Centre for Internet and Society

Who is a Digital Native?

anfearpa — 2012-04-04T10:54:22Z

Name(s): Andrés Felipe Arias Palma
Location: Barranquilla, Colombia
Age: 22
Profession: Journalist and Communications Analyst

I think many people are digital natives unknowingly. Being a digital native is a relationship with activism and society, not as they initially thought. It was a condition of being born in specific times and external factors. In the video, I will interview people about who and what is a digital native? How to use the Internet? What is internet advantages and disadvantages for society where everything is interconnected to the Web.

Video Genre: Interview footage on video

Interview

On being a Digital Native
I think that a Digital Native is somebody who has made technology a basic tool to cover all of her or his own needs. Anyway, there aren’t any specific features that can define a digital native because it’s a condition you define for yourself. I don’t know if I’m a digital native, but technology has been very useful for my work and social initiatives.

You agree with a perception that the digital native is typically a “White, American, Young, Male” who’s always connected to his gadgets and apathetic to social issues?
I think it’s just a stereotype, but there are people who don’t have any social life and are stuck at home, online, all day long; and there is the person that works with social projects and makes use of technology as an instrument to optimize the labor as well. I think that the digital natives can be many, starting from being a web developer to responding to a simple tweet - you choose on what side or what kind of person you want to be.

Can digital natives from developing nations create an impact with digital activism?
It is very important to know which one of the tools we employ is functional for what we want and what we need. For example, I am not going to use twitter to target a community that doesn’t have any idea of what Web 2.0 is; in this case, perhaps it is more useful to use some other kind of technology or service. At present, I support the “Asociación Latinoamericana de Educación Radiofónica” on virtual workshops and with social media. Thus, I work with popular audiovisual education.

How effective are digital activism campaigns in raising awareness about an issue in comparison to traditional activism such as protest march or hunger strikes?
The traditional protest will never fade out. What’s happening is that the network and the new technologies are making facts more visible, therefore issues are more transparent today and people are more aware. It depends on how each activist strategizes for his / her campaign. The real problem is when people mobilize support only through one platform and neglect the other. Both, digital and traditional (activism) go hand in hand.

The ‘Get Kony’ campaign created by US-based NGO Invisible Children has created controversy. What are your thoughts on the campaign?
Although I haven’t seen it, the news and comments on the video brings to my mind the image of the typical ‘Young, White, American, Male’ stereotype that we just spoke about. However, it’s worth mentioning that the “Get Kony” campaign has captured the attention of people, maybe because it uses a lot of audiovisual material and has received support from mainstream media, so perhaps something good might come out of it.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/who-is-a-digital-native

What scares a Digital Native? Blogathon

tettner — 2015-05-14T12:16:14Z

What Scares technologized young people around the world? In an effort to present a view often not heard in traditional discourses, on Monday the 18th of April 2011, young people from across the world blogged about their fears in relation to the digitalisation of society.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/what-scares-a-digital-native-blogathon-1

What it means to be a child today

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T07:42:34Z

They move seamlessly between reality and virtual reality. The digital landscape they inhabit comprises generations — not of family — but of technology such as Web 2.0, 3G, PS4 and iPhone5. Their world has moved beyond their neighbourhood, school and childhood friends to encompass a 500-channel television universe, the global gaming village, the endless internet. These are the children born in the last decade and half — possibly the first generation that has never known a world without hi-tech.

These tweens and teens were born with dial-up internet, learnt to crawl alongside the PC and practiced writing the alphabet on the desktop. To them, a world without keypads, joysticks, digicams, headphones and LCD is unimaginable. For them, the Dark Ages are the time when television was black and white.

Nishant Shah, director of research at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, says, "We are living with digital natives — populations that do not know the ins and outs of analogue technologies but they do often instinctively take to the world of digital and internet technologies. They view the world differently, connect with each other in unprecedented fashions and often question the authority structures developed by analogue technologies."

But no one is born into or with technology, Shah points out, and it's still the older generation that is shaping the new technologies.

Even so Indian childhood in 2010 is markedly different from ever before, he says, in that "the younger generations growing up with digital and internet technologies are using them for things that were not integral to the technologies. For example, Facebook was only meant to be a social networking site. Twitter was merely a microblogging platform. And yet, we now see the young users using these spaces for political participation, social transformation and mobilization of resources."

A survey of 14,000 children aged between 12 and 18 in 12 Indian cities by Tata Consultancy Services last year found that 63% of urban students spend an hour online daily; more than 80% have access to mobile phones and one in four have laptops. They do their homework and assignments online, access report cards, chat, blog, game, download, SMS and send photos via Bluetooth. The internet is becoming friend, philosopher and guide for the 'screenagers', supplying them with endless friendship requests, enlisting them for social causes and sometimes offering emotional solace.

Delhi student Manil Chhabra, 13, who swears by his mobile, desktop and PS2, supports many causes on Facebook, including the welfare of street dogs and gay rights. He also bonds with friends online. "My mother gets angry that I 'waste' too much time on the cell phone and online but I do try to make family time. It is not like I don't want to go out with my parents anymore. But I have a busy schedule and have free time only on Sundays. I would rather spend it with friends than my parents who I meet every day."

That said, this doesn't always translate into 'real' friendship of the physical sort. Mumbai businessman Anoop Sharma says of his 14-year-old daughter Aruhi, "My daughter has friends she chats with on Facebook but does not even say 'hi' to when she meets them!"

Admittedly, many young Indians today limit their friendships to the slightly antiseptic interaction possible on the Net. In Mumbai, Amara Mustan, 10, is constantly busy with his iPhone, an iPod with a "state-of-the-art" docking station and a Macbook. She says, "I don't think I have the time to be in touch with any of my friends except on Facebook."

Does this change social interaction? Clinical psychologist and student counsellor Dr Etishree Bhati agrees that the way children now use technology redefines the way they judge themselves and interact with everyone else. "Earlier, children turned to parents and siblings for emotional support. Today, they are checking up personality, IQ and other tests online themselves. Coming to me is the last option. Sometimes, they even crosscheck whether what I tell them tallies with these test results," says Bhati.

So yes, children in 2010 are more knowledgeable and aware. The downside is the "superiority complex and stress" says Bhati wryly.

For urban children then, if both parents are at work, the school day ends with returning to an empty home and the 'human' contact of the internet. Manil's mother, Simar Chhabra, says she is sad to note that today's children "do not understand and realize the joy of solitude. My son has absolutely no time for himself. Even when he is in bed, he is messaging till the time he falls asleep. They are disconnected from themselves and with their families."

Bhati says the impact of increasing exposure to technology is yet to be understood. "Cognitive learning can get affected. Some schools have barred students from joining Facebook. But what do you do when teachers are themselves interacting with the whole class on Facebook?"

As children routinely Google for answers to class quizzes, skipping books and encyclopaedias altogether, scientists worry that they are in danger of developing 'magpie minds' — flitting between web pages and losing the ability to analyze.

Is technology at fault? No, says Nishant Shah. "Technology in itself cannot be good or bad. It is we, the users, who make the decisions on our usage of it and what we can do with it. Children as young as two are also getting introduced to books. Is exposure to books at much younger ages necessarily bad?"

Shah believes that young users of technology are exactly like the generations that went before — only different. "Each generation has used the technologies that they are most familiar with, in order to bring about change."

He believes that the era of individualism seems to be ending and the future lies in networks and how we work, live and play within networked societies.

Is the 'twitch speed' or the rate at which networked children adapt to newer technologies the number every parent and school teacher needs to know? Keeping pace may be the only way to stay connected with the networked generation.

Read the news in the Times of India

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/a-child-today

What does it mean to be a digital native?

praskrishna — 2012-12-10T04:21:00Z

The war between natives and immigrants is ending. The natives have won.

Oliver Joy's blog post was published by CNN on December 8, 2012. Nishant Shah is quoted, criticising Marc Prensky's ideas of digital nativity as borne of privilege and first-world centricity.

It was a bloodless conflict fought not with bullets and spears, but with iPhones and floppy disks. Now the battle between the haves and have-nots can begin.

The post-millennial "digital native," a term coined by U.S. author Marc Prensky in 2001 is emerging as the globe's dominant demographic, while the "digital immigrant," becomes a relic of a previous time.

The digital native-immigrant concept describes the generational switchover where people are defined by the technological culture which they're familiar with.

Prensky defines digital natives as those born into an innate "new culture" while the digital immigrants are old-world settlers, who have lived in the analogue age and immigrated to the digital world.

Although not Luddites, the immigrants struggle more than natives to adapt to hi-tech progress.

The author of "Teaching Digital Natives," whose success pushed him onto the speaking circuit, says the explosion of technology over the last 10 years is just the start of a symbiotic new world. Computers and handsets are becoming an extension of body and mind, creating a Cyborg-like population.

Prensky cites the 100-meter runner Oscar Pistorius, an athlete with prosthetic legs, as an example of how technology is used to enhance our lives. He told CNN: "For humans, what used to be this body of flesh and bone, all that is now just the center... Being human is a moving target."

The human race and its struggle to keep up with technology

Prensky says that at no time in history has technology moved so fast. Today the latest high-tech gizmos can be passe even before hitting the shop floors.

In the past -- during the post-industrial revolution era, for example -- accelerating technology has plateaued. So, with the meteoric rise of new social media outlets including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Skype, history suggests the world is overdue for a slowdown.

But Prensky says this time, any slowdown in the digital age is a "myth," as innovation will only press forward "faster... And faster and faster."

He told CNN: "We are not going through a transition to another faze of stability, and that is the key point. People will always be behind now and that will be a stress they have to cope with."

The new norm

Connecting with one another in the modern world requires a knack for social networking and texting, which is the norm for the digital native. But for the immigrant, it can be akin to learning a whole new language.

Prensky illustrates his point with former director of the CIA David Petraeus. In November, he was embroiled in a scandal that revealed he had an affair with Paula Broadwell.

The FBI uncovered the affair while it investigated e-mails that Broadwell allegedly sent to a Petraeus family friend, Jill Kelley.

Prensky labels this naivety by immigrants as "digital stupidity" -- by assuming that when people decide to post online or send e-mails, they believe privacy is automatically applicable.

"People get frightened by change and they should be. They need courage to face the future these days, especially those who feel left behind." Prensky said. "People adapt instinctively and humans are very good at that. The young people live in the context; the older people see the changing context and struggle."

Digital poverty

As technology filters into every corner of the globe and tech cities spring up in some unlikely places from Bangalore to Tel Aviv, a new gulf is emerging to separate the digitally savvy from the disconnected: Poverty.

In India, over two-thirds of the population live on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank. But a United Nations report still says that mobile phones are more common than toilets, with nearly half of India's 1.2 billion population armed with a handset.

Nishant Shah, a director at the Centre for Internet and Society in India, told CNN that defining natives and immigrants by generation is a "serious concern." According to Shah, Prensky's views were formed from the "privileged" position of living in the U.S.

Shah added: "[Prensky's] observations may describe a generation gap that the U.S. faced, but if you transplant the same definition to other parts of the world, natives are sometimes indistinguishable from immigrants."

The real fear for Shah is the new hierarchies created by digital literacy and the class systems that will be shaped by access to digital technologies.

The call of the developing world

As mobile networks extend their reach and areas become increasingly urbanized, Western tech companies are seeking to tap markets with large populations.

Last year, Finnish phone maker Nokia released a range of smart phones targeted at consumers in emerging markets, particularly in Asia, to compete with cheaper Android devices.

But Shah argues bombarding a country with technology and infrastructure is not a rounded solution to the digital poverty problem.

India, for example, has connectivity and access in abundance, but the country continues to suffer from a generation of "digitally poor classes." He argues that simply providing the equipment does not help young people understand how that technology can better their lives without education and training.

Shah told CNN: "Just because young people have tech access in India, it doesn't make them digital natives." He added, "It creates digital outcasts -- people whose supposed problem of access to the world has been resolved."

Prensky, however, believes a "networked planet" is a sign developing nations will soon close the digital divide. Even those who don't yet have the technology still know that it exists, and will have it before long.

The world in 2020

By 2020, Prensky predicts people across the globe will be plugged into the "AORTA," -- Always On RealTime Access -- a term coined by Mark Anderson, the chief of the Strategic News Service -- specializing in technology news. A future in which people are constantly able to access information and news from anywhere on the planet.

Shah says that the works of science fiction may offer the most accurate insight into our futuristic society.

He said: "The presents that we live in, are the futures that our pasts have imagined."

"Let us hope that the technologies of the future will also be designed to protect that which is sacred, and that which is important in our own understanding of being human."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/cnn-december-8-2012-oliver-joy-what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-digital-native

We Have the Answer for You. So, what's the Question?

praskrishna — 2015-05-08T12:30:51Z

The Everyday Digital Native Video Contest invited everyone to send in videos that answered the question: who's the everyday digital native? Participants from all parts of the globe now have the answers.

Click here to view the videos and vote for your favorite! Voting ends March 31, 2012.

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/answer-for-you-what-is-the-question

We Are All Cyborgs

nishant — 2015-04-24T12:00:54Z

The cyborg reminds us that who we are as human beings is very closely linked with the technologies we use.

Nishant Shah's article was published in the Indian Express on April 29, 2012

If you look at any illustrated history of human civilisation, you will quickly realise that it is also a history of technology. From the discovery of fire by Homo sapiens to the contemporary homo digitalis, there is no escaping that technologies of different kinds have not only changed the way we live but also helped us realise what it means to be human. Often, we treat these technologies as external to us, thinking of them as tools that we deploy to perform a particular task. However, as our technologies become more transparent, intimate and customised, we realise that we are developing relationships with the technological devices that surround us. So, if your laptop crashes, you feel crippled. There are people who proclaim that they feel amputated without their cellphone. It is quite reasonable to feel lost without the information compass of the internet.

This relationship between human beings and technologies has been very concisely defined in the idea of a cyborg. A cyborg is a human-technology synthesis which enhances our capacities to live as human beings. While it might seem like a slightly new idea, once you realise that we constantly live with technologies and often internalise them in our bodies, it is not difficult to wrap our head around it. Think of people with pacemakers or prosthetic limbs or different implants in their bodies, who experience technologies as an integral part of their everyday life. Similarly, think of the wide range of technology apparatus that you depend on to live a “regular” human life. We have also seen iconic cyborg representations in popular movies — from the absolutely unforgettable Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2 to our very own dimpled Shah Rukh Khan as Ra.One — there has been a persistent imagining of the human being as we know it, evolving to become some sort of a super man, enhanced by advancements in digital technologies of virtual reality.

There has been a growing anxiety, almost a moral panic, about how technologies are alienating us, replacing face-time with inter-face time so that we are all growing “alone together”. There is also, across generations and users, a growing separation of those who work with technologies and those who don’t. There is much concern about the human becoming corrupt because of the ubiquitous presence of the pervasive and invasive technologies around us. In the face of these anxieties, the cyborg stands as a culturally significant and timely reminder that we, as human beings, are very closely linked with the technologies that we use. And that we need to stop thinking of technologies as merely gadgets and tools that surround us. The different objects that remind us of the presence of technology are not the same thing as technology itself. Technology is a way of thinking about things, a way of relating to the world around us. The most intrinsic forms of technologies are the ones that we don’t even recognise as a part of our innate mental make up.

Do this simple experiment. Right now, while you are reading this, do not look at any clock or time-measuring device and guess what time it is. Chances are that you will be, give or take a few minutes, more or less accurate. Even if you are temporally challenged, you will at least know what part of the day it is, morning, afternoon, evening or night. The point is that we are absolutely and completely creatures of time. We cannot think of ourselves outside of it and even when we might be dramatically wrong about it, there is no escaping the fact that we are always thinking of ourselves and the world around us through time.

We experience our lives and our relationships in cyclical notions of the clock’s face, thinking of our actions as borrowed from the future, lived in the present, and relegated to the archives of the past. It then, must come as a bit of a shock (it certainly did to me, the first time I was made to realise it) that time is not natural. Time is a human way of measuring a passage of actions. Time is a technology which has now become such a potent metaphor of life that we have forgotten to make the separation of the human and the technological.

And thus, whether you might be a tech-savvy digital native or a byte-fearing luddite, there is no denying the idea that when it comes to technologies of time, you are already a natural born cyborg. This ability of technologies to become transparent and an inalienable part of who we are forms cyborgs. The process through which they become transparent is not easily accessible, but it does begin by an internalisation of the technology’s processes in our everyday vocabulary. So the next time you think of yourself as a system that needs to be upgraded, or unable to pay attention because you don’t have enough bandwidth, remember that you are engaging in a flirtatious relationship with the digital. And slowly, but surely, we are all turning into cyborgs, as the new technologies rearrange patterns of our life and living.

digitalnative@expressindia.com

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/we-are-cyborgs

Vote for the Everyday Digital Native Video Contest!

praskrishna — 2015-05-08T12:32:00Z

The Centre for Internet & Society and Hivos are super excited to present the final videos in the Everyday Digital Native Video Contest. We invite readers to vote for the TOP 5 Videos. The finalists will each win EUR500! Voting closes March 31, 2012

Who’s the Everyday Digital Native? This global video contest has the answer

They effect social change through social media, place their communities on the global map, and share a spiritual connection with the digital world - Meet the Everyday Digital Native

The Everyday Digital Native video contest has got its pulse on what makes youths from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds connect with one another in the global community – it’s an affinity for digital technologies and Web 2.0-mediated platforms coupled with a drive to spearhead social change. The contest invited people from around the world to make a video that would answer the question, ‘Who is the Everyday Digital Native?’. Following a jury-based selection process, the final videos are now online and open for public voting.

Run by the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) with the support of Dutch NGO HIVOS, the contest will see the top five videos with the most votes declared winners on April 1, 2012. The 12 finalists in the video, who come from different parts of the globe, are each vying for the top prize of USD 500 and a chance to have their shorts screened in a film screening and panel discussion hosted by CIS.

Referring to the theme of the contest, Dr Nishant Shah, Director of Research and Co-founder of the Centre, says that the contest aims at highlighting the alternative users of digital technologies. These are people who are often not accounted for either in mainstream discourses of changemakers or in academic biopics on digital natives. “The 12 video proposals show that the everyday digital native does not wake up in the morning and think, ‘hmmm today I will change the world’. And yet, in their everyday lives, when they see the possibility of producing a change in their immediate environments, they turn to the digital to find networks that can start a change”, says Shah.

Apart from the top five public selections, the jury members will be instrumental in picking their two favorites among the finalists. Talking about the range of ideas that participants sent in jury member Leon Tan, a media-art historian, cultural theorist and psychoanalyst based in Gothenburg, Sweden, says, “The contest is an exciting project as it has the potential to portray the lives of digital natives from different corners of the world. The generosity of the contestants in creating video proposals is commendable as is the range of ideas suggested. The ideas address both the opportunities and risks of what we might call digital life.”

Adds Shashwati Talukdar, a filmmaker and jury member from India, “It was really interesting to see how different all the proposals were. Some of them were taking the notion of digital native as a personal one and some were very clearly political and sought an intervention in the real world. Dutch digital media artist and jury member Jeroen van Loon refers to a proposal from the USA where the participant wanted to explore the possibility of unplugging from his digital life. “It’s very interesting how digital natives question their own world. The proposals are good examples of how technology and culture constantly change each other. We can learn a lot from the global digital natives.”

Profiles of the finalists and their videos can be viewed here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/vote-for-digital-natives

Video Vortex # 9 Re:assemblies of Video

praskrishna — 2013-03-04T03:44:56Z

Nishant Shah is a speaker at this event organized by the Institute of Network Cultures, Post Media Lab, Moving Image Lab, Leuphana, et.al. The event is being held at Luneberg from February 28, 2013 to March 2, 2013.

Click to see the program flyer. Also see Nishant's key note at Video Vortex

Participants

Thursday February 28th / Donnerstag 28.02.2013 VIDEO VORTEX #9 Re:assemblies of Video + Analog@VIDEO VORTEX

confirmed speakers / bestätigte Referenten: Beth Coleman» , Seth Keen» , Edwin» , Thomas Østbye» , Andreas Treske» , Stephanie Hough» , Martin Katić» , Theresa Steffens» , Arndt Potdevin» , Robert M. Ochshorn» , Nan Haifen» , Viola Sarnelli» , Boris Traue» , Achim Kredelbach» , Dalida María Benfield» , Renée Ridgway» , Gabriel S Moses» , Nishant Shah»

Friday March 1st / Freitag 01.03.2013 VIDEO VORTEX #9 Re:assemblies of Video

confirmed speakers / bestätigte Referenten: Margarita Tsomou» , Sascha Simons» , Nelli Kambouri» , Pavlos Hatzopoulos» , Joshua Neves» , Gabriel Menotti» , Filippo Spreafico» , Caroline Heron» , Jonathan Shaw» , Jan Gerber» , Sebastian Luetgert» , Elric Milon» , Sebastian Luetgert» , Sascha Kluger» , Jamie King» , Stefano Sabatini» , Peter Snowdon» , Miya Yoshida» , Boaz Levin» , Azin Feizabadi» , Kaya Behkalam» , Jens Maier-Rothe» , Jasmina Metwaly», Graswurzel.tv» , Björn Ahrend» , Timo Großpietsch»

Saturday March 2nd / Samstag 02.03.2013 VIDEO VORTEX #9 Re:assemblies of Video

confirmed speakers / bestätigte Referenten: Vito Campanelli» , Robert M. Ochshorn» , Alejo Duque» , Lucía Egaña Rojas» , Andrew Clay» , Stefan Heidenreich» & Deborah Ligorio» , Cornelia Sollfrank»

Digital Natives

For the videos DNI-IV, visual artist Renée Ridgway and filmmaker Rick van Amersfoort interviewed digital natives from all over the world around four issues, juxtapositioning images with spoken content. The following 4 clips were specially edited teasers of the Digital Natives videos for public transport in Lueneburg. From 4 February to 4 March they run on the screens in public busses (between central station and university campus).

Renée Ridgway will show her ’collaborative meme’ in full length as part of the Video Vortex program at 16:30 on 28 February and discuss her project together with respondents Dalida Maria Benfield and Nishant Shah.

The first video, DNI addresses the construction of the digital native (DN) with comments, critiques and opinions from the interviewees, visualizing a shift in how digital natives are imaged and perceived.

The second video DNII focuses on the real vs. the digital whereby the division between physical reality and virtual reality is dismissed to build more comprehensive accounts of digital native practices.

The third clip DNIII explores the processes that produce possibilities and potentials for social change through political participation and the role that technologies play in defining civic action and social movements. What are the relationships that these technology-based identities and practices have with existing political legacies?

The last video DNIV combines connectivity, collaboration, inspiration and transformation but also reflects upon the limits of cyberspace, its borders and the eventual co-optation of technology by users.

DNI, DNII, DNIII, DNIV were commissioned by Hivos, Amsterdam and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/video-vortex-9-net-re-assemblies-of-video

Video Proposals: Top 14

praskrishna — 2013-09-09T01:11:40Z

Here are the ideas from our 14 digital native video contest finalists. Videos will soon be online! Voting begins from 10 March.

Joseph Francis

A young man gets ready to start his day: switching on his cable box, checking his Blackberry, listening to music, and microwaving his food. As he leaves, he turns on his iPod and sends a text message via his cell phone. Waiting for the train, he responds to emails and posts to Facebook. He sends a tweet and then gets to work. All day answering emails and phone calls while staring at a computer screen. Finally he ends his work day only to stare at a digital screen for train arrivals. Inside the train, he once again begins sending messages and tweets. Once he gets to his destination, he is told by an attractive woman to “unplug” and be with her. The End. Credits roll.

Marie Jude Bendiola

I come from a third world country where technology seemed to be hard to reach back in the 90s; especially by the not-so-privileged. As we progressed, technology has not only become ubiquitous (in malls, various institutions and technological hubs) but also, it has come to be used by the common man. My video will answer how technology bridges the gap between dreams and reality. It will be a fusion of documentary and re-enactment of real life events and dramas.

Cijo Abraham Mani

I want to convey the power of digital media by showcasing the reach of social media with specific examples from a tweet-a-thon panel discussion and #bloodaid tweets.

TJ K.M.

My video explores the spiritual aspect of digital technology and how rather than getting in the way of our spiritual expression, it is actually bringing us face to face with it, if only we choose to look. The video will be a mixture of live action and stop motion animation/puppetry where digital devices take on a transcendent character similar to nature spirits in various cultures. I plan to investigate the tendency to exclude digital devices and technology from being categorized alongside nature as if it is somehow exempt from or superior to this category. Using symbolism and motifs from various cultures such as the Native American Hopi, Balinese Hinduism and Japanese Shintoism, my video will create a world where the technology we use daily is viewed not just as a means for socio-cultural exchange and communication but is available for the nurturing of our souls if we so choose.

Mike Hickey

My video proposal would be centered on my involvement in the electronic music scene. Over the last couple of years, I have gained a large following across numerous platforms, including YouTube and Facebook that puts me as one of the top promoters of this genre. I am an admin on several Facebook pages that total around 200,000 fans combined. I am a very influential in the music I post and help shape this music scene to what it is.

Thomas Burks

We have a small production company in Birmingham, Alabama. I was hired on a year ago to do film and commercials for them as they expand into advertising and video coverage of events. We only have about 3 employees including myself, working out of our homes. We recently acquired a space to open a studio and retail location downtown where we live. We use Facebook, blogs, and viral marketing all the time to get our name out there. Our account executive is constantly monitoring our Facebook for client orders and bookings. We are beginning to use twitter to provide information more fluidly to people. We believe this might be a year of growth for our small company, as we are becoming able to provide much higher quality content. We're fully digital; constantly updating our websites and blogs, and I believe we would be able to tell a great digital story. We submit numerous small films and skits; we cover awesome concerts, and rely so heavily on the digital world to show our content. That will be the gist of our video.

John Musila

Map Kibera Trust is an organization based in Kenya’s Kibera slums. Using digital gadgets and technology, they have transformed the community by placing it on the map as it was only seen as forest when viewed on a map. They also film stories around the community and share them with the world on their YouTube channel and other social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Through this they have been able to highlight and raise awareness about the challenges the community faces. Our video would show Kibera’s role in bringing about change.

Andrés Felipe Arias Palma

I think many people are digital natives unknowingly. Being a digital native is a relationship with activism and society, not as they initially thought. It was a condition of being born in specific times and external factors. In the video, I will interview people about who and what is a digital native? How to use the Internet? What are the advantages and disadvantages for society where everything is run with the power of the Internet?

Joseph Gathecha

Black and White is a colour combination for the layman, but intensely they may be used in multiple ways or forms: as signs and symbols, as animations, decorations, and to convey myths, beliefs, taboos and many other concepts. Kibera’s slum, in the surburb of Nairobi, Kenya, is the perfect place to showcase this contrast of extremes and how digital technology is a thread connecting what I want to convey.

Martin Potter

Over a period of nearly four years, moving across small towns in Australia and South East Asia, I have seen the most extraordinary innovations at a local community level. My video will focus on these local stories with global impact. I am pursuing a PhD in participatory media and this will lend a uniquely academic perspective on the concept of collaboration, community life and innovation.

E. James Rajasekaran

I live in the temple town of Madurai in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. I am a social worker and the plight of people living in slims is something that my NGO is closely associated with. My video will bring out the efforts of the people who live in the slums of Madurai.

Anand Jha

Bangalore is home to a lot of technology start-ups. A lot of geeks, who find it limiting to work for corporations, are driving a very open source-oriented, frugally-built and extremely demanding culture. While their products are standing at the bleeding edge of technology, their personal lives too are constantly driven on the edge, every launch being a make or break day for them. The project would aim at capturing their stories, their frustration and motivation, looking at the possibilities of Indian software scene moving beyond the services and back-end office culture into a more risk prone but more passionate business of technology.

MJ

As a digital native living in a developing country l have carried out a series of both online and offline projects which have always strived to benefit Zimbabweans in a number of ways since 2000. These projects have increased my interactions with computers. I got married to the computer in 2000 when I bought my first PC; in a way, my relationship with a computer is now intimate. Even though this computer I bought was an old 386 machine made obsolete by faster Pentium III models, this did not affect my love for this computer. My video will focus on a dream-waking reality moment of my digital life.

Test User

I am a test user from the future

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/video-proposals

Unpacking Digital Natives from their Shiny Packaging

praskrishna — 2011-12-25T05:04:43Z

The ‘Digital natives’ concept is neither necessarily nor inherently positive, as YiPing Tsou highlights in her article Digital Natives in the Name of a Cause: From "Flash Mob" to "Human Flesh Search". The essay was published in the Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Book 2, To Think. Argyri Panezi reviews the essay.

In this article, the writer supports that China, despite having a plethora of hacker talents, does not conform to the typical paradigm of liberal, usually anti-government, group of digital natives. She explains that the so-called “red hackers” are working hand-in-hand with the dominant ideology, fighting against the enemy abroad while hunting down the enemy within who disrupts the ‘harmony’ (of the nation). Focusing on China’s digital culture, Tsou demonstrates that digital natives, despite what is commonly thought of them as a universal group, can also engage in far from civic-minded activities. The stories of Human Flesh Search as described in the article, gives flesh to this argument.

‘Human Flesh Search’ is a Chinese phenomenon of online crowdsourcing that targets ‘morality violators’ (the modern versions of medieval witches). Most importantly, the punishment meted out to these ‘violators’ is not only harsh (the mob versus an individual) but also reaches beyond cyberspace, affecting the real lives of the one who’s hunted, even affecting the lives of their family. All the examples given, illustrate how this ‘naming-and-shaming’ trend becomes an insidious calling card of the entire hacking society in China.

As Tsou explains, Human Flesh Searches mobilize masses of people online or offline to identify certain violators of ‘morality’ that the community seeks to punish because the ‘crimes’ might not be punishable by the law. Indeed, the Human Flesh Search stories bring in mind B-grade reality shows: as the first story goes, the real identity of a woman staring in a kitten-killing video is discovered and consequently, the woman is attacked both in cyberspace (via email, social media networks) and in real space (her residence, work place). Another story seems more serious, mainly from a political and legal perspective; a student expressing himself in favor of a Korean ruling in a sports game is immediately dealt by the online community as a traitor who has to pay for what he has said online. What seems to follow, within these stories, are blatant violations of privacy and freedom of speech.

What message do the Human Flesh Searches stories convey? What are these stories teaching us? While Internet enthusiasts have connected digital natives with progressive liberal movements, it is also the case that some can be (ab)using the powers of technology, and principally the power of crowd-sourcing, engaging in phenomena that even recap medieval witch-hunt. It is clear that the rationale of the author is not to call for more regulation or censorship online, but rather to point out that technology and the Internet is merely a tool, and as every tool it can have both good and bad uses; a knife might be used safely in a kitchen, it can save lives in the hands of a doctor, and can take lives in the hand of a murderer.

Tsou cleverly alternates between the phrases ‘wisdom of the crowd’, ‘crowd-sourcing’ and ‘irrationality of the crowds’. While the majority can collaborate to get brilliant results, it can also quickly become a tyranny against anything ‘different’, ‘irregular’ or ‘immoral’. Wikipedia is a famous example of the first (a success story of mass collaboration) but also the second (see the editing wars on Wikipedia talk pages).

In all, Tsou effectively reminds us that the aspiring digital stories of peer-to-peer culture and civic empowerment, including technology-mobilized revolutions such as the recent examples in the Middle East and elsewhere, do have a counter side, what the author calls “the dark force of digital natives”. The importance of this realization is immense. Internet romanticism can be at the very least naïve, and at most dangerous as it gives space to the abusers to continue their work using a tool that is wrongly considered solely equalizing, empowering, liberating.

Argyri Panezi, a native of Greece, studied law at the University of Athens and at Harvard Law School (focusing on issues of Internet law and policy), now practicing as an attorney at law in Brussels, Belgium.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/unpacking-from-shiny-packaging

Tweet a Review of Digital AlterNatives with a Cause Books

praskrishna — 2012-01-07T14:42:32Z

Essays from 'Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?' books are getting reviewed. We invite everyone to participate in this book review event! Deadline: January 31

Read one essay from the 'Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?' books published by the Centre for Internet & Society and HIVOS.
Download PDFs here.

Post a review on your blog

Tweet the review's link on Twitter using #TweetReview and copy @cis_india

For e.g. "Unpacking the shiny packaging of Digital Natives" Book 2 To Think #TweetReview http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/unpacking-from-shiny-packaging @cis_india
Send us a link to your view

For more details about the event and the essays you want to review, email: nilofar.ansh@gmail.com

Tweet-a-Review is a monthly event organized as part of the 'Digital Natives with a Cause?' project.

Read previous reviews here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/events/tweet-a-review

To Act or to Watch

guerassimova.lyuba — 2012-02-17T05:18:13Z

I want to explore the border between the urge to act and the collective irresponsibility created by online media. In initial stages of the spread of digital communication methods, they can empower, and if used smartly, they can create changes even in the more digitalized communities/countries. However, there is a big 'but': collective irresponsibility - the potential for change has in many societies become diffused into pointless social networking, which creates only passive supporters for a cause but does not lead to any positive action. I want to look at the choices we have to make and how we can learn from communities that are not so digitized in order to 'remember' where our power for change lies.

Video Genre: Documentary / film

Lyuba Guerassimova

Location
Bulgaria

Age
25

Profession
Student

Bio

Hi there! I am a 25 year old student from Bulgaria and my video has been inspired from all the revolutions happening around us and how their success or failure is attributed to Facebook, Twitter, etc. However, I have remained very skeptical, even more so when it comes to my country and online campaigns - the public has been relying on the Internet as a method of self expression but has forgotten how to act. As a result, from 10 000 supporters online, only 50 show up for a protest. It is inspired by the overall theme of Book 3 of the Digital AlterNatives with a Cause (published by Centre for Internet & Society and HIVOS) and the essay stories where communities are empowered by technology.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/to-act-or-to-watch

The Write Stuff

praskrishna — 2011-11-14T03:32:00Z

“Digital natives are no longer those youngsters who fit in the bracket of a Harvard return professional, glued to their PC all day,” says Nishant Shah, director of research, Centre for Internet and Society, a Bengaluru-based organisation. For Nishant, and many youngsters across the globe, digital natives are not any of those secluded geeks who spend hours on the Internet. “I am a homemaker, yet I am a digital native,” says Nilofer Ansher, a community manager who manages members from across three continents.

A housewife, a young college graduate, a freelance writer, an NGO professional and many other individuals are behind the Internet activist flurry. Digital Natives, Fair Observer, PC Tech Magazine are just a few of the newsletters and forums that are connecting youngsters from across the globe and are mobilising them to do something beyond information gathering.

Youth-related discussions, inventions in make-shift laboratories from the backyards of homes in Nigeria and action against corruption across the globe; these are just some of the activities that these netizens are involved in. “The idea was to build a network of people from across the globe who are passionate about what they do. We are not talking countries, it is all to do with people with similar interests,” says Shah, who collaborated with Hivos to create the online platform called Digital Natives.

The members collaborate online to write about various issues. But these online movements can have serious repercussions, “In fact, Alaa Abdel-Fattah, one of Egypt’s most vocal activists and bloggers, has been detained. He is our team member. We are now running a campaign supporting his early release,” says Ansher who doubles up as a co-editor of one of these newsletters. Various discussions have led to solutions. “My first challenge was to create a communication system for illiterate farmers. But I wanted a definite solution. So another member from mobile active community sent a message and it worked and we are following the same system,” says Ajay Kumar, manager, ICT operations.

This article was published in the Deccan Chronicle on 14 November 2011. It can be read here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/write-stuff

The Stranger with Candy

nishant — 2015-04-17T11:00:04Z

Beware of online threats, as the distinction between friends and foes is false on the internet.

Nishant Shah's column was published in the Indian Express on June 16, 2013.

My parents and I were in Oslo, when after a long day in the city, we returned to an intriguing situation. My father, who is quite a digital migrant and uses the internet for daily exchanges, found an email from an uncle waiting in his inbox. The email begins with the uncle travelling to Madrid, Spain, to help an ailing cousin who needs a surgery and requested that my father help the writer, his cousin, with €2,500. The email ended with a note of urgency, "I will check my email every 30 minutes for your reply".

My father, who was by now rather agitated, asked my brother and me what could be done. People asking for money over email is the modern day equivalent of strangers bearing candy in a car. We were both immediately wary and when we saw the mail, we knew that it was a scam. Somebody had cracked into somebody's account and was now sending out emails to everybody in their contact list, hoping to make a quick buck. The only action we took was to inform the relative that his account seemed to have been compromised and that he needed to protect it.

This incident, in the context of disallowing children below 13 years on Facebook in India, got me thinking. How do we trust somebody, or something online? There is a presumption that digital natives instinctively know how to deal with dubious situations online. True, one seldom hears of a digital native falling for scams of Nigerian princes offering their inheritance or widows of bank managers in Saudi Arabia wanting to transfer millions to their bank accounts. But that might be because digital natives live more in gift and attention economies and have always been suspicious of anybody waving a wad of notes.

However, we do know that the young are often susceptible to other predators on the Web. While it might occasionally seem that the West's paranoia around paedophiles online, preying on young children as sexual victims might have reached the limits of logical absurdity, it remains indisputable that young adults haven't yet developed the codes to trust somebody online. We encounter countless stories of the young who endanger their futures by documenting their follies and foibles in the unforgiving and unforgetting space of the internet. Let us not forget the names of Adnan Patrawala and Koushambi Layek, who fell prey to strangers pretending to be friends and lovers on the social networking site Orkut.

I am not suggesting that the World Wide Web is any more dangerous than the brick and mortar world that we live in. Our flesh- and-bone bodies are under equal danger in our everyday lives. But over time, we have learned and have been taught how to decode conditions that might harm us. We have learned to distance ourselves from strangers with grins, and people who look hostile. The authorities have created visible signposts of danger all around us — from red traffic lights to surveillance cameras — that constantly remind us that safety is not the default mode of our existence but something that we need to incessantly create for ourselves.

The digital world has no such guidelines. The mammoth corporations, which now govern a large part of the cyberspace, individually try to create structures that would save us from falling victim to such attacks. So the filter on your Gmail account is an intelligent system that scans every byte of information that goes in and out of your inbox, learning both your behaviour patterns and your interaction modes, to filter out not only the obvious hoax emails but also things that you might deem as clutter. Smart browsers like Firefox identify IP addresses that are regularly abusive and warn us about installing any software that might originate there. On Facebook, certain pictures and posts with offensive content are censored even before they get into your data stream. The friendship algorithm, further ensures that you increasingly see content from your 'close friends' rather than strangers. In all these mechanisms, which use big data mining tools to recognise harmful patterns as well as encourage you to devise your own vouchsafes, there is an implicit understanding that the people we know will do us less harm. They are designed to keep out unwanted or potentially harmful people because it might lead to danger or conflict.

However, as we saw in the case of the email to my father, the distinctions between strangers and friends on the internet, is a forced one. When all digital avatars are a performance of a kind, it becomes easy for an imposter to take on that identity. The only credentials we have of somebody's authenticity are often their user accounts and email — data which can be stolen and manipulated effortlessly. And increasingly, we have learned that when it comes to the online world, the people who infect us with viruses, rob us of our money and crash our digital worlds are people who are our 'friends'.

While we shall learn through experience and through stories, there remains a need to develop a larger social discussion around trust online. This debate cannot be whether content needs to be censored online or whether certain groups should be allowed to get on to social network systems. Instead, it has to be a debate that realises the notions of friendship and trust, of networks and connections, are not merely extensions of the physical into the digital. On the infobahn, these are new modes of operation and being and it is not going to be easy to create a handbook of online safety. What we will need is an involved and inter-generational debate about the social, political and economic safety online and create signposts that remind us of the dangers of being online.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/indian-express-june-16-2013-nishant-shah-the-stranger-with-candy

The Rules of Engagement

nishant — 2015-04-24T11:48:54Z

Why the have-nots of the digital world can sometimes be mistaken as trolls. I am not sure if you have noticed, but lately, the people populating our social networks have started to be more diverse than before.

Nishant Shah's column was published in the Indian Express on October 29, 2012.

Oh, sure, we are still talking about a fairly middle-class hang-out that happens largely in English and is restricted to people in urban environments who have the economic and cultural capital of access. But if you browse through your friends’ lists and compare it with, say, the network from five years ago, you will realise that the age demography has changed quite dramatically. I am not suggesting that the Web was only the realm of the young – let us face it, the people who actually created the infrastructure of the Web were not tiny tots. However, with Web 2.0 at the turn of the millennium, we have had an extraordinary focus on young people online.

But as the networks grow to include more people, there are now a lot of people online, who might not be the 16-year-old BlackBerry-wielding digital native, nor be in the “business of internet” but are finding a space for themselves, tentatively and steadily negotiating with this new space. Some of it might be because, those of us who were new kids on the block in the Nineties, are now older by a decade and are still on the block, but replaced by newer kids around the block. Some of it might be because there is an ease of access as portable computing devices grow more personal and get more people to use their smartphones as a gateway into the online worlds. But a lot of it is actually because the fold of the Web is expanding. The digital spaces of conversation are being integrated into our everyday lives and practices, replacing older forms of media and information structures and processes of social and cultural belonging.

And so, even though the penetration of the interwebz is not as rapid in countries like India as one would have hoped for, we do see a wide age group of people coming online, forming networks, and entering into conversations. I hadn’t really realised this, even though I was adding them to my social networks, that the digital immigrants are now here, and they are here to stay. It suddenly surfaced in my thoughts, because I recently heard a few narratives which made me dwell on the effort and the learning that one takes for granted but is a prerequisite for belonging to these new social spaces.

One of the first complaints I heard was about a hostility that many digital immigrants face when they start engaging with the social media. They follow the manuals. They read the FAQs. They look at patterns, and learn. And yet, even when they seem to be doing what seems to be exactly what everybody else is doing, they are often told that they got it all wrong. This is bewildering for many, because they cannot really see the difference. And the reason is that the social web is governed by a whole lot of unwritten rules and codes, which clearly are the rites of passage into the online world. These are not things that can be taught. These are not written in a guideline that tells you how to behave on Facebook or how to sift through the live-streams on Twitter. It is a fiercely guarded set of dos and don’ts which clearly distinguish between the digital natives and the digital immigrants, reinforcing exclusivity and exclusion. And when the digital immigrant violates these rules, they are often faced with a sneer, a sarcastic comment, or a dismissal as “not with it”.

The second thing I have repeatedly noticed is “calling troll” to people who do not always know these rules. Trolling is not new to the world of the internet. People who disrupt conversations and discussions by posting provocative or tangential information, by voicing hateful opinions, by passing harsh judgments, or sometimes by willfully breaking the rules of the communities, in order to seek attention and interrupt the flow of conversations are called trolls. Trolls are universally frowned upon and trolling wars often take up epic proportions because people get emotionally invested in them. Trolls are often shamed publicly, their mistakes brought into an embarrassing spot-light and ridiculed in back-channels or even in public discussions.

Calling somebody a troll presumes that the user is conversant with the rules of the game and is then breaking them, working with the idea that if you are online, you are naturally a digital native. The digital immigrants often create noob mistakes that can appear troll-like but are not intended to be so, and are often on the receiving end of a community’s hostility. And it is time, now that our online networks are growing, for us to realise that our presumptions about who is online need to change. If we are looking at an inclusive Web, we need to stop imagining that the person on the other side of the interface is necessarily like us, and develop new networks of nurture, which allows the digital immigrants safe spaces to experiment, make mistakes, and learn like the best of us. The next time, before you call somebody a troll, see if it might just be somebody learning the tricks of the trade. If they are doing something wrong, just politely point it out to them. And remember, acceptance is not only for people who are like us, but about people who are markedly unlike us.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/india-express-news-nishant-shah-oct-29-2012-the-rules-of-engagement