machine-envy

This fortnight’s article for openDemocracy continues on a theme:

“My column a fortnight ago (”Claiming our digital rights”, 26 September 2006) sparked a train of thought that hasn’t stopped chugging through my brain since. The piece was a celebration of the imminent victory over that most unsuitable of technologies, digital rights management, but sounded a note of caution: that the victory appeared to have been won on consumer-interest grounds rather than those of democratic principle. Two cheers, said the column, but let’s save the third for when rights in the networked age are won for citizens, not shoppers.

“Colin Crouch, Klaus Eder, and Damian Tambini have a phrase for what I’ve been fretting about these last two weeks: the “marketisation of citizenship”. It is a neat phrase for a bundle of restrictions that increasingly impact on my everyday life in the public arena…”

Read the rest here.