Hardt and Negri’s Information Empire: A Critical Response

Hardt and Negri’s Empire contains dystopian gestures toward information technology. In this essay I examine these aspects of their important work, without ignoring their more positive understandings of the topic. I hope to sustain three arguments about networked digital information humachines that counter the dystopian thesis: (1) They are an evolving, unavoidable and central aspect of globalization; (2) they contain countless dangers and afford considerable resources for highly dangerous prevailing agglomerations of power; (3) they offer serious points of resistance to those powers and may serve as a base for developing auspicious, decentralized, multicultural global networks. These theses are mutually related, sustainable only together.