China Keywords: Information Sovereignty
In the fifth webinar in the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute's “China Keywords” series, Eric Hendriks talks with Johannes Thumfart about the topic of information sovereignty (xìnxī zhǔquán, 信息主权). Chinese academics were early pioneers of “information sovereignty” or “network/cyber sovereignty,” while China’s Great Firewall today epitomizes the internet’s postliberal multi-polarization. The discourses of digital sovereignty are of urgent importance to political thought inside and outside China, as Thumfart shows in The Liberal Internet in the Postliberal Era: Digital Sovereignty, Private Government, and Practices of Neutralization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). Thumfart joins us to discuss his findings and theorizations, followed by a response from Mark Stahlman.
Johannes Thumfart works at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies and security studies, political philosophy, international law, and intellectual history. He is a fellow at the research group Law, Science, Technology, and Society (LSTS) at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His research has been published in the Journal of Global Security Studies, Global Studies Quarterly, Grotiana, and AI and Ethics. He has held academic positions in Berlin, Paris, Mexico-City, and Cincinnati.
Mark D. Stahlman is a biologist, computer architect, and ex–Wall Street technology strategist. He is the President of the not-for-profit Center for the Study of Digital Life (CSDL, digitallife.center) and co-founder of its educational project Trivium University (TrivU, trivium.university). He is also CEO of Exogenous, Inc. (EXO, exogenousinc.com), a strategic risk analysis group, and on the editorial staff of its Substack publication, EXO: Digital Bomb!. He is the godson of cybernetics founder Norbert Wiener, and he considers CSDL to be a continuation of Wiener’s “Genius Project.”
Moderating the webinar is Dutch sociologist Eric Hendriks, the director of TPPI's China Initiative, streaming live from Budapest, where he is a Danube Institute fellow.
The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute is pleased to present this webinar in cooperation with the Danube Institute.
For more information about TPPI's China Initiative, visit our website.
Topics: China Initiative • Webinars