RAW Blog
Digital native: The View from My Bubble
- December 05, 2016
In the digital world, the privileged have the power to deny a devastating crisis for the poor.
Read more →Digital native: The Voices in Our Heads
- November 22, 2016
What if our phones were to go silent? Would you be able to deal with the silence?
Read more →Digital Native: The Future is Now
- October 17, 2016
The digital is not just an addition but the new norm in our lives, and it might not be all good. There used to be a popular joke among technology geeks when Bluetooth arrived on our mobile devices — everything becomes better with Bluetooth.
Read more →Love in the Time of Tinder
- October 17, 2016
Service providers and information aggregators mine our information and share it in ways that we cannot imagine.
Read more →Mobilizing Online Consensus: Net Neutrality and the India Subreddit
- September 27, 2016
This essay by Sujeet George is part of the 'Studying Internet in India' series. The author offers a preliminary gesture towards understanding reddit’s usage and breadth in the Indian context. Through an analysis of the “India” subreddit and examining the manner and context in which information and ideas are shared, proposed, and debunked, the paper aspires to formulate a methodology for interrogating sites like reddit that offer the possibilities of social mediation, even as users maintain a limited amount of privacy. At the same time, to what extent can such news aggregator sites direct the ways in which opinions and news flows change course as a true marker of information generation responding to user inputs.
Read more →How Green is the Internet? The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
- September 23, 2016
This essay by Aishwarya Panicker is part of the 'Studying Internet in India' series. The author draws attention to the fact that there is little data, debate, analysis, and examination of the environmental impact of the internet, which is true especially for India. She explores four central issue areas. First, as the third highest country in terms of internet use, what is the current environmental impact of internet usage in India? Second, are there any regulatory provisions that give prescriptive measures to data centres and providers? Third, do any global standards exist in this regard and finally, what future steps can be taken (by the government, civil society and individuals) to address this?
Read more →Quarter Life Crisis: The World Wide Web turns 25 this year
- September 09, 2016
With the unexplained ban on websites, the state seems to have stopped caring for the digital rights of its citizens.
Read more →The Curious Incidents on Matrimonial Websites in India
- August 30, 2016
This essay by Abhimanyu Roy is part of the 'Studying Internet in India' series. The author explores how the curious interplays between the arranged marriage market in India the rise of matrimonial sites such as Jeevansathi.com and Shaadi.com. The gravity of the impact that such web-based services have on the lives of users is substantially greater than most other everyday web-enabled transactions, such as an Uber ride or a Foodpanda order. From outright fraud to online harassment, newspaper back pages are filled with nightmare stories that begin on a matrimonial website. So much so that the Indian government has set up a panel to regulate matrimonial sites. The essay analyses the role of matrimonial websites in modern day India, and the challenges this awkward amalgamation of the internet and love gives rise to.
Read more →Do I Want to Say Happy B’day?
- August 22, 2016
When it comes to greeting friends on their birthdays, social media prompts are a great reminder. So why does an online message leave us cold?
Read more →101 Ways of Starting an ISP:* No. 53 - Conversation, Content and Weird Fiction
- August 03, 2016
This essay by Surfatial is part of the 'Studying Internet in India' series. It argues that the internet has created a space for philosophical questioning among contemporary Indian participants which can develop further, despite common assertions that online spaces are largely uncivil and abusive. It actively explores how anonymous and pseudonymous content production may offer a method for exploring and expressing the internet in India, with a certain degree of freedom, and how spam-like methods may prove effective in puncturing filter bubbles.
Read more →