 1960s romanticism and cold war paranoia. If the political world becomes a mirror of the Internet, then the world will be restructured around secretive digital power centres surrounded by a sea of chaotic, underachieving openness. WikiLeaks is such a centre. It’s the world of nerd supremacy.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2011/3139205.htm
Jacques Marie Emile Lacan, who died in 1981, was a French psychoanalyst and follower of Freud, but his influence has extended far beyond the boundaries of psychiatry: to philosophy, critical theory, literary theory, sociology, feminist theory, film theory and clinical psychoanalysis. And all this despite a literary style of forbidding complexity. This week, we take courage and try to penetrate his thought.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2011/3324385.htm
A.C. Grayling outlines Bertrand Russell’s proudest achievement, his theory of descriptions in this episode of the philosophy podcast Philosophy Bites.
http://philosophybites.com/2009/12/ac-grayling-on-bertrand-russells-theory-of-descriptions.html