Centre for Internet and Society

(e)Governance by selection

nishant — 2008-11-03T20:37:21Z

The paper was presented at the Technology, Governance, Citizenship conference at the Indian Institute of Bangalore, and explores the processes of urban restructuration, positing of new digital citizenship, and the way in which technologised globalisation is implicated in the process. Looking at the instance of the Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project in Ahmedabad - a part of the Mega City project in India, the paper looks at the tropes of desire, ambition and aspiration as ways by which people relate and belong to circuits of technology but are often made invisible in the popular rhetoric of e-governance policies in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/nishant/governance%20by%20selection.pdf

Network as a Unit of CMC

nishant — 2009-07-07T06:09:00Z

The paper was presented at the Inter Asia Cultural Studies Conference, on a panel on the Digital DNA. With digital globalization producing cities, spaces, and identities heavily mediated by digital technologies, the Database becomes the interface through which the state regulates and controls cities and bodies to produce new conditions of citizenship. The Network links these databases to produce spaces, cities, bodies, and nation states in new transnational orbits. The Archive serves as a way through which belonging to these spaces and subjectivities become possible. As the Database adopts fluid architecture, mixing different set of informational archives to produce new identities, the Network emerges as an infinite, interminable set of legitimised objects, identities and spaces in new politics of power and economy.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/nishant/Network%20as%20a%20unit%20of%20CMC.pdf

Once Upon a Flash

nishant — 2008-11-03T20:25:38Z

The essay was published as a part of Sarai Annual Reader titled 'Turbulence' and explores the aesthetics, politics and form of the flashmobs and their manifestation in India. It looks at the potentials of the flashmob to produce turbulent physical spaces and identities and their encounter with legalities. The essay is also available at http://www.sarai.net/journal/06_pdf/03/04_nishant_shah.pdf

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/nishant/Sarai%20turbulence.pdf

The Curious Incident of the People at the Mall

nishant — 2008-12-14T12:13:09Z

The first flash mob in India, in 2003, though short-lived and quickly declared illegal, brought to fore the idea that technology is constructing new sites of defining public participation and citizenship rights, forcing the State to recognise them as political collectives. As India emerges as an ICT enabled emerging economy, new questions of citizenship, participatory politics, social networking, citizenship, and governance are being posed. In the telling of the story of the flash-mob, doing a historical review of technology and access, and doing a symptomatic reading of the subsequent events that followed the ban, this paper evaluates the different ways in which the techno-narratives of an ‘India Shining’ campaign of prosperity and economic growth, are accompanied by various spaces of political contestation, mobilisation and engagement that determine the new public spheres of exclusion, marked by the aesthetics of cyberspatial matrices and technology enabled conditions of governance.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/nishant/the%20curious%20incident%20of%20the%20people%20at%20the%20mall%20%20ACS%20Crossroads.pdf

Material Cyborgs; Asserted Boundaries

nishant — 2008-11-03T20:14:45Z

The essay was published in the European Journal of English Studies in a special issue on Multimedia Narratives. Emerging as an epistemological category with the rise of the Information and Communication Technologies, the cyborg leads to a complex set of negotiations about the production of a cyborg identity. This paper looks at the cyborg as a translator, to see the new mechanics of translation that come into play as the cyborg straddles multiple systems of making meaning and producing itself. Analysing the new social networking systems that have emerged in the last few years, the paper posits the cyborg as not only an author of translated texts but also as produced in the processes of translation. Focusing on one particular instance of the production of a cyborg identity, exploring the various players involved in the process of cyborgification and the material consequences of imagining the cyborg, the paper seeks to analyse the new incomprehensibility or illegalities that the cyborg, in its role as a translator, gets produced within.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/nishant/material%20cyborgs%20ejes.pdf

Subject To Technology

nishant — 2009-07-06T12:06:10Z

This paper is an attempt to examine the production of illegalities with reference to cyberspace, to make a symptomatic reading of new conditions within which citizenships are enacted, in the specific context of contemporary India. Looking at one incident each, of cyber-pornography and cyber-terrorism, the paper sets out to look at the State’s imagination of the digital domain, the positing of the ‘good’ cyber citizen, and the production of new relationships between the state and the subject. This essay explores the ambiguities, the dilemmas and the questions that arise when Citizens become Subjects, not only to the State but also to the technologies of the State. The paper first appeared in the Inter Asia Cultural Studies Journal.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/nishant/iacs%20article.pdf

Adrienne Shaw

nishant — 2010-11-18T04:26:06Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/home-images/adrienneshaw

Cao Ni Ma plushies

nishant — 2010-02-23T11:09:33Z

The Cao Ni Ma became so popular that plushies were sold in the markets.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/home-images/caonima

Sleepover cyber cafes in Shanghai

nishant — 2009-09-21T13:58:33Z

Shanghai has introduced the popular slee-over cafes, which give space to young users of the internet from midnight till dawn, at a very cheap rate, where they can access the net and also sleep when need be. This is very reminiscent of the cardboard cities in Tokyo which offer similar safe havens of temporary internet access.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/home-images/cybercafe

Cute mouse

nishant — 2009-09-21T13:44:52Z

China's IT markets show an increasing trend towards 'cute' gadgets aimed at younger users of technology.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/home-images/cutegadget

Billboard in Shanghai

nishant — 2009-09-21T13:37:30Z

A large LCD screen display as a part of architecture, at the East Nanjing Road, Shanghai

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/home-images/billboard

Shanghai Bund

nishant — 2009-09-17T12:02:25Z

A night view of the Bund in Shanghai

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/home-images/Bund

Aerial view

nishant — 2009-09-17T11:59:44Z

An aerial shot of shanghai in the night

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/home-images/shanghai

Jamillah Knowles

nishant — 2009-09-15T10:27:20Z

Jamillah Knowles from BBC is to make a public presentation on User Generated Content at the Centre for Internet and Society on the 26th of September 2009, at 16:00 hours.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/home-images/Jamillah

telephones

nishant — 2008-10-06T13:33:49Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/home-images/blue%20telephones.jpg