Synopses & Reviews
There was never such a thing as true freedom of speech. In order to speak freely you had to have access to a printing press, a newspaper, a radio or a TV station. And everywhere you had to get past the editors. Only an elite ever did: the articulate and well-behaved representatives of ordinary people. But those ordinary people hardly, if ever, had a chance to speak publicly and freely.
Until now. The age of blogging has begun. The internet revolution has given us all a chance to be irreverent, blasphemous and ungrammatical in public. We can reveal secrets, blow whistles, spill beans, or just make stuff up.
The old elites don't like it. In fact, they really really hate it. Blogs are commonly shut down, and bloggers are silenced, reprimanded and fired from their jobs. Suddenly modern liberal society reveals a repressive face that few of us knew existed.
Should we behave ourselves? Should we fall silent? Absolutely not! Let's call them on their hypocrisy. Let's demand that modern liberal society lives by the principles it claims to embrace. Bloggers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your gags.
Review
'Fun to read. It makes a strong case for the democratic power of blogging and the Internet. A form of empowerment for the voiceless.' —Ronald Eyerman, Professor of Sociology, Yale University
Review
'Erik has an engaging style of writing and I thoroughly recommend that anyone interested in anything more than the superficies of blogging read this book.' —The Blog of Dave Cole
Review
'Fun to read. It makes a strong case for the democratic power of blogging and the Internet. A form of empowerment for the voiceless.'
Ronald Eyerman, Professor of Sociology, Yale University
Review
'Anyone eager to understand how cyberspace has changed our possibilities and how it often remains trapped in grim social contexts would do well to read Erik Ringmar's ‘A Bloggers Manifesto’.' —Norman Solomon, Author of ‘War Made Easy’
Synopsis
There was never such a thing as true freedom of speech. In the past, in order to speak freely you had to have access to a printing press, a newspaper, a radio or a TV station. Until now. The age of blogging has begun. The internet revolution has given us all a chance to be irreverent, blasphemous and ungrammatical in public. We can reveal secrets, blow whistles, spill beans or just make stuff up. The old elites don't like it. In fact, they really hate it. Should we fall silent? Absolutely not! Let's demand that modern liberal society lives by the principles it claims to embrace. Bloggers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your gags.
Synopsis
An expansive and captivating interrogation of free speech in the modern world, exploring the limitations of the digital age.
About the Author
Erik Ringmar is Professor at the National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. He is the author of Interest, Identity & Action (CUP, 2007) and Surviving Capitalism: How We Learned to Live with the Market and Remained Almost Human (Anthem, 2005), as well as many academic articles in the fields of history, international politics and sociology. He received a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University in 1993, and between 1995 and 2007 he taught in the Government Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He lives deep in the Taiwanese mountains surrounded by gorgeous females (one wife, four daughters). He is a Linux user, a Bob Dylan fan, and likes to eat roast duck. His next book, The Fury of the Europeans, deals with imperialism in China in the nineteenth-century.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements; ‘Watch It Buddy, I’m Blogging This’; FAQ; Free Speech and Censorship at the LSE; Bloggers @ Uni.Edu; Bloggers @ Work; A Republic of Bloggers; Secrets of the Heart; A Blogger’s Manifesto; Bibliography