Centre for Internet and Society

Science, Technology and Society International Conference – Some Afterthoughts

tettner — 2015-05-14T12:22:08Z

An international conference on Science, Technology and Society was held at the Indore Christian College on March 12 and 13. It was sponsored by the Madhya Pradesh Council of Science and Technology, Bhopal and organized by the Indore Christian College. Samuel Tettner, Digital Natives Coordinator from the Centre for Internet and Society attended this conference and is sharing his experience about the workshop.

This past weekend I attended the “Science, Technology and Society International Conference”. The experience was one of learning, more so on the idiosyncrasies and social particularities of academic research than on the subject matters presented at the conference.

I arrived in Indore late on Friday night; my plan was to just check into the hotel and watch some Tom and Jerry before falling asleep. Then I met the conference organizer, the head of the Department of Sociology at the Indore Christian College, who informed me that I would be one of the key-note speakers the next day and that I had around 40 minutes of speaking time. My presentation at that time was around 20 minutes, so there was less Tom and Jerry than expected. This was the first indication of the interesting cultural experience I was about to have.

As I navigated the rather austere streets of Indore, I realized that this was really a modest city. Not in population of course, because Indian cities are huge compared to pretty much anywhere else in the world, but in its aspirations. I quickly noticed I was the only white person on the streets. “I made the conference international”, I thought, but I was wrong: There was one more white person, a middle aged man from Hungary named Laszlo who had come to present his research on population. And so as the first day of the conference rolled on, Laszlo and I got a taste of some bizarre reverence that continued throughout the two days. I can’t say for sure if it’s the result of some colonial baggage, the Indian tradition of treating guests like gods, may be a combination of both, the truth is that we got treated with way too much respect and an uncanny humility that was at times a bit embarrassing. Laszlo and I got to sit on the stage, next to the former Indian ambassador to Fiji, the head of the college, and other conference organizers.

The influence of Hinduism in more rural areas is very visible, on the stage next to the podium was a huge representation of Saraswati (goddess of wisdom) and there was a constant puja being offered to her. I thought of the academia, the temple of rationality, the house of reason, surely cannot co-exist with the world of religion. It can, if anyone in the world can make it happen, it’s the Indians. There were floral offerings, and introductions, and dedications. It seemed the organizers were very concerned with decorum and pomp and circumstance, pleasing local government officials (I recognized them because they were fat and everyone smiled at them awkwardly) and maintaining a tradition I got the feeling they didn’t understand properly. This whole exercise was ironic to me, as the building was almost in ruins, there was no proper ventilation, and the restrooms were a complete mess with no proper running water, and so on.

Finally I got to speak. I only got 15 minutes because one local man (maybe a friend of one of the local politicians) took his sweet time delivering his speech. This was definitely not my crowd. I was presenting a small paper I wrote called “iCare: Emergent Forms of Technology-mediated Activism” which was basically a summary of two of the findings of “Digital Natives with a Cause?”: One was a concept of activism which moves away from one time campaigns and looks at the practice of activism as an every-day activity, which can be valued without the need of an issue nor a community. The other was an observation about the language of activism and how it relates to different communities, through the use of voice, terminology, literary devices, and context. These were not the topics most attendees were familiar with, for example at the beginning of the talk I asked how many people in the audience used Facebook, and about 15 of out 150 people raised their hands. Relating to the issues of people who use technology incessantly was difficult for this crowd, who were not familiar with terms like “Slacktivism” and “Digital Native”, and who generally held the view that modern society and its overuse of technology were chipping away at traditional Hindu family values.

I tried my best in those 15 minutes, to illuminate some of the basic conceptual bases of the kind of work we’re doing with “Digital Natives with a Cause?”. They enjoyed the presentation, or at least I gathered that from several people who came up to me afterwards and told me so. Many people came up to me and asked me where I was from, and I started saying “USA” after a while, because “Venezuela” does exist in their mind, and “South America” just means the south of the United States.

I got to learn a lot about academic life in more rural traditional social spaces. I am generally completely ignorant of rural life, as I was born in the capital of Venezuela, and have in general lived in very cosmopolitan and metropolitan cities all my life. However what little slices of rural life I had encountered while backpacking through India, were concentrated in the work around the house and the fields. I was under the impression that research, that academic pursuit, and that critical thinking, were activities reserved for the urban, the middle class, the English speaking. Attending this conference opened my view a bit in this respect. People in rural areas have their own academic culture, with their own research interests, views and perspectives, and in most cases, reliable data backing them. Granted, in many cases these cultures are reflections or copies of what comes out of the cities, (and the west to a certain extend) but many times they are not, and getting to experience the complexity of it was a great experience. For example, there were many papers presented which dealt with the politics of caste, which is a concept I have barely come in contact with while being in Bangalore. A lot of people also talked about sustainable development, the impact of technology on agriculture, how new chemical fertilizers are changing the lives of farmers, and one teacher talked about the exiting potential uses for the novel technology called the podcast.

It was then that it dawned on me: “Science, Technology and Society” meant a completely different thing to my audience than it did to me. My presentation about how people conversing on Facebook can be viewed as activism must have seemed so alien and disconnected to them. I left the place very pensive about the whole experience. After taking pictures with some children, I went to a mall, and stood in front of a McDonalds and wondered how globalization is allowing for encounters like this one: A Venezuelan young man speaking at a local college in Indore, in the cultural and geographical centre of India. I’d like to think I was breaking barriers, participating in inter-cultural dialogue, exemplifying the exchange of intellectual and cultural capital that I hope takes places in the following years after our markets have gone global. Then again, I might not have been, I might have confirmed their perception of the well-dressed Westerner, who gracefully does them the favour of speaking at their college, and then talks in an accent about some random and obscure topic no one has any idea about. I’m still trying to decipher what happened. Eventually I went back to my hotel and experienced possibly the one and only truly cross-cultural and global thing in today’s world: Tom and Jerry.

See the agenda here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/science-technology-and-society-conference-in-indore-march-12-13

Lives suspended in the Web

praskrishna — 2011-04-01T15:45:39Z

When 14-year-old Manish sits behind his laptop, punching away at keys, his facial expressions reflecting his various online interactions, his parents stand in the doorway, watching curiously. Their son is physically at home, but to all purposes, lost in the limbo of the Internet. By all standards, Manish is a good, responsible young adult but his parents worry because they don’t seem to have any control over Manish’s online life. They find it difficult to understand the digital realms that he seamlessly integrates into his life.

As young people across the country are creating these new hybrid physical-digital spaces of work, leisure and lifestyle, the “analogue generations” remain outside, concerned about how they can ensure that their children are safe online, and not abusing the power of this largely unregulated space.

Their paranoia is amplified by the stories of uncontrolled access to pornography, of children falling prey to sexual predators, fears of intellectual property theft, and subversive and violent mobilisations that the young orchestrate through these online networks. The need to regulate, control and design this digital environment that so many of these young people inhabit is countered by their own ignorance and lack of control over these spaces. Technological solutions, like cyber-nannies and filtering software that prevent access to websites that can have questionable content, have eventually proven to be futile preventatives.

Attempts at technology-based censorship are useless because these young people, digital natives, find ways to circumvent the attempts at controlling their access. It is clear that the solutions are outside of technology, and not very different from ways in which parents have always dealt with these questions.

Here are the top five ways to do so, which do not require a parent to become a netizen overnight, but can get them involved and make sure young users of technology remain responsible, safe and canny in their interactions online.

Monitored access: Instead of figuring out censorship software, parents need to learn that as with the TV, monitored access for younger users of the Internet is completely valid. Web 2.0 rhetoric promotes a strong sense of individualism and privacy and parents often feel like they are intruding on a child’s “private” time online. However, it is completely valid for parents to be in the same room and keeping an eye on what their child is up to while surfing.

Limited time: Instead of trying to control the content, try and help the young person to efficiently manage time and digital resources. We live in a world where the impulse to stay constantly connected is very strong. However, there is no reason why the young user has to be online in all their free time. If they are given a specified number of hours a week to spend online, they learn to use their time more efficiently. Password-protect the computers, take limited expenditure accounts for their mobile phones and have strict rules (which everybody in the family has to follow) about interface access during family time.

Shared computers: As computing becomes more personal, young users access the Internet from many computing devices like cellphones, personal laptops, etc. Studies have shown that young users who use shared machines kept in common areas of the house are less prone to accessing undesirable material online. Do not keep the computing devices in bedrooms. Use shared studies or quiet corners of the living room.

Get digital and involved: One of the reasons why young people often do not communicate with parents about their technological forays is because the older generation professes a digital disconnect. Take this opportunity to initiate a two-way learning. Get your children to teach you on how to use certain platforms and websites, and in conversations, you might be able to educate them about responsible behaviour online. This peer-to-peer connection helps establish trust and a safe space to discuss problematic areas. Parents of teenagers who join social networks like Facebook and Tumblr, and get to be a part of the child’s life, often find new channels of communication opening up for them.

Storytelling: Digital storytelling has huge potential for voicing concerns and problems. For these young people, the spaces provided online are safe spaces. They write freely, tell stories, create digital content, providing a gateway into what is happening in their lives. Recognise the creative potential of young users, appreciate their ability to tell these stories — through blogs, micro-blogs, audio and video podcasts, commentary on other content, etc. Getting them to tell stories and sharing your own with them makes for greater insight. Many cross-generational storytelling projects, where younger children tell the stories of the older people in the house, or write a combined blog have proven to be quite successful online.

At the end of the day, it is good to remember that the problems that new technologies throw up are not necessarily new. The solutions need to be found in our everyday interactions and practices, and dependence on technological application is often counter-productive. Technology can only be a way by which solutions are implemented.

The article by Nishant Shah was published in the Indian Express on March 11, 2011. The original can be read here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/suspended-in-web

Activism: Unraveling the Term

maesy — 2015-05-14T12:25:05Z

After discussing Blank Noise’s politics and ways of organizing, the current post explores whether activism is still a relevant concept to capture the involvement of people within the collective. I explore the questions from the vantage point of the youth actors, through conversations about how they relate with the very term of activism.

Youth's Popular Imagination of Activism

As a start, I need to clarify that ‘activism’ is not a concept that the participants are generally concerned with. For a majority of them, the conversation we had was the first time they thought of what the term means and reflect whether their engagement with Blank Noise is activism. Regardless of whether one identifies Blank Noise as a form of activism or not, all participants share a popular idea of what activism is.

Generally speaking, at an abstract level all participants saw activism as passionately caring about an injustice and taking action to create social change. At a more tangible level, all participants mentioned three elements as popular ideas about doing activism. The first is the existence of a concrete demands as a solution to the identified problem, such as asking for service provision or state regulations. Since these demands are structural, activism is also seen dealing with formal authority figures in the traditional sense of politics, the state. The second is the intensity and commitment required to be an activist, for many participants being an activist means having prolonged engagement, taking risks, and making the struggle a priority in one’s life. In other words, being an activist means “... being neck-deep, spending most if not all of your time, energy, and resources for the cause” (Dev Sukumar, male, 34). The third element relates to the methods, called by some as ‘old school’: shouting slogans, holding placards, and doing marches on the streets – all enacted in the physical public space. This popular imagination of activism becomes the orientation for participants in deciding whether Blank Noise is a form of activism and whether they are activists for being involved in it.

Activism as the Intention and Action

“I have an idea of what activism is but not what it exactly looks like.”

(Apurva Mathad, male, 28).

For those who think that Blank Noise is a form of activism, there was a differentiation between the idea at the abstract level and how it is manifested at a more tangible level. The definition of activism is the abstract one, while the popular ideas of doing activism do not define the concept but present the most common out many possible courses of actions. Blank Noise is fulfils all the elements in the abstract definition: a passion about an injustice, having an aim for social change, and acting to achieve the aim. Hence, Blank Noise is activism, but the way it manifests itself does not adhere to the popular imagination of doing activism. The distinction between Blank Noise’s methods with popular ones was emphasized, along with the difference in articulating goals.

Interestingly, not all participants who share this line of thinking called themselves as activists for being involved in an activism. Again, it must be reiterated that no participants ever really thought of giving a name to their engagement prior to the interview. Instead of saying ‘I am an activist’, they said ‘I guess I could be called an activist’ for the fact that they are sharing the passion and being actively involved in a form of activism, albeit in an unconventional manner.

Those who would categorize Blank Noise as activism but not call themselves activists related with a particular element on the popular idea of doing activism, which is getting “neck-deep”. They were helpers, volunteers, idea spreaders, but not an activist because their lives are not dedicated for the cause or their involvements were based on availability. On the other hand, these participants all said that Jasmeen is an activist for being completely dedicated to Blank Noise from its inception until today.

Activism as Particular Ways of Doing and Being

“What are the repercussions if activism is so fluidly defined? It can mean not questioning

privilege... not seeing the class divisions and still call yourself activist.”

(Hemangini Gupta, female, 29).

Most participants did not consider Blank Noise as an activism. Generally, this can be explained by the discrepancies between Blank Noise and the popular imagination on the tangible ways of doing activism. Blank Noise does not propose a concrete solution or make concrete demands to an established formal structure nor did it march on the streets and make slogans. However, the underlying attitude to this point of view is not of a younger generation finding the ‘old’ ways of doing activism obsolete. Rather, there was an acknowledgement that the issue itself causes the different ways of reading an issue and taking actions to address it.

Furthermore, there is an appreciation to the achievements and dedication of activists that deterred them from calling themselves activists. These people referred to their occasional participation and the fact that Blank Noise is not the main priority in their lives as a student or young professional despite being a cause they are passionate about. As reflected in the opening quote, being an activist for some participants also means deeply reflecting on their self position in terms of class, acknowledging their privileges, and putting themselves in a position that will enable them to imagine the experience of people who are also affected by the issue but has a different position in the society. In other words, being an activist is not just about doing but also about critically reflecting on one’s position in relation to the issue and how it influences the way an issue is being pushed forward. Thinking that they are not up to these standards, these youth choose to call themselves ‘volunteers’, ‘helpers’, or ‘supporters’.

Youth: The Activist, the Apathetic, and the Everyday

“Blank Noise is a public and community street arts collective that is volunteer-led and attempts to create public dialogue on the issue of street sexual violence and eve teasing.”

(Jasmeen Patheja)

“... a group of people against street sexual harassment and eve teasing.”

(Kunal Ashok, men, 29)

“... an idea that really works.”

(Neha Bhat, 19)

As clarified before, the participants did not use the words ‘movement’ and very few used ‘activism’ during our conversations. Instead, the terms they used to describe Blank Noise are represented in the quotes above: collective, community, group, project, and even as an idea. These phrases do not carry the same political baggage that ‘movement’ or ‘activism’ would; they also do not conjure a particular imagination that the other two terms would. These phrases are de-politicized and informal; they imply fluidity, lack of hierarchy, and room for manoeuvre.

The implied meanings in the terms reflect the debates on the average youth and political engagement. For the past decade, various youth scholars criticized the dichotomy of youth as either activists or apathetic in explaining the global trend of decreased youth participation in formal politics. The activists are either politically active Digital Natives engaged in new forms of social movements influenced heavily by new media or sub-cultural resistances, which only account for a fraction of the youth population that are mostly completely apathetic. This dichotomy ignored the ‘broad “mainstream” young people who are neither deeply apathetic about politics on unconventionally engaged’ (Harris et al, 2010).

These mainstream young people actually are socially and politically engaged in ‘everyday activism’ (Bang, 2004; Harris et al, 2010). These are young people who are personalizing politics by adopting causes in their daily behaviour and lifestyle, for instance by purchasing only Fair Trade goods, or being very involved in a short term concrete project but then stopping and moving on to other activities. The emergence of these everyday activists are explained by the dwindling authority of the state in the emergence of major corporations as political powers (Castells, 2009) and youth’s decreased faith in formal political structures which also resulted in decreased interest in collectivist, hierarchical social movements in favour of a more individualized form of activism (Harris et al, 2010). Internet and new media technologies are credited as an enabling factor, being a space and a medium for young people to express their everyday activism.

All of the research participants, perhaps with the exception of Jasmeen as the only one who has constantly been the driver Blank Noise its entire seven years, are these everyday makers, people who were involved with the Blank Noise either on a daily basis as a commentator, one-time project initiator and leader, or people who were active when they are available but remain dormant at other times. Blank Noise is a space where these individual forms of engagement could be exercised while remaining as a collective. The facilitation is not only by the flexibility of coming and going, but also the lack of rigid group rules and the approach of allowing Blank Noise to be interpreted differently by individuals. Considering that the mainstream urban youth are everyday makers who would not find ‘old’ or ‘new’ social movements appealing, this can be the reason why Blank Noise became so popular among youth; however, I would also argue that the fact that Blank Noise is the first to systematically address eve teasing is a determining cause.

The implications of this finding, together with other concluding thoughts, will be shared in the next and final post in the Beyond the Digital series.

This is the ninth post in the Beyond the Digital series, a research project that aims to explore new insights to understand youth digital activism conducted by Maesy Angelina with Blank Noise Project under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge Programme.

References:

Bang, H.P. (2004) ‘Among everyday makers and expert citizens’. Accessed 21 September 2010. http://www.sam.kau.se/stv/ksspa/papers/bang.pdf

Castells, M. (2009) Communication Power. New York: Oxford University Press.

Harris, A., Wyn, J., and Younes, S. (2010) ‘Beyond apathetic or activist youth: ‘Ordinary’ young people and contemporary forms of participaton’, Young Vol. 18:9, pp. 9-32

Image source: http://blog.blanknoise.org/2010/02/tweet-now-feb-17-27.html

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/activism-unraveling-the-term

The Many Faces Within

maesy — 2011-08-04T10:41:53Z

Blank Noise, as many other digital native collectives, may seem to be complete horizontal at first glance. But, a closer look reveals the many different possibilities for involvement and a unique way the collective organize itself.

One day, during an afternoon stroll to the M.C. Escher museum in The Hague, I stumbled upon a painting called ‘Fish and Scales’. On the first glance, I saw two big black-and-white fishes and some smaller ones, but on a closer look I found hundreds of fishes, heading to different directions and merging seamlessly into the bigger fishes as their scales. Upon this discovery, I exclaimed out loud, “This is just like Blank Noise!”

No, I do not mean to imply in any way that the Blank Noise Project is like a fish, although it is definitely as fascinating as the painting. Rather, I found that this painting from the master of optical illusion is a great analogy to the structures of Blank Noise.

In the words of Kunal Ashok, one of the male volunteers, the collective consists not only of “people who volunteer or come to meetings, but anyone that have contributed in any way they can and identified with the issue.” In this sense, Blank Noise today consists of over 2,000 people who signed up to their e-group as volunteers.

How does a collective with that many people work? Firstly, although these people are called ‘volunteers’ for registering in the e-group, I would argue that a majority of them are actually what I call casual participants – those who comment on Blank Noise interventions, re-Tweet their call for action, promote Blank Noise to their friends through word of mouth, or simply lurk and follow their activities online. In the offline sense, they are the passers-by who participate in their street interventions or become intrigued to think about the issue afterwards. These people, including those who do the same activities without formally signing up as volunteers, are acknowledged to be a part of Blank Noise as much as those who really do volunteer.

Blank Noise is open to all who shares its concern and values, but its volunteers must go beyond articulating an opinion and commit to collective action. However, Blank Noise applies very little requirement for people to identify themselves with the collective. The main bond that unites them is their shared concern with street sexual harassment. Blank Noise’s analysis of the issue is sharp, but it also accommodates diverse perspectives by exploring the fine lines of street sexual harassment and not prescribing any concrete solution, while the latter is rarely found in existing social movements. The absence of indoctrination or concrete agenda reiterated through the public dialogue approach gives room for people to share different opinions and still respect others in the collective.

Other than these requirements, they are able to decide exactly how and when they want to be involved. They can join existing activities or initiate new ones; they can continuously participate or have on-and-off periods. This is reflected in the variety of volunteers’ motivations, activities, and the meaning they give to their involvement. For some people, helping Blank Noise’s street interventions is exciting because they like street art and engaging with other young people. Many are involved in online campaigns because they are not physically based in any of the cities where Blank Noise is present. Some others prefer to do one-off volunteering by proposing a project to a coordinator and then implementing it. There are people who started volunteering by initiating Blank Noise chapters in other cities and the gradually have a more prominent role. Some stay for the long term, some are active only for several times before going back to become supporters that spread Blank Noise through words of mouth. The ability to personalize volunteerism is also what makes Blank Noise appealing, compared to the stricter templates for volunteering in other social movements.

Any kind of movement requires a committed group of individuals among the many members to manage it. The same applies to Blank Noise, who relies on a group of people who dedicate time and resources to facilitate volunteers and think of the collective’s future: the Core Team. Members of the Core Team, about ten people, are credited in Blank Noise’s Frequently Asked Question page and are part of a separate e-group than the volunteers. In its seven years, the Core Team only went for a retreat once and mostly connected through the e-group. In this space, they raise questions, ideas, and debates around Blank Noise’s interventions, posters, and blog posts. Consequently, for them the issue is not only street sexual harassment but also related to masculinities, citizenship, class, stereotyping, gender, and public space. However, there are also layers in the intensity of the Team members’ engagement.

The most intense is Jasmeen, the founder and the only one who has been with Blank Noise since its inception until today. Jasmeen is an artist and considers Blank Noise to be a part of her practice; she has received funds to work for Blank Noise as an artist. Thus, she is the only one who dedicates herself to BN full time and becomes the most visible among the volunteers and the public eye. According to Jasmeen, she is not alone in managing the whole process within Blank Noise. Since Hemangini Gupta came on board in 2006, she has slowly become the other main facilitator. “It is a fact that every discussion goes through her. I may be the face of it, but I see Hemangini and me working together. We rely on each other for Blank Noise work,” Jasmeen said.

Hemangini, a former journalist who is now pursuing a PhD in the U.S., explains her lack of visibility. “Blank Noise could never be my number one priority because it doesn’t pay my bills, so I can only do it when I have free time and my other work is done.” The same is true for others in the Core Team: students, journalists, writers, artists. Unlike Hemangini who still managed to be intensively involved, they have dormant and active periods like the volunteers.

The Core Team’s functions as coordinators that facilitate the volunteers’ involvement in Blank Noise and ensure that the interventions stay with the values Blank Noise upholds: confronting the issue but not aggravating the people, creating public dialogue instead of one-way preaching. This role emerged in 2006 when the volunteer applications mounted as the result of the aforementioned blogathon. They have also initiated or made Blank Noise chapters in other cities grew. Although some of them have also moved to another city due to work, they remain active touch through online means. Together, the Core Team forms the de-facto leadership in Blank Noise.

I am tempted to describe Blank Noise as having a de-facto hierarchy in its internal organization. The form would be a pyramid, with Jasmeen on top, followed by the coordinators, long-term project-based volunteers, one-off-project-initiator volunteers, and then the casual participants. After all, it was clear from my conversations with the many types of volunteers within Blank Noise that they acknowledge that some people are involved more intensely and carry more responsibilities than others in the collective, that there is an implicit leadership roles. This is also shown by the reluctance of many volunteers to call themselves as an ‘activist’, claiming that the title is only suitable for people within those leadership roles and preferring to call themselves ‘supporters’, ‘part of the group’, or ‘volunteers’ instead.

However, doing this will be a mistake in interpreting the internal dynamics within Blank Noise. Firstly, the line between the types of participation is not as clear-cut as it appears to be. With the exception of Jasmeen, everyone from the coordinators to the one-off volunteers has active and dormant periods depending on what happens in their personal lives; they can shift roles quite easily. Some of Blank Noise coordinators, for instance, are now pursuing higher education abroad and could only be very active when the return to India during the holidays or when the school schedule is not as demanding. During momentary dormant periods, they turn into casual participants because those are the only roles they are able to take. Secondly, a hierarchy implies that casual participants are not important for the collective, whereas they turn out to be the main “target group” and the reason why Blank Noise has grown internally and in the public eye.

This is again a reason why I was so taken by Escher’s painting. There are definitely “big fish” leadership figures, but their scales are actually smaller fishes in different forms, symbolizing how the roles of a person in the collective could shift from “big” to “small” and vice versa depending on your perspective. The many fishes are not depicted horizontally, but also not in a clear hierarchy. Instead, they are interconnected with each other. The type of connection is not very clear and the fishes seem to be swimming in different directions, but they make a cohesive unity. This is the beauty of both Escher’s creation and Blank Noise.

This is the eighth post in the Beyond the Digital series, a research project that aims to explore new insights to understand youth digital activism conducted by Maesy Angelina with The Blank Noise Project under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge Programme.

The photo of M.C. Escher’s painting ‘Fish and Scales’ is borrowed from:

http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/minitext/escher/big.asp?IMAGE=fish_and_scales

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/the-many-faces-within

February 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T11:16:29Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage:

Researchers@Work

RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. CIS believes that in order to understand the contemporary concerns in the field of Internet and society, it is necessary to produce local and contextual accounts of the interaction between the Internet and socio-cultural and geo-political structures. To build original research knowledge base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organisations and individuals to focus on its three year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India. Monographs finalised from these projects have been published online for public review:

Internet, Society & Space in Indian Cities

Digital Natives

CIS has interest in developing Digital Identities as a core research area and looks at practices, policies and scholarships in the field to explore relationships between Internet, technology and identity. The Digital Natives project is funded by Hivos, Netherlands. CIS involvement has resulted into these:

Columns on Digital Natives

A fortnightly column on ‘Digital Natives’ authored by Nishant Shah is featured in the Sunday Eye, the national edition of Indian Express, Delhi, from 19 September 2010 onwards. The following articles were published in the Indian Express recently:

Pull the Plug [published in the Indian Express on February 20, 2011]
A FLASH of Change [published in the Indian Express on February 6, 2011]
Wiki changes the world [published in the Indian Express on January 23, 2011]

Workshop

The third and final workshop in the Digital Natives with a Cause? research project took place in Santiago, Chile, from 8 to 10 February 2011. Samuel Tettner wrote a report about the workshop:

Digital Natives with a Cause? —Workshop in Santiago — an Afterthought

Blog Entries by Maesey Angelina

Maesy Angelina is doing Masters on International Development, specializing in Children and Youth Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam. She is working on her research on the activism of digital natives under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge Programme. She spent a month at CIS, working on her dissertation, exploring the Blank Noise Project under the Digital Natives with a Cause? framework. She writes a series of blog entries. The new ones are:

Blog Entry by Samuel Tettner

Samuel Tettner is a Coordinator in the Digital Natives project. He has written one blog entry:

Computer Science & Society – The Roles Defined

Accessibility

Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.

New Blog Entry

The Working Draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2010: Does it exceed its Mandate in Including Provisions Relating to Other Disability Legislations?

Intellectual Property

CIS believes that access to knowledge and culture is essential as it promotes creativity and innovation and bridges the gaps between the developed and developing world positively. Hence, the campaigns for an international treaty on copyright exceptions for print-impaired, advocating against PUPFIP Bill, calls for the WIPO Broadcast Treaty to be restricted to broadcast, questioning the demonization of 'pirates', and supporting endeavours that explore and question the current copyright regime. Our latest endeavour has resulted into these:

New Blog Entries

Openness

CIS believes that innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration and is committed towards promotion of open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software, its latest involvement have yielded these results:

New Blog Entries

Internet Governance

Announcement

Google Policy Fellowship Program: Asia Chapter

New Blog Entries

Privacy

CIS is doing a project, ‘Privacy in Asia’. It is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and the International Development Research Centre, Canada and is being administered in collaboration with the Society and Action Group, Gurgaon. The two-year project commenced on 24^th March 2010 and will be completed as agreed to by the stakeholders. It was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around challenges and violations of privacy in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.

Blog Entries by Elonnai Hickok

Elonnai Hickok is a Programme Associate in the Privacy in Asia project. She has published a series of Open Letters to the Finance Committee regarding the UID:

Other New Blog Entries

Telecom

The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. It is imperative to resolve these issues in the common interest of users and service providers. CIS campaigns to facilitate this:

Column

Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.

Spectrum auctions - 'Jhatka' or 'Halal'? [published in the Business Standard on February 3, 2011]

Forthcoming Events

CIS is holding some conferences/workshops in the month of March in Delhi and Bangalore:

Role of the Internet in Fostering Freedom of Expression and Strengthening Activism in India - A Workshop in Delhi (March 4, 2011, Constitutional Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi)
Global Challenges to Freedom of Expression (March 4, 2011, Constitutional Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi)
Electronication: Ragas and the Future (March 6, 2011 Jaaga, Bangalore)
Design!publiC (March 18, 2011, Taj Vivanta, New Delhi)

Staff Update

Deepti Bharthur

Deepti Bhartur is a Research Intern at CIS. She did her BA (Hons) in Journalism from Lady Sriram College, University of Delhi and completed her Masters in Communication from Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad. Deepti joined the Accessibility team of CIS and is working on accessibility in telecom policy in India.

News & Media Coverage

Growing cyberspace controls, Internet filtering (Hindu, February 20, 2011)
2(m) or not 2(m) (Business Standard, February 19, 2011)
Can the twitterati change the world? (The Times of India, February 12, 2011)
Can the mouse be a tool of revolution in India? (DNA, February 12, 2011)
Social Network Suicide (Bangalore Mirror, February 6, 2011)
New Kids on the Blog (Indian Express, February 6, 2011)
Procuring books in Indian libraries (Hri Institute for Southasian Research and Exchange, February 4, 2011)
What Are You Accused of? Find Out Online (Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2011)
One among the clan of Wikipedians (Hindu, January 27, 2011)
Digital Wrongs (Forbes India, January 24, 2011)

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/february-2011-bulletin

"Digital Natives with a Cause?" newsletter Volume I

tettner — 2015-05-15T11:44:19Z

For everyone who is interested in learning more about the Digital Natives who form part of the "Digital Natives with a Cause?" community. The Newsletter includes opinion posts by participants from the three workshops, interview with them, comics and cartoons highlighting current issues affecting the community, as well as current news and discussions happening at the project website, www.digitalnatives.in

"Links in the Chain" is a bi-monthly publication which highlights the projects, ideas and news of the "Digital Natives with a Cause?" community members. The first volume was introductory and experimental in nature. Here are the two issues of volume I:

Links in The Chain - Volume I

Links in The Chain - Volume I issue II

For more information on"Digital Natives with a Cause?" please check out www.digitalnatives.in

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digital-natives-with-a-cause-newsletter-volume-i

Pull the Plug

praskrishna — 2012-01-03T10:21:16Z

Is it time to start talking about the right to disconnect? There is so much expectation and focus on being connected to the internet, that it seems like we don't have a choice. This article by Nishant Shah was published in the Indian Express.

W e hear a lot about how the internet should be considered as one of the basic human rights. As more of the world gets connected through the World Wide Web, and information becomes the new capital, there is a digital divide that emerges between those who can surf the web with ease, and those who struggle to boot their computers.

It is assumed that the digital natives are wired and connected, with their fingers constantly swooping on gadgets and their eyes glued to the interfaces at their disposal. They communicate with each other but also with the world around them through their tech tools, with the world just a click away. It is also assumed that for most digital natives, this existence in a surfeit of information and action is a default mode of being -that even when they are asleep, their digital selves are interacting in social networking systems, their gadgets are harvesting information from the Web, and their personal communication tools are bombarded with messages that are queued up for them to read when they wake up.

This constantly connected future is fuelled by governments and markets who are offering greater access to the young, both for education and consumption. Projects like the US-based One Laptop Per Child and mobile phones targeted at a "tweenage" demography are testimonies to how the younger generation is at the centre of this digital matrix of information communication.

In her book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle, professor at MIT, talks about how readers who are bombarded by snippets of information from a multitude of connections feel lost when disconnected from their smartphones and laptops. One of her key findings is that "these days, insecure in our relationships and anxious about intimacy, we look to technology for ways to be in relationships and protect ourselves from them at the same time".

In light of all this, the digital natives in our research group started debating about the right to disconnect. They proposed that there is so much expectation and focus on being connected, that it seems like they don't have a choice. This was a new way of looking at the relationships that digital natives have with technology.

Paola, one of our 20-something discussants from Latin America, told the story of the tyranny of BlackBerries. One of her friends recently applied for an internship as a part of her graduation programme. He cleared the interviews and got a six-month internship position with a large media house in Brazil. On the first day of work, as a part of his orientation, he was offered a BlackBerry. He wasn't particularly fond of the device and preferred to use his own smartphone. His reasoning was, "The BlackBerry never allows you to disconnect. When I am not at work, I want to be not at work."

It came as a rude shock to him when the company said that he had to use the BlackBerry because they wanted him be connected 24X7 to the media flows online. When he insisted, he was told that he would lose his internship if he did not accept the BlackBerry.

It is a story that found resonance with many other digital natives. They agreed that the internet is an incredible space for information consumption, and that they were very keen on the digital tools of communication and mobilisation. However, there seems to be an increased pressure on them to be wired all the time -no unplugging the cable, no downtime on the computer, no turning off of the cellphone. "If I have to go offline, I actually have to put it on Facebook and Twitter so that my friends don't get anxious," said another one.

"I get messages from followers asking me if I am alright, if I don't tweet for more than a few hours", agreed another. These pressures come from peers as well as the external world. And maybe, it is time to start talk ing about, along with the right to access, the right to disconnect.

The world might be shrinking and time might be ac celerating, but there is a value in being all alone and not necessarily together. As Paola says, "The next time you don't get a reply to your message from me in five minutes, it doesn't mean I am dead. It means that I choose not to. That I am digitally disconnected."

Email:

digitalnative@expressindia.com

Read the original in the Indian Express here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/pull-plug

The Class Question

maesy — 2011-09-22T12:45:35Z

Blank Noise aims to be as inclusive as possible and therefore does not identify any specific target groups. Yet, the spaces and the methods they occupy do attract certain kinds of volunteers and public. This raises the class question: what are the dilemmas around class on digital interventions? Are they any different from the dilemmas on street interventions?

My first click to Blank Noise’s main blog was a surprise. Having read so many media coverage about them, I expected to see a professional, minimalist looking website like other women’s organizations[1] where the menu is immediately visible. Instead, I have arrived at the most common and basic form of blogging: the personal blog.

I was greeted by entries on their latest thoughts and activities with photos and text with red font against a black background. I scrolled down a long list of permanent links on the right side of the site and arrived only at its Frequently Asked Questions link on the 28^th item while it would be one of the easiest to spot in other websites. For me, this discovery said, “we would like to share our thoughts and activities with you” rather than “we are an established organization and this is what we do”. It is not the space of professionals, but passionate people. As a blogger myself, I recognize the space as being one of my peer’s and immediately felt more attracted to it.

Reflecting on my own position, my familiarity with the space is due to my background as a young, urban, educated, English-speaking woman for whom the Internet is a key part of life. My ‘peers’ who are also attracted to this place apparently share the same background with me. The main demography of Blank Noise’s volunteers, almost equally men and women, are those between 16-35 years, urban, and English speaking (Patheja, 2010). My interviewees were all at least university educated, some in the U.S. Ivy league, and are proficient users of social media, most of them being bloggers or Twitter and Facebook users.

This dominant base reflects the discourse on the ‘youth of India’, which represents only a fragment of India’s vast population of young people. The two narratives on the youth of India are described by Sinha-Kerkhoff (2005) as ‘the haves’ and ‘have-nots’, a reflection on the broader discourse on the deep social economic inequities in India. ‘The have-nots’ are the majority of Indian youth who are struggling with the basic issues of livelihood, health, and education, while ‘the haves’ are painted as the children of liberalization: the mostly urban, middle class, technologically savvy, and highly educated students and young professionals up who maintain a youthful lifestyle up to their 30s.

Although ‘the haves’ only consist 10% of the total youth population, they are the ones identified as the youth of India by popular discourses. Lukose (2008) explained this by stating that youth as a social category in India is linked to the larger sense of India’s transformation into an emerging global economic powerhouse together with Brazil, Russia, and China (popular as BRIC) after its liberal economic reform in the 1990s. India’s information and technology industry is spearheading this transformation, thus it feeds into the discourse of youth as Digital Natives.

Although there are exceptions to this dominant demography, they are far fewer. Does this then mean that Blank Noise is ‘contextually empowering’ (Gajjala, 2004), given that it reaches only ‘the haves’ due to the digital divide and their sites of participation?

The classed nature of the virtual public space is something Blank Noise fully acknowledges. Some interviewees stated that this is why street interventions are so important; they reach people who may not be Internet users. However, people who have been involved in Blank Noise for more than two years acknowledged that class issues are also present in the physical public space.

Dev Sukumar, one of Blank Noise’s male volunteers, explained to me that the British colonial legacy still shape the way public spaces in Bangalore are organized. The commercial areas in the city centre where Blank Noise interventions were initially organized, such as M.G. Road and Brigade Road, are dominantly inhabited by English speaking people, but in other parts of the city there are many who can only speak the local language, Kannada. After recognizing this, Blank Noise organized street interventions in such places, like the Majestic bus stand, and making flyers and stencils in Kannada. In order to do this, Blank Noise specifically called for volunteers who knew the local language.

The interventions might be in a non-elite space, but the main actors remain those from the middle class. Hemangini articulated the class issue in Blank Noise, saying “Like it or not, a lot of the people in Blank Noise are from the middle class and a lot of the people we have been talking to on the streets are of a certain class. What is the ethics in a middle class woman asking ‘why are you looking at me?’ to lower class men? It is if we already assumed that most perpetrators are lower class men while it is definitely not true.”

The reflexivity Hemangini shows led me to rethink the assumptions around digital activism. It is often dismissed as catering only to the middle class, privileging only one side of the digital divide. But then again, the class issue is also present in the physical sphere. If middle class youth mostly attracts their peers in their digital activism, is it problematic by default or is it only problematic when there is no accompanying reflection on the political implications of such engagement? How is it more problematic than the ethical dilemma of middle class people addressing their ‘Others’ in street interventions? Is the problem related to the sphere of activism (virtual versus physical), or is it more about the methods of engagement and the reflexivity required for it?

Hemangini told me that her dilemma is being shared and discussed with other members in Blank Noise’s core group, consisting of those who dedicate some time to reflect on the growth and development of the collective. They have no answer just yet, but they intend to continue reflecting on it. I have no idea what their future reflection looks like, but I do know that the class implications of the cyber sphere will be resolved with more than simply taking interventions to the streets. Considering that the actors of youth digital activism are, like it or not, urban, middle class, educated digital natives, Blank Noise’s reflection will indeed be relevant for all who is interested in this issue. And if you have your own thoughts on the strategies to resolve this dilemma, why don’t you drop a comment and reflect together with us?

This is the seventh post in the Beyond the Digital series, a research project that aims to explore new insights to understand youth digital activism conducted by Maesy Angelina with Blank Noise under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge Programme.

References:

Gajjala, R. (2004) Cyber selves: Feminist Ethnographies of South Asian Women. Walnut Creek: Almitra Press.

Lukose, R. (2008) ‘The Children of Liberalization: Youth Agency and Globalization

in India’, in Dolby, N. and Rizvi, F. (eds.) Youth Moves: Identities and Education in a Global Perspective, pp. 133-150.

Patheja, J. (2010) Case Study: Blank Noise. Accessed 7 November 2010 <http://www.indiasocial.in/case-study-blank-noise/>

Sinha-Kerkhoff, K. (2006) ‘Youth Activism in India’, in Sherrod, L.R., Flanagan, C.A.

and Kassimir, R. (eds.) Youth Activism: An International Encyclopedia, pp. 340-348. London: Greenwood Press.

Source for picture: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/photo.php?fbid=73473166363&set=o.2703755288&pid=2095143&id=687356363

[1] For example: http://www.jagori.org/ , one of the most established women organizations in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/the-class-question

Computer Science & Society – The Roles Defined

tettner — 2011-08-04T10:39:56Z

Computer Science has had a big impact on the growth of modern society. In today’s world keeping in mind the intersection between society and technology, creating powerful machines alone isn’t enough rather the role of computer science in society is undergoing a change, says Samuel Tettner in this blog post.

This week much fuzz is being made about Watson, an IBM super computer that handily defeated two of the most successful Jeopardy! champions and made it look easy. This event coincides with an interview in Time magazine with Ray Kurzweil, an American author, inventor and futurist involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. As a technology enthusiast he often talks about artificial intelligence and is a firm believer in ‘the singularity’, a moment in time when computers will become more intelligent than human beings.

These two events are representative of a society-wide fascination we have with machines that can become ‘smarter’ than us. Such fascination is the substance of popular science fiction as prophesied by the likes of Isaac Asimov and Douglas Adams. I think this sub-culture has taken hold of mainstream computer science, with the announced arrival of the ‘Network Society’ and the insane profit software and IT companies have accumulated in the 90s and the 00s. The cult of information has reached too far. The technological cloud of today, like the market of yesterday, is more and more conceived as something omnipresent, both being everywhere and nowhere, and omniscient, capable of knowing everything. Those who believe the cloud is going to save us all with its super human powers are as blinded as those free market ideologues who thought liberalization would bring democracy, peace and stability in the early 90s. This tendency to elevate our human practices and hold them as outside of ourselves, in the pursuit of something greater than ourselves has potential damaging consequences.

There was a time when technological advances in the field of computer science were greatly beneficial to society. With more raw computational powers novel understandings of the world were possible: Everything from statistical models of weather patterns, to the sequencing of the human genome, to improvements in telecommunication greatly benefited from them. We allocated millions of dollars to research and development because there was a premise that with greater computation, better understanding of the world would be possible which in turn would lead us to live healthier and more productive lives. Today however, our most pressing global issues benefit less and less from raw technological advances. Global climate change and environmental destruction are not issues because we lack the tools to analyze the complicated mathematical models which describe the effects human societies have on the planet for example. IBM says that it plans to use the powerful computer in the health care sector: “IBM researchers are working to apply the system to business uses, such as helping physicians and nurses find answers within huge volumes of information. A doctor considering a patient's diagnosis could use Watson's analytics technology along with Nuance's voice and clinical language understanding offerings to rapidly consider all the related texts, reference materials, prior cases and latest knowledge in medical journals to gain information from more potential sources then previously possible, making the physician more confident in the patient's diagnosis.”1

I find it impossible not to ask if these are really the areas where we ought to concentrate of scientific efforts. Take for example a society like the USA, where IBM is located. Diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and smoking-related illnesses, which cause society billions of dollars a year, are highly preventable. Public health campaigns and changes in eating patterns are more promising than advances in technology when it comes to solving issues like this.

Don’t get me wrong, computer science has an important role to play in society. I don’t think this role needs to continue being framed as a race to build the most powerful machine. One of the bigger impacts of digital technologies in the last few years has been the usage of social media in political and social causes. The revolutions in Iran and Egypt most recently are examples of how digital technologies played major roles in societal transformations. And yet, the technological side of twitter and Facebook is very simple, certainly very simple compared to the room-sized, 90 servers and 360 computer chips Watson. More and more, the interplay between society and technology is becoming the determinant factor in determining the impact of the technology. This signifies in my opinion a transition point in the field of computer science— it is no longer enough to build faster, more powerful machines with more raw computing power.

While we continue to imagine our role with digital technology as one of creator-creation we will always run the risk of pulling a Frankenstein. While we continue to attribute value to technologies based on their sheer computing power and not on their application to social causes we make it easier to displace our objectives and goals. We have to demystify computer science similar to how we had to demystify economics a couple of years ago with studies about the irrationality of human beings. Markets are made of people, and computers are made by and for people. We cannot continue to conceive ‘the cloud’ as a dehumanized identity foreign and above ourselves. The idolization of computers and of computer systems only pushes us further from achieving tangible results.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110216-719076.html

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/computers-in-society

Can the twitterati change the world?

praskrishna — 2011-04-01T16:30:10Z

Whether it is the Ganapati immersion in Mumbai or a labour union dharna at Jantar Mantar or a hunger strike in Kolkata, India has had a rich history of people coming out on the streets. However, as cities are reshaped in the image of a 'world-class city', public spaces are being steadily appropriated into gated communities which cater to an elite section of the population.

Although the shrinking of public spaces is not the only reason the younger urban population is engaging with cyber space, it has certainly contributed to the shift. The recent historic transformations that have taken place in Egypt and Tunisia show that the digital sphere, which cannot be wholly regulated or shut down, has become the platform for protest.

When a 26-year old university graduate in Tunisia lost his only source of income after the police had confiscated his fruit and vegetable cart, he set himself on fire, setting into motion a nationwide protest which resonated through the internet. People poured into the streets and stood fast until the authoritarian president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, left the country. "Without the internet, it would be possible for the massacre to happen in silence for us and for the outside world. Five years ago, without Facebook and Twitter, the same uprising would have been smothered, " says an anonymous Tunisian interviewed by @kyrah (Twitter).

In Egypt, as well, technology was harnessed to spread the word across a huge and unprecedented section of the population within a short span of time, engineering the mob gathering we saw in Tahrir Square.

In the vastly different political context of India, digital activism serves the purpose of increasing openness, access and transparency.

Nishant Shah, the Research Director for the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore argues that the evolution of digital activism in India in the first decade of the 21st century can be seen through the emphasis on creating open structures of arbitration, justice, policy and jurisdiction. "The effort has been to grant access to the state, its governance and resources to the citizens, " he says.

Initially, digital natives in India were considered programmers or techies who were not just web savvy but technologically aware. For example, Vote Report India, a citizen-driven electionmonitoring platform, was the brainchild of software developers, designers and other professionals. Maesy Angelina, whose research for her MA looked into understanding the involvement of youth in online campaigns in India, argues that the way in which digital natives are perceived has been changed, "Since the Pink Chaddi campaign, a new angle becomes more prominent: one that views digital natives as regular people who have grown up with the internet and are web savvy, but not necessarily techies. "

Campaigns such as Batti Bandh, Justice for Jessica, the 2008 Gateway of India rally after the Mumbai attacks, and most recently the group called "It's my Arunachal, Dream on China, " have leveraged the existing networks on social media websites.

However, digital activism when transplanted into a developing country such as India leverages its own forms of discrimination, excluding sections of the population without the cultural, economic and educational capital to gain access to these spaces. While the medium can be useful in generating public dialogue, it is not enough to sustain a movement if it cannot reach non-internet users. Though technology can be used to organise, these protests must then manifest into public gatherings.

"The digital can help us in re-appropriating and reclaiming the fast disappearing physical spaces of public engagement, gathering and participation in our cities, " says Shah. "The technology is not an alternative, but is embedded in the physical worlds we inhabit and it becomes a powerful tool to fight back and demand the spaces that are central to the imagination of a coherent, responsible and sapient public. "

Fight-Back, an online gender equality campaign launched in 2008, now has about 4, 000 members on its Facebook group, who act as a volunteer database nationally. The group uses its website and social media to create awareness and start a conversation which then translates into events such as their Music for Equality concerts and Women's Day marches. The group's founder, Zubin Driver, 41, argues that digital activism is on the rise in India, "Mobile phone penetration in India is already 700 million. Once internet via mobile phones becomes more common, digital activism will cut across class, caste and geographical boundaries. "

Parmesh Sahani, the founder of the Godrej Culture Lab and the author of Gay Bombay, says that even though the audience for digital activism is restricted to English-speaking, twittering, Facebooking people, congregating online often leads to people coming out on the streets. "There are great opportunities in the intersections between the digital medium and actual physical spaces. The overspill of the Mumbai Gay Pride parade into cafês near the official route goes to show that activism still persists in the peripheries of regulated spaces. "

Though often vilified as armchair activism or slacktivism, digital activism has a role to play in facilitating community building in a changing urban landscape. The new forms of organisation and intervention have the potential to be more inclusive than older modes of social transformation, crossing geographies and communities. "Every medium comes with a promise and possibility of change when it's introduced - television, print, radio, loud speaker, " says Patheja. "The conversations on the internet don't usually end there;the participants of the movement hopefully carry these ideas and beliefs to their other linked communities or spaces. "

However, all new platforms come with pitfalls. "The power of the internet and wireless social networks as tools of dissent is now well established, " says Rajni Bakshi, author of Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom. "What is not so well known is that the future of the internet itself is under threat - not just from dictatorships and repressive regimes, but from an assortment of private, profit-motivated entities. "

Read the original in the Times of India here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/twitterati-change-world

Digital Natives with a Cause? —Workshop in Santiago — an Afterthought

tettner — 2012-01-03T10:16:18Z

The Digital Natives had their third and final workshop in Santiago, Chile from 8 to 10 February 2011. Once again CIS and Hivos joined hands to organise the event. Samuel Tettner, Digital Natives Coordinator from CIS narrates his experiences from the workshop in this blog post.

For three days, from 8 to 10 February, I spent most of the days and almost one full night at the Digital Natives with a Cause? Workshop. The day before the workshop, I met the facilitators: Kara, Pedro and Juan-Manuel. All three of them were quite enthusiastic with each one specializing on an aspect of the research objectives. That night, I had my first formal meeting with the participants in the conference room of Hotel Windsor in Santiago. It is always fascinating to meet a large group of people, especially since you have been corresponding with them for a couple of weeks, have read about them and their projects, made images in your head of how they look, how they act, how they will get along with each other and so on.

I was particularly excited about the workshop in Santiago since it presented itself to me an opportunity to re-connect with a side of Latin America that I had not experienced. I moved from Venezuela to the United States at the age of 15. I don’t know about everyone else, but when I was 15, I was mostly interested in music, movies, my friends, fast cars, video games, and a whole lot of the nonsense stuff. Meeting these highly motivated young men and women from all over the American continent and the Caribbean islands allowed me to connect with the more nuanced and matured side of my identity— a side that had only heard English spoken to it.

The actual workshop took place at the Biblioteca de Santiago, a library in Santiago, a beautiful modern building, with an architecture that rivalled the best libraries I ever saw in the world. Our local partner Rising Voices, had done an incredible job of organizing the logistics. The workshop opened with an ice-breaking exercise that unlike most ice-breaking exercises required some neural movement. Participants were asked to come up with a word that described their practice, politics or ideology. You see the workshop participants were young people who engage with digital technologies to create social and political change. I chose my word ‘innovation’ mainly because it’s an idea that’s been hunting my day-dreams lately, but also because I knew it would elicit interesting responses. I briefly sat down with Luis Carlos from Peru and Joan from the Dominican Republic, whose words were ‘stories’ and also ‘creative’. A blog post about that experience can be found here.

Afterwards we had the pleasure of hearing from Juan-Manuel, the facilitator from Mexico. Juan-Manuel talked about issues of participation, motivation to do social change, impact of our engagements and other social change related processes. He left us with three big questions that stayed with us for the rest of the afternoon:

What is our motivation to do social work? Where does it come from? Where does it end? How did it start? Can it be replicated?
What is incidence / impact? How can one measure impact?
What does one need to know to create social impact?

I got in a group with Adolfo from Nicaragua, Maria Del Mar from Paraguay, Karl from Haiti and Julio from Chile. Kara was our facilitator for the discussion. A blog post about that experience by Maria Del Mar can be found here. After discussing for about one hour, we made a white paper that visually illustrated` our discussion. We decided to make a word / concept cloud and mix it with a collage. That was it. With a lot of anticipation and nervousness the first day of our workshop ended.

Oh wait! I forgot to add a small detail, that day Nishant also taught us how to do a Bollywood dance. I didn’t take any pictures, but I hope someone did!

On the second day, Pedro Markun from Brazil opened the floor with a thought-provoking presentation. Unfortunately, I missed most of the presentation, but if one is to judge by the tweets, it was very inspiring. After the presentation, we participated in a bar camp. During this activity participants proposed the topics for discussion, out of which we selected five to focus on. I decided to join the conversation about ‘digital rights’, a topic proposed by Andres from Venezuela. Brendon from Trinidad and Tobago, Luis Carlos and Roberto from Peru, and Joan from the DR also participated in this discussion. I wrote a small blog about my opinion on this conversation here.

During the second half of the day, the process was reversed and instead of us participants writing down concepts we wanted to talk about, five words were written on the board: mobilization, network building, awareness, campaigns, and representation. This activity, called HOW DO YOU SPELL PROCESS? asked us to choose the word with which we identify the most; it could be the word we know the most about, or the least about, or the word we’re most interested in implementing in our practice. I joined the mobilization group, because part of the job as the community manager for the Digital Natives project involved motivating the members, involving them in other’s ideas, helping them connect with greater initiatives – all ideas that I think connect with mobilization issues. I sat down with Maria Carmelita from Argentina, Brendon from T&B and Francisco from Chile.

After we were all settled in the group plenary after this activity, Fieke had a dictatorial proclamation to make: we then had around 12 hours to make a visual presentation (a video, a play, a sketch and others) about our discussions during HOW DO YOU SPELL PROCESS?

I met Brendon, Francisco, and Carmelita shortly after for dinner and the planning of our video. We decided to have an Indian night, which is ironic since I now live in India, yet the experience was very interesting: I tried ‘curry’ for the first time in my life! For our video, we decided to make a cheesy, 1984-esque “how to” video to change the world through mobilization. The video can be found here. Check out the other videos as well, they all are quite interesting and thought-provoking.

Finally, on the third day after a showing of the videos and plays, the last facilitator, Kara from Guatemala, shared with us her personal journey into her social commitment. From growing up in a banana plantation in Guatemala, to her use of digital technologies to raise funds to build a house for her uncle, Kara’s story inspired all in attendance. Kara told her story through a specific framework, which was named the Matrix. The Matrix consisted of re-framing one’s story through four lenses: dream, discovery, design and destiny. We then broke into groups and reflected into our own journeys with technology using the same framework.

In the end, we all went to a nice restaurant and had a common dinner. I love those tables of over 20+people; you can switch seats and change conversations instantly. Overall, the workshop was a huge learning experience. I was able to meet some similar people from Latin America, and better understand the cultural context of the intersection of technology and the social and the political spheres. With the last workshop now over, we have collected a plethora of research materials which we will analyze during the second phase of the Digital Natives with a Cause? project. The journey still continues.

Thanks to all of you who made the experience Possible!.

For info on schedule of events, organisers and participants, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/santiago-workshop-an-after-thought

A FLASH of Change

praskrishna — 2012-01-03T10:22:18Z

A fortnightly column on ‘Digital Natives’ authored by Nishant Shah is featured in the Sunday Eye, the national edition of Indian Express, Delhi, from September 2010 onwards. In this article published on February 6, 2011, Nishant Shah writes that citizens are organising, congregating, acting and thereby creating revolutions.

Imagine you are in your favourite mall, walking around, looking at familiar shops, staring at the latest fashions in the windows, chatting with your friends and scouting for food. And suddenly, a bunch of people, who were just there, as a part of the larger scene, start dancing. They churn out well orchestrated but easy-to-replicate moves and for the length of a song, they convert the mall into an impromptu dance floor and then disperse. Or how about when walking through a park, you suddenly see a crowd of young and old, coming together to have a vigorous pillow fight and then after a few minutes of riotous laughter, they disappear into the blue? What would you do if you were faced with something like this in the expected and safe environments that you are used to?

The next time you see something like this, remember that you have just seen a flash mob. Organise, congregate, act, disperse — that is the anatomy of a flash mob. It is a form of mobilisation where anonymous strangers, who are connected via mobile and Web-based communication structures, come together in public spaces to perform a series of pre-determined actions for a brief period of time. They are generally fun, create a lot of confusion for those not in the know, and infuse everybody with a sense of wonder. They fuel conversations by transforming regular places with something that is new and unexpected.

I was recently at the Godrej India Culture Lab in Mumbai, to speak about digital natives, flash mobs and how they have the potential to change the world. Flash mobs are often seen to be frivolous and seen to achieve “mere fun” more than anything else. While I do want to make a case for how “mere fun” is actually the strongest means of political subversion and protest, something else erupted that made us all spectators of History (with the capital H) in the last two weeks.

In Egypt, tens of thousands of protesters came out into the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, and other cities, to demand the overthrow of an authoritarian government that has been unable to meet the needs of its citizens. In a dramatic unfolding of events, starting on January 25, young people in Egypt used Facebook, Twitter, SMS, emails and other forms of digital communication to come together in an unprecedented show of protest on the streets.

What has happened in the last few days is now the stuff of legend. There were digital blackouts and information blockages. The internet was blocked in the country so that protesters would be left in the dark. Mobile phone companies and internet service providers were ordered to debilitate the entire communication infrastructure so that word would not spread — within or outside Egypt. But such is the strength of the digital medium that the signal was lost, but the voice survived. It found echoes and resonances around the world. In a matter of hours, “Egypt” and “Jan 25” emerged as the most tagged messages on Twitter, with more than 2,500 tweets per second. The civic hackers in Egypt found supporters around the world, who not only spread their message but also provided them with legal and political infrastructure to make sure that their voice was heard.

This revolution, in the first month of the second decade of the 21st century, is not only about the present but also about what the future will hold. The young — digital natives who are integrated with the circuits of technology mobilisation and networking — were able to use these platforms to fight for their rights for freedom, dignity and expression. And all this was orchestrated using viral networking technologies and digital communication assemblages. I do not want to go into analysing Egypt’s politics, but I do want to highlight that the democratic citizen-driven future is already here.

The ways in which digital natives are able to harvest the technologies of mass communication and outreach are an indication of how the contours of global governance are going to be shaped. Citizen journalism, citizen action and civic collaboration are the new weapons of social change and transformation that the young are able to use effectively. Across the world, flash mobs like these bring together virtual strangers in spaces of physical solidarity. True, a lot of them are fun and games. But in participating in these playful structures, digital natives also develop new cultures of trust, belonging, participation, collaboration and mobilisation that remind us that we do not inherit the world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. And they now have the power to ask us questions for which we might not always have the answers.

Original article was published by Indian Express

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/flash-of-change

January 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T11:25:44Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! It gives us immense pleasure to present regular updates on the progress of our research on the mainstream Internet media. In this issue of we bring our latest project updates, news and media coverage:

Researchers@Work

Digital Natives

Column on Digital Natives

Is That a Friend on Your Wall? [published in the Indian Express on 9 January 2010]

Workshop

The third and final workshop in the Digital Natives with a Cause? research project will take place in Santiago, Chile, from the 8 to 10 February. Open Call and FAQs for the workshop are online:

Blog Entry by Maesey Angelina

Maesy Angelina is a MA candidate on International Development, specializing in Children and Youth Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam. She is working on her research on the activism of digital natives under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge Programme. She spent a month at CIS, working on her dissertation, exploring the Blank Noise Project under the Digital Natives with a Cause framework. She writes a series of blog entries. The latest is:

The Digital Tipping Point

Announcement

Rising Voices Seeks Micro-Grant Proposals for Citizen Media Outreach

Accessibility

New Blog Entry

Accessibility in Telecommunications

Intellectual Property

Copyright, patents and trademarks are the most important components on the Internet. CIS believes that access to knowledge and culture is essential as it promotes creativity and innovation and bridges the gaps between the developed and developing world positively. Hence, the campaigns for an international treaty on copyright exceptions for print-impaired, advocating against PUPFIP Bill, calls for the WIPO Broadcast Treaty to be restricted to broadcast, questioning the demonization of 'pirates', and supporting endeavours that explore and question the current copyright regime. Our latest endeavour has resulted into these:

New Blog Entry

New Release of IPR Chapter of India-EU Free Trade Agreement

Internet Governance

Although there may not be one centralised authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cybercrime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as “the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” Within the larger field of Internet governance, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), a multi-stakeholder policy dialogue forum that was instituted by the WSIS processes and that is their only formal outcome, has fast emerged as one of the key institutions. As the definition quoted above indicates, a unique feature of the field of Internet governance is that, unlike many other governance spheres, it does not only involve governments. Historically, not only governments but also the technical community and private players have played a crucial role in the development of the Internet. In the context of the IGF, that role is not only explicitly acknowledged but also institutionalised as the IGF formally brings together governments, private players and civil society actors from all areas of and organisations involved in Internet governance. Moreover, now that the open and egalitarian potential of the Internet is increasingly under attack, this unique nature of the IGF, in addition to its WSIS roots, has made it a prime venue to remind stakeholders in all areas of Internet governance of the commitment they have made earlier to building a “people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society” (WSIS Geneva Principles, Para 1). CIS involvement in the field of Internet governance has the following shape:

New Blog Entry

Jurisdictional Issues in Cyberspace

Privacy

CIS has undertaken many new and exciting projects. One of these, "Privacy in Asia", is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and is being completed in collaboration with Society and Action Group. "Privacy in Asia" is a two-year project that commenced on 24 March 2010 and will complete within two years from the commencement date, unless otherwise agreed to by the parties. The project was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around privacy challenges and violations in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote an over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.

Apart from "Privacy in Asia" CIS is also participating in the " Privacy and Identity" project, which is funded by the Ford Foundation and managed by the Centre for Study of Culture and Society. The project is a research inquiry into the history of Privacy in India and how it shapes the contemporary debates around technology mediated identity projects like Aadhaar. The "Privacy and Identity" project started in August 2010.

New Blog Entries

Staff Update

Prashant Iyengar is a lawyer and legal scholar who has worked extensively on intellectual property issues particularly focusing on copyright reform and open access. He is a past recipient of an Open Society Institute fellowship for research into Open Information Policy, and has been affiliated with the Alternative Law Forum – a collective of lawyers in Bangalore engaged in human rights practice.

Prashant joined the Centre for Internet and Society as a lead researcher in the Privacy India project recently.

Telecom

Column

Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.

The policy langurs [published on 6 January 2011]

News & Media Coverage

Civic hackers seek to find their feet in India (Livemint, 24 January 2011) and (IndiaInfoline, January 2011)
A Tweet and a poke from the CEO (Livemint, 24 January 2011)
Clicktivism & a brave new world order (Mail Today, 2 January 2011)
Would it be a unique identity crisis? (Bangalore Mirror, 2 January 2011)
Nel suk dei nativi digitali. Perché gli studenti 2.0 hanno bisogno di una bussola per orientarsi (Il Sore24 ORE, 2 January 2011)
A Refreshing Start! (Verveonline, Volume 19, Issue 1, January, 2011)
Getting Connected (Livemint, January 2011)
Knowledge Warriors (Il Sore24 ORE, January 2011)
Nishant Shah Quoted in Livemint 2011 Tweet-out (Livemint, January 2011)
Digital Natives with a Cause? - Workshop in Chile seeks participants (Bahama islands info, 30 December 2010)
Mothers discuss kids, music, fashions, on Net (The Hindu, 26 December 2010)

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/january-2011-bulletin

A Refreshing Start!

praskrishna — 2011-04-01T16:49:44Z

Parmesh Shahani enters the New Year inspired by the various ideas he’s been exposed to in The Hague and Lavasa.

The time between December and January is the time to hit the ‘re’ button. Re-fresh. Re-start. Re-think. Re-imagine. One’s own self as well as the world around us. It is the time for new ideas. The year is just beginning and everything is possible. I decide to spend this time by taking a short learning break away from the Radia tapes, 2G scams, WikiLeaks and what have you.

My first stop is Amsterdam where I go to museum hop for exactly one day. My friends are surprised when I tell them that I’m not doing any weed, and that, yes, I’ve seen it but no, the red light district isn’t really my thing. “Well, you can’t really say you’re in Amsterdam,” declares a particularly wise one to me over Facebook.

I politely disagree. My visit is intensely enjoyable and I manage to pack in the Anne Frank House (very moving, especially if you’ve read the diary, and who hasn’t?), Rijksmuseum’s famed Rembrandt masterpieces as well as the Van Gogh Museum (indescribably moving, despite the line of tourists) all in one day. It helps that I am staying at the super luxurious Sofitel The Grand. The renovated 16th century royal guest house is full of heritage listed heirlooms showcasing Amsterdam’s history dating back to 1578, so my art tour continues even after I return from my outside excursions.

Not for too long, because I quickly have to rush to The Hague, where Nishant Shah and Sunil Abraham (who together run the Centre for Internet and Society in Bengaluru, and are in my mind, two of the smartest people living in India right now) have collaborated with the Dutch organisation Hivos to put together a thinkathon on ‘Digital Natives with a Cause?’ This is the third event in a series on technology, youth and engagement, that began in Taipei, moved on to Johannesburg, and will finally end in Santiago, Chile this coming February.

Nishant and Hivos’ fabulous Fieke Jansen set the tone by talking about why the question mark at the end of the title ‘Digital Natives for a Cause?’ is important. Can one think of digital natives as simply youth who have grown up with technology or can we include other older people within this term? What does it mean talking about digital natives and questions of transformation and change? What does it mean to even have a cause? Does a cause have to be framed in certain language? I discuss and debate all of this and much more with an incredible group of change-making activists, policy makers and artists from all over the world.

These include folks like Prabhas Pokherel from UNICEF Kosovo, Eddie Avila from Rising Voices Bolivia, Dorothy Okello from the Women of Uganda Network, and Simeon Oriko from the Kuyu Project in Kenya. I’m fascinated by all that they are doing. Kuyu, for instance, aims to teach young African students how to use various forms of social media to make a positive impact in their communities, through online Wikis, mobile phone networks and digital training camps. Nonkululekho Godana’s uniquely South African fashion sense catches my eye and we discuss shopping during the fun dinners, each of which is at a spectacular location in The Hague. Our thinkathon venue is the Museum of Communication, which itself is very special, with its talking installations and special multimedia galleries.

Being here gives me a chance to meet Sam Gregory from Witness, Peter Gabriel’s organisation and website that trains and equips individuals across the world to use video to document human right violations and effect change. I’ve been a big fan of what they’re doing ever since they started. It’s also great to hang out with Ushahidi’s Juliana Rotich, even if it’s only for a little while. Ushahidi develops free open source software for information collection, visualisation and interactive mapping that anyone can use to further their cause. For example, Vote Report India – that catalogued the 2009 general elections – was built on this platform.

I am extremely happy with the quality time I share with co-TED fellow Jasmeen Patheja. I’m sure that you’ve heard of her Blank Noise Project; it is a physical and virtual artistic intervention that aims at creating public awareness about eve teasing. See http://blog.blanknoise.org/ or the image of one of their Bengaluru park interventions that accompanies this column. Jasmeen has just returned from Tokyo where she’s been cataloguing Japanese women’s stories about harassment. Together, we roll our eyes at how similar men all over the world are!

At the thinkathon, a hot topic of discussion is slactivism or slacker activism that a lot of social media seems to be promoting. Is signing an online petition the same as protesting on the ground, in real life? How might we conceptualise a button clicker as an agent for social transformation? Beyond this, how might we engage digital natives in terms of policy-making processes?

I mull over all these questions on my crazy 30-hour journey from snow-bound The Hague to the artificially created city of Lavasa on the outskirts of Pune. Jetlagged as hell, I make it just in time for the first talk of the INK India conference. Compared to last year’s TED, I find everything to be smaller at INK, including the audience. The Bollywood night with Kunal Ganjawala, for instance, has about 20 people dancing in front of the stage as opposed to the 100 or so from last year. And, there are problems galore, with the poorly organised transportation, constantly crashing sound system, and general organisational chaos.

I’ve been a Lavasa sceptic ever since I heard about the project and now that I’m finally visiting, I see my worst fears have been realised. It feels like being on the set of the Truman show, with the fake looking lake, pastel coloured houses, and ever-smiling and possibly ever-afraid staff members. It seems like, at least to me, that they have been trained to not draw attention to themselves, to forcibly ‘invisibilise’ themselves, lest they prick the bubble of the middle-class fantasy of an idyllic foreign-like ‘home’. I continue to be surprised as to why the conference organisers would chose a location like this to host a conference that aims to showcase the best of innovation and knowledge. The court cases against Lavasa that are being flashed on the national news even while INK is taking place, don’t really help very much in making me change my views.

But despite the logistical hiccups and weird choice of location, INK still manages to score for me on the sheer power of its excellent speakers, and I’m glad to have been there. Where do I begin, even with the highlights? Should I tell you about James Cameron’s effortless charm, as he offers his 3D cameras to Indian filmmakers who might want to play with them? Deepak Chopra’s incredible mind on display making connections between the sub-atomic and the Vedic? Phillipe Starck’s sense of humour and his overall design genius that he wears so lightly on his oh-so French sleeves?

How about Jennifer Aaker’s incredible talk that begins with an emotional story about a bone marrow transplant, loops into a campaign to improve the number of registered South Asian bone marrow donors, and ends with her understanding of what happiness is? Or Matt Groening’s video of his father doing basketball throws, backward, while he tells us just why he named Homer Simpson’s character after him?

Just like with TED last year, the Indian speaker contingent is very inspiring. Toy inventor Arvind Gupta is a livewire on stage as he rapidly shows us one toy after the other, made from material like newspapers, old CDs, straws, matchsticks, and pencils. Clay innovator Mansukhbhai Prajapati shows us the clay filters and fridges that he makes for poor consumers in India that need such products but cannot afford their conventional avatars. Commonwealth 4x400 relay gold medallist Ashwini Akkunji recounts how her athletic career started out by running after cattle in her village in Karnataka. Conductor George Mathew talks about how a New York mugging in which he was almost beaten to death became a music lesson after his muggers found his metronome in his pocket.

Anand Kumar, founder of the ‘Super 30’ classes in Bihar that train impoverished rural youth to get into the IITs, gets a standing ovation. It is good to catch up with TED stars from last year like India’s youngest headmaster Babar Ali, who is continuing to scale up his school, or Sunita Krishnan, who has used her Google grant money to build an impressive centre for women survivors of violence.

However, my best talk is by Simon Lewis, who has produced films like Look Who’s Talking in Hollywood. Simon shares his personal story of a car crash that almost ended his life but set him off on a quest to rebuild both his mind and body, piece by piece, using technology and willpower every step of the way.

He has meticulously captured this journey in his book Rise and Shine, which you should read this year, if you can. I want to leave you with http://www.thevisualmd.com/, which is a website you should visit. INK speaker Alexander Tsiaras has shared his nine visual rules of wellness here. Check it out and see if you want to follow them in 2011. I certainly do.

Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/refreshing-start

Knowledge Warriors

praskrishna — 2011-04-01T16:50:07Z

Dieci anni fa, quando Jimmy "Jumbo" Wales lanciò l'idea di una piattaforma della conoscenza partecipativa e plurilingue, di tipo enciclopedico, basata sul web, pochi erano pronti a raccoglierla. L'industria della conoscenza era rigidamente divisa tra chi la produceva, chi la fruiva e chi mediava tra i due gruppi.

Scostarsi da questa struttura sembrava assurdo. Eppure Wikipedia è uno dei siti web più grandi del mondo, con oltre 17 milioni di articoli e 365 milioni di lettori in 262 lingue. Basata sulla semplice idea che la conoscenza sia un patrimonio comunitario piuttosto che individuale, Wikipedia ha invitato chiunque avesse accesso a internet a contribuire a rafforzare le proprie conoscenze attraverso un processo di discussione, costruzione del consenso e collaborazione. A differenza di una normale enciclopedia, forte del suo battaglione di "guerrieri del sapere", Wikipedia si affida ai normali utenti, che utilizzano il potere dell'informazione online per «totalizzare la somma della conoscenza umana».

A un decennio dal suo inizio, la battaglia nata intorno a Wikipedia non si placa. I suoi partigiani esaltano la democratizzazione del sapere e la sfida al regime capitalista dei diritti di proprietà intellettuale che Wikipedia rappresenta. I suoi detrattori, invece, la identificano con nuove concentrazioni di potere, un'ingiusta rappresentazione delle voci alternative e l'appiattimento delle complesse relazioni tra l'umanità e l'informazione. Seguiamo queste guerre-Wiki per vedere quali lezioni possiamo trarne per il futuro del nostro mondo sempre più Wikificato.

01 – stabilire un punto di vista critico

La neutralità del punto di vista (Npv) è uno dei capisaldi teorici attraverso cui Wikipedia garantisce la solidità delle sue informazioni e la governance delle sue comunità. Anziché cercare la "Verità", Wikipedia promuove la "Verificabilità", per cui solo quelle idee che sono già state documentate altrove, e che possono essere addotte come prova, hanno diritto di esistere nel suo universo. Le ricerche originali, le nuove idee, le incursioni artistiche e le risposte emotive non trovano spazio in questo scenario di informazione quasi piatto. La Npv mira a eliminare l'intenzione umana, il desiderio e l'investimento nella conoscenza, a favore di quanto è già documentato. Benché questo si sia dimostrato utile per risolvere dibattiti su argomenti particolarmente delicati o provocatori, non può essere una soluzione sostenibile a lungo termine.

Gli esseri umani non hanno un rapporto neutrale con la conoscenza. Come sostiene appassionatamente il guru della rete Geert Lovink, direttore dell'Institute of Network Cultures di Amsterdam: «La conoscenza, specialmente nella società dell'informazione, è potere e denaro. Wikipedia può professarsi neutrale, ma si tratta di una neutralità costruita e falsa. Cerca di nascondere i complessi meccanismi di potere che alla fine determinano quali tipi di conoscenza sono validi». A dispetto della sua prospettiva di completa inclusione e della sua ambizione, spesso Wikipedia viene definita cabalistica, basata su rituali, priva di una riflessione critica sul suo stesso rapporto con la conoscenza. Occorre riflettere criticamente sugli sforzi di rafforzare la conoscenza umana per individuare criteri che vadano oltre la neutralità e la verificabilità.

02 – superare la saggezza delle masse

Wikipedia resta uno dei più visitati siti a contenuto elaborato dagli utenti a livello mondiale. La sua struttura "Open Wiki" invita diversi attori umani e non umani (i "robot") a collaborare nella produzione e nella documentazione della conoscenza. L'esperimento condotto dalla rivista «Nature», che ha confrontato gli articoli scientifici dell'Enciclopedia Britannica con quelli di Wikipedia, ha evidenziato un livello di accuratezza e un tasso di "errori seri" simili.

Lo scienziato informatico e artista Jaron Lanier, nel libro Tu non sei un gadget, sostiene che il collettivismo online non è la soluzione giusta per documentare il sapere umano a lungo termine. Lanier afferma che l'ethos collettivista alla base di nuovi fenomeni culturali come Wikipedia in realtà riduce la qualità del prodotto finale. Parte dal principio che il design del software di piattaforme del tipo di Wikipedia produce «regole non modificabili» che portano a nuove forme di esclusione. Considera la saggezza delle masse uno strumento che dovrebbe essere usato strategicamente. Lanier contesta a Wikipedia di promuovere «il culto del dilettantismo», che rende le singole voci non essenziali – persino quelle degli esperti – e considera la saggezza collettiva più affidabile che non i tentativi rigorosi di trovare la verità e il significato.

Negli anni a venire bisognerà sottrarre la saggezza delle masse alle piattaforme che condizionano la partecipazione attraverso il design del software e dell'interfaccia. Bisognerà usarla come uno strumento piuttosto che come fine a se stessa.

03 – una svolta verso l'inclusione

Wikipedia, come incarnazione dello zeitgeist Free/Libre/Open Source (Floss), teoricamente abbraccia una cultura di apertura, inclusione e pluralismo. Il suo design tecnologico neutrale, che assicura il diritto di contribuire a chiunque abbia accesso a internet, trascura il fatto che il numero di persone che accedono a internet, globalmente, è molto basso. La mancanza di altre interfacce utilizzabili, tramite cellulari o altre forme di portable computing, fa sì che i contributori restino concentrati in specifiche parti del mondo. Johanna Niesyto, dell'Università di Seigen, nella sua tesi di dottorato afferma: «Il profilo demografico medio di un redattore di Wikipedia è quello di un maschio bianco appassionato di internet con una visione del mondo monoculturale e limitata, basata sulla razionalità occidentale». Le contributrici donne che si sono sentite silenziate dalla cultura tech maschile di Wikipedia hanno già creato spazi alternativi, come Wikichix.org.

Nonostante la sua ricerca di pluralismo, Wikipedia palesemente esclude quei processi, idee, culture e stili di vita che non rientrano nella mentalità razionale occidentale. Rifiuta altre forme di conoscenza tradizionali, effimere e orali. La popolarità di altre enciclopedie collaborative online come Baidu Baike in Cina, testimonia le implicite esclusioni del mondo di Wikipedia.

Perché Wikipedia diventi davvero inclusiva, dovrà dissociarsi dai monolitici standard culturali, morali e politici della civiltà dominante e imparare ad arricchirsi di sfumature, diventando più sensibile e pluralista per facilitare davvero la partecipazione e la diversità, a livello di contenuto, design e governance.

04 – aprirsi alla resistenza

Wikipedia è l'incarnazione del grido di guerra, scaturito dall'euforia tecnologica, per una società aperta che dovrebbe mettere l'individuo in condizioni di sfuggire alla tirannia dello stato e dei mercati. Tuttavia il cyber-realista Evgeny Morozov, dell'Università di Stanford, nel suo ultimo libro, The Net Delusion, afferma che tale cyber-utopia è frutto di «una fede naif nella natura emancipativa della comunicazione online, fondata su un ostinato rifiuto di riconoscere il suo lato negativo».

Nel quadro tracciato da Morozov, il "mainstreaming" di progetti tipo Wikipedia costituisce la fine del vero dibattito pubblico e dell'impegno politico. Con Wikipedia il dissenso è difficile. Qualsiasi intervento che violi le "Condizioni di Servizio" e dunque sfidi i presupposti fondamentali di Wikipedia, viene immediatamente "bannato" o contrastato legalmente.

Il progetto "Wikipedia Art", avviato dagli artisti Nathaniel Stern e Scott Kildall, si è scontrato con un problema simile. È iniziato come voce di Wikipedia supportata da una serie di blog e articoli scritti da un gruppo di collaborazione che appoggiava l'iniziativa. Il progetto artistico intendeva criticare e utilizzare le stesse strutture di autorità che davano autenticità alle voci di Wikipedia. Eppure l'iniziativa è stata rapidamente rimossa, all'inizio dalla comunità e successivamente dalle azioni legali intraprese dalla Fondazione Wikimedia, che gestisce Wikipedia.

Benché Wikipedia sostenga di essere uno spazio che sovverte i processi dominanti, non riesce ad accettare la resistenza e le sfide che muovono dalla più grande sfera digitale. Se vuole aderire alle originarie ideologie di internet, che avrebbe dovuto costruire un mondo di conoscenze libere e aperte, dovrà evolvere con il web, imparando ad accogliere e facilitare tali sovvertimenti.

Wikipedia resta un autentico fenomeno storico che ha cambiato il modo in cui ci confrontiamo con l'informazione e la conoscenza nel quotidiano. Ha contribuito a mettere radicalmente in discussione la logica del tardo capitalismo e della proprietà intellettuale che ha governato l'industria della conoscenza, producendo strutture di esclusione e dominio. Tuttavia, nel celebrare il suo decimo compleanno, è ora di evolvere verso un futuro in cui la Wikificazione del mondo si confronti realisticamente con le necessità di equità, pluralismo e apertura rappresentate da progetti come Wikipedia. (traduzione di Elisa Comito)

Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/guerrieri-del-sapere