October 21, 2009  “On the periphery of real wars, we see a virtual battlespace flourishing,” James Der Derian reported in a keynote videoconferenced from the Watson Institute to the Australian National University’s recent conference on War 2.0: Political Violence & New Media. Der Derian proceeded to run through a list of related phenomena – from blogs full of conspiratorial rants, to digihadist hip hop tirades, swarms of activists using new media both for and against the war, private contractors mining data and conducting surveillance, and individuals super-empowered by the connectivity, simultaneity, and ubiquity of the infosphere in which we live, while that sphere itself fractalizes and Balkanizes.

He also presented what he characterized as a “buzz-cut-style” short video of the years of research captured in his book Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment-Network (Routledge, January 2009). Watch the keynote session below.