Rebecca MacKinnon to Speak at American University

On Monday, October 6, author and activist Rebecca MacKinnon is coming to American University to lead a conversation on Internet governance, privacy, free speech, and journalism in the digital age. 

MacKinnon is the director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at the New America Foundation. After establishing her journalism career at CNN, she co-founded the citizen media network Global Voices with Ethan Zuckerman in 2005. More recently, she released her book "Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom." 

"Consent of the Networked," MacKinnon told the Atlantic when the book came out in 2012, argues that

we cannot assume that the Internet will evolve automatically in a direction that is going to be compatible with democracy. It depends on how the technology is structured, governed, and used. Governments and corporations are working actively to shape the Internet to fit their own needs. The most insidious situations arise when both government and corporations combine their efforts to exercise power over the same people at the same time, in largely unconstrained and unaccountable ways. This is why I argue that if we the people do not wake up and fight for the protection of our own rights and interests on the Internet, we should not be surprised to wake up one day to find that they have been programmed, legislated, and sold away. 

MacKinnon will be speaking at 2:30pm in room 101 of the McKinley Building at American University. Visit the event page for more information.