Richard Barbrook

ISEA Bio(s) Available:

• ISEA2004

  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). 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 influence of the gift economy on the Net. He is presently working on a book – ‘Imaginary Futures’ – which is about how ideas from the 1960s have shaped our contemporary conception of the information society. A selection of Richard’s writings are available on the Hypermedia Research Centre’s website: hrc.wmin.ac.uk