The Realpolitik of the virtual state . . . by this I mean the way that decision-making for public policy about the Internet is dictated not by transcendent ideals but by practical, proximate interests and autonomous methods of control 

Traditional institutions of knowledge like government agencies, state universities, and public libraries often seem to be in conflict about changes created by an information revolution they claim to champion.  Part of this can be explained by the fact that individual public institutions can contain many different cultures and that these cultures reflect particular ideologies about concepts like "freedom" or "honesty" that are in turn shaped by factors like national, linguistic, or theological identity, societal attitudes about ownership and authorship, and cultural categories of gender, race, and class.

Although digital communication is increasingly central to our cultural and civic lives, it is a hybrid form of discourse that challenges certain long-standing norms. As a result policy makers who once spoke optimistically of the Internet in terms of creating public infrastructure, such as "digital libraries" or "information superhighways" now focus on the use of the distributed electronic networks by particular kinds of "monsters," such as terrorists or child molesters. I am arguing that we are going through a period of profound political reaction when it comes to everyday digital practices, such as videogame play, file-sharing, and the use of social networking sites. Furthermore, I argue that a rhetoric about infrastructure-building has now been supplanted by a rhetoric about policing criminality.

Anyone interested in 21st century rhetoric, politics, hermeneutics, or epistemology should be interested in these conflicts between different stakeholders about how to manage the presentation of and access to public information via the Internet.

I am interested in theories about conflicts in social networks that are described by Karl Marx, Jürgen Habermas, Gregory Bateson, and Manuel Castells.

I am also interested in applying the concept of governmentality from Michel Foucault to electronic artifacts and edifices such as government websites, military-funded videogames, or national digital libraries. 

I also like to look at nuts-and-bolts rhetoric and public policy work by Ian Bogost, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Lawrence Lessig, and Eric S. Raymond (along with other champions of the "open source" movement).