Centre for Internet and Society

Collaborative Projects Programme

nishant — 2011-08-23T03:04:56Z

The Centre for Internet and Society recognises collaboration and consultation as its primary mode of engaging with research and intervention. The Collaborative Projects Programme (CPP) is CIS’ platform for partnering (intellectually, logistically, financially, and administratively) with other organisations, individuals and practitioners in projects which are of immediate concern to the work that CIS is committed to.

The Collaborative Projects Programme also expands the scope of research to produce a synergy between research and praxis. The CPP is, in many ways, the in-house research that CIS undertakes, in collaboration and consultation with other organisations, institutions and individuals who have a stake and a say in the field of Internet and Society. The CPP is not bound by any theme of programmatic modalities and is envisioned more as a way for CIS to extend its field and establish a strong network with other exciting spaces in the Global South.

The Collaborative Projects Programme can include, but is not limited to, organising of large conferences or workshops; developing tools for better research and advocacy; data mining towards a specific goal that complements CIS’ vision; producing original monographs/publications/books targeted at different audiences; experimenting with new technologies to affect policy and usage; implementing pilot studies and instances of existing ideas; developing schemes to integrate education and technology; public intervention and awareness campaigns geared towards particular outcomes; celebrating certain aspects of internet technologies; engaging with digital natives; and creating new environments of learning and participation online.

The CPP is NOT a grant making programme. However, we are interested in partnering on new and innovative ideas and would welcome conversations with people and organisations in the field. If you have an interesting idea that you think fits our larger vision, please contact us and we can begin the discussions.

List of Projects under the Collaborative Projects Programme:

1. The Promise of Invisibility: Technology and the City - A seven month research project initiated by Nishant Shah, in collaboration with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Shanghai University, enabled by a grant from the Asia Scholarship Foundation, Bangkok.

2. Disability, Learning and Digital Participation - in partnership with Inclusive Planet

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/research/grants/collaborative-projects-programme

i4D Interview: Social Networking and Internet Access

nishant — 2011-09-22T12:51:57Z

Nishant Shah, the Director for Research at CIS, was recently interviewed in i4D in a special section looking at Social Networking and Governance, as a lead up to the Internet Governance Forum in December, in the city of Hyderabad.

Mechanism of Self-Governance Needed for Social Networks

Should social networking sites be governed, and if yes, in what way?

A call for either monitoring or censoring Social Networking Sites has long been proved ineffectual, with the users always finding new ways of circumventing the bans or the blocks that are put into place. However, given the ubiquitous nature of SNS and the varied age-groups and interests that are represented there, governance, which is non-intrusive and actually enables a better and more effective experience of the site, is always welcome. The presumed notion of governance is that it will set processes and procedures in place which will eventually crystallise into laws or regulations. However, there is also another form of governance - governance as provided by a safe-keeper or a guardian, somebody who creates symbols of caution and warns us about being cautious in certain areas. In the physical world, we constantly face these symbols and signs which remind us of the need to be aware and safe. Creation of a vocabulary of warnings, signs and symbols that remind us of the dangers within SNS is a form of governance that needs to be worked out. This can be a participatory governance where each community develops its own concerns and addresses them. What is needed is a way of making sure that these signs are present and garner the attention of the user.

How do we address the concerns that some of the social networking spaces are not "child safe"?

The question of child safety online has resulted in a raging debate. Several models, from the cybernanny to monitoring the child's activities online ,have been suggested at different times and have more or less failed. The concerns about what happens to a child online are the same as those about what happens to a child in the physical world. When the child goes off to school, or to the park to play, we train and educate them about things that they should not be doing -- suggesting that they do not talk to strangers, do not take sweets from strangers, do not tell people where they live, don't wander off alone -- and hope that these will be sufficient safeguards to their well being. As an added precaution, we also sometimes supervise their activities and their media consumption. More than finding technical solutions for safety online, it is a question of education and training and some amount of supervision to ensure that the child is complying with your idea of what is good for it. A call for sanitising the internet is more or less redundant, only, in fact, adding to the dark glamour of the web and inciting younger users to go and search for material which they would otherwise have ignored.

What are the issues, especially around identities and profile information privacy rights of users of social networking sites?

The main set of issues, as I see it, around the question of identities, is the mapping of the digital identities to the physical selves. The questions would be : What constitutes the authentic self? What is the responsibility of the digital persona? Are we looking at a post-human world where online identities are equally a part of who we are and are sometimes even more a part of who we are than our physical selves? Does the older argument of the Original and the Primary (characteristics of Representation aesthetics) still work when we are talking about a world of 'perfect copies' and 'interminable networks of selves' (characteristics of Simulation)? How do we create new models of verification, trust and networking within an SNS? Sites like Facebook and Orkut, with their ability to establish looped relationships between the users, and with the notion of inheritance (¨friend of a friend of a friend of a friend¨), or even testimonials and open 'walls' and 'scraps' for messaging, are already approaching these new models of trust and friendship.

How do we strike a balance between the freedom of speech and the need to maintain law and order when it comes to monitoring social networking sites?

I am not sure if the 'freedom of speech and expression' and the 'maintaining of law and order' need to be posited as antithetical to each other. Surely the whole idea of 'maintaining law and order' already includes maintaining conditions within which freedom of speech and expression can be practiced. Instead of monitoring social networking sites to censor and chastise (as has happened in some of the recent debates around Orkut, for example), it is a more fruitful exercise to ensure that speech, as long as it is not directed offensively towards an individual or a community, needs to be registered and heard. Hate speech of any sort should not be tolerated but that is a fact that is already covered by the judicial systems around the world.

What perhaps, is needed online, is a mechanism of self-governance where the community should be able to decide the kinds of actions and speech which are valid and acceptable to them. People who enter into trollish behaviour or hate speak, automatically get chastised and punished in different ways by the community itself. To look at models of better self-governance and community mobilisation might be more productive than producing this schism between freedom of speech on the one hand and the maintenance of law and order on the other.

Link to original article on i4donline.net

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/i4d-interview-social-networking-and-internet-access

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

Digital Natives Workshop in Taipei: Only a Few Seats Left!!!

praskrishna — 2011-08-04T10:29:26Z

The Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with the Frontier Foundation is holding a three day Digital Natives workshop in Taipei from 16 to 18 August, 2010. The three day workshop will serve as an ideal platform for the young users of technology to share their knowledge and experience of the digital and Internet world and help them learn from each other’s individual experiences.

Everybody has a story to tell, and with the Internet, it is possible to tell the story and be heard. Young people around the world use digital technologies to find a voice, an expression, a creative output and a space for dialogue. Gone are the days when the young were only to be seen and not heard. In the Web 2.0 world, the young are seen, heard and are making a dramatic change in the world that we live in.

As Internet and digital technologies become more widespread, the world is shrinking, time is replaced by Internet time, we are constantly connected and intricately linked to our contexts, our people, our cultures and our networks. And you, yes YOU are a part of this change. In fact, as Digital Natives – people who have found technologies as central to their lives – you are directly affecting the lives of many, sometimes even without knowing about it.

An Open Call for Participation

The Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore, India) in collaboration with the Frontier Foundation (Taipei, Taiwan) are calling out to young technology users to share stories about how they have tried to change things around them with the use of digital and Internet technologies. Conversely, if you feel that the presence of these technologies has significantly changed you in some way, we want to hear about that too! These can be stories where you have made a significant impact by initiating campaigns or movements for a particular cause, stories where you have used technologies to cope with problems in your personal and social life through your online persona in the virtual World Wide Web or stories where a small blog you started, or a facebook group you created, or a plurk network that you started, or a discussion group that you participated in, led to a change that has a story to tell.

The three day workshop will select 20 participants from all around Asia and in the Middle East to come and share these stories, to interact with facilitators and scholars who have worked in different countries and areas, and to form a network of collaboration and support. We will give your stories a face, a voice and a platform where they can be heard in your own voice, in your own style and in your own formats. Participants can fill in an application form (as given below) and forward it to digitalnatives@cis-india.org by 15th July 2010.

Simultaneously a website will also be hosted online where the Digital Natives will contribute to the content. Selected participants will be encouraged to document in it. Expenses relevant to the project will be granted to the selected participants.

Application Form

Name:
Gender:
Age:
Primary language of communication:
Other languages you can read and write:
Email:
Postal address:
Describe your Internet related experience / initiative(s) in 300 words. Furnish with URLs where necessary. Optionally, if images and videos are part of the description, then upload them in a high resolution version to a secure website and provide the URL.
Write in a few sentences about your expectation from the workshop.
I declare that the above information is true to the best of my knowledge.
I agree that Digital Natives will use the material I have provided for public use.

Please note that the information you provide will be kept for purposes of the Digital Natives project. Materials which you submit will be used for reporting to sponsors and for public use relevant to the project.

Dates: 16, 17 and 18 August, 2010
Venue: Taipei (Taiwan)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/open-call

Beyond the Digital: Understanding Digital Natives with a Cause

maesy — 2012-03-13T10:43:37Z

Digital natives with a cause: the future of activism or slacktivism? Maesy Angelina argues that the debate is premature given the obscured understanding on youth digital activism and contends that an effort to understand this from the contextualized perspectives of the digital natives themselves is a crucial first step to make. This is the first out of a series of posts on her journey to explore new insights to understand youth digital activism through a research with The Blank Noise Project under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge Programme.

The last decade has witnessed an escalating interest among academics, policy makers, and other practitioners on the intersection between youth, activism, and the new media technologies, which resulted in two narratives: one of doubt and the other of hope. The ‘hope’ narrative hinges on the new plethora of avenues for activism at the young people’s disposal and the bulge of the population, stating that the contemporary forms of youth activism represent new ways of conceiving and doing activism in the present and the future (see, for example, UN DESA, 2005). The ‘doubt’ narrative, on the other hand, questions to what extent the digital activism can contribute to broader social change (Collin, 2008) and some proponents of this view even call it ‘slacktivism’, stating that online activism is only effective if accompanied with real life activism (Morozov, 2009).

Before assessing the potentials of youth’s digital activism to contribute to social change, it is imperative to first gain a comprehensive understanding about this emerging form of activism. A brief review of existing literature on the topic found that most of the analyses are centered on three perspectives, each with its own approach, strengths, and weaknesses: the technology centered, the new social movements centered, and the youth centered perspectives.

The technology centered perspective places a great emphasis on the instrumental role of the internet and new media (see, for instance, Kassimir, 2005; Shirkey, 2007; Brooks and Hodkinson, 2008). It discusses how internet savvy young people are able to exercise their activism differently, because the technology can remove obstacles to organizing, provide a new platform for visibility and make transnational networking easier. In this perspective, the Internet and new media technologies are seen as enabling tool sand the web is viewed as a new space to promote activism. However, this perspective mainly stipulates that there is already a formulaic form of activism that can be transferred from the actual, physical sphere to the virtual arena; it does not consider that the changes caused by the way the youth are using technologies in their daily lives may also create new meanings and forms of activism. This perspective is the most dominant in literature on the topic, being the lens used by the pioneering studies on youth, Internet, and activism.

The new social movements centered perspective goes beyond that and looks at how new meanings and forms of politics and activism are created as the result of the way people are using new media technologies and the Internet. This perspective is leading the recently emerging literature on the topic and emphasizes on the trend of being concerned on issues related to everyday democracy and the favour towards self organized, autonomous, horizontal networks (for examples, see Bennett, 2003; Martin, 2004; Collin, 2008). However, this perspective treats young people merely as ‘vessels’ of the new activism and neglect to examine how their lives have been shaped by the use of new media technologies and the Internet.

The youth centered perspective, represented for example by Juris and Pleyers (2009), acknowledges that ICTs have always been part of young people’s lives and that it intersects with other factors in shaping how they conceive politics and activism. Most of the studies in this perspective were done with youth activists in existing transnational social justice movements, such as the global anti-capitalism or environmental movements. Nevertheless, this perspective mainly views youth activists as ‘becomings’ by defining them as the younger layer of actors in a multi-generational group that will be future leaders of the movement. There are very few researches on autonomous youth movements that are created and consist of young people themselves and look at the youth as political actors in its own right. In addition, the majority of studies also focused on the youth as individuals but not as a collective force.

In addition to the shortcomings of each perspective, there are also common gaps in the current broader body of knowledge on the intersection of youth, new media technologies, and activism.

Firstly, existing researches tend to define activism as concrete actions, such as protests and campaigns, and the values represented by such actions. It neglects other elements that constitute activism together with the actions and values, such as the issue taken up by the action, the ideologies underlying the formulation of action, and the actors behind the activism (Sherrod, 2005; Kassimir, 2005). Divorcing these elements from the analysis gave only a partial view of what youth digital activism is.

Secondly, the majority of studies zoomed into the novelty of new media technologies and how they are being used as a point of departure to investigate the topic. This arguably stems from an adult-centric, pre-digital point of view, which overlooks the fact that internet and new media has always been ‘technology’ for most young people just as how the radio and television have always been ‘technology’ for the previous generation (Shah and Abraham, 2009). This way of thinking divorces the ‘digital’ from the ‘activism’ in digital activism; consequently, it ignores all the other factors that are causing and shaping youth activism and fails to capture how youth actors themselves are viewing or giving meaning to this digital activism.

Finally, researches on the issue skew excessively on developed countries. It must be acknowledged that the ‘digital divide’, or the unequal access to and familiarity with technology based on gender, class, caste, education, economic status or geographical location, in developing countries is deeper and that the digitally active youth are a privileged minority. Yet, a neglect to understand their activism also means a failure to understand why and how the elite who are often perceived to be politically apathetic are engaging with their community to create social change.

The weaknesses identified above demonstrate that our understanding on this particular form of contemporary youth activism is currently obscured. Hence, the two narratives of ‘hope’ and ‘doubt’ lose their relevance given that the subject of assessment, the digital youth activism, is not even clearly understood.

Based on the above overview of the limitations, it is imperative to find a new way to approach to understand the phenomenon of digital youth activism. I will explore the possibilities of such an approach with the following arguments as the starting point.

Firstly, I argue that the key limitation lies on the adult-centric perspective in viewing youth’s engagement with new media technologies, thus what is essential is to go beyond the ‘digital’ and focus on the ‘activism’ part of youth digital activism. Secondly, I argue that exploration of the issue from the standpoint of the youth political actors themselves is crucial to counter the adult-centric perspective dominating the literature on this topic. Thirdly, since so many researches divorce the youth from the context of their activism, it is crucial to focus on a particular case study to a tease out the nuances of youth digital activism.

I have the opportunity to explore the approach through a study with The Blank Noise Project, an initiative to address the problem of street sexual harassment in public spaces that originated in 2003 in Bangalore. It has since expanded into nine cities in India with over 2,000 volunteers, all young people between 17-30 years of age. Known for their unique public art street interventions as well as their savvy online presence, The Blank Noise Project was also chosen because its growth and sustainability over the past seven years are a testament to its legitimacy and relevance for youth in India.

The research does not aim to assess the contribution of The Blank Noise Project to social change nor does it claim to represent all forms of youth digital activism in India. Rather, it aims to offer insights on one of the forms of digital natives joining forces for a cause. The research is interested in the following questions: how do young people involved in the Blank Noise articulate their politics? Who are their audience? What are their strategies? What is their conception of the public sphere? How do they organize themselves? How do they represent themselves to others? How do they see and give meaning to their involvement with the Blank Noise? How can we make sense of their initiative? While ‘activism’ is the popular term that is also used in this research, is their initiative a form of activism or is it something else altogether? More importantly, how do these young people define it by themselves? For the next few months, I will share stories, questions, and reflections that emerge along my journey of exploring those questions with The Blank Noise Project on the CIS blog.

This is the first 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.

References:

Bennett, W.L. (2007) ‘Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age’, paper presented at

the OECD/ INDIRE Conference on Millenial Learners, Florence, Italy (5-6 March).

Brooks, R. and Hodkinson, P. (2008) ‘Introduction’, Journal of Youth Studies Vol. 11:5,

p. 473 – 479

Collin, P. (2008) ‘The internet, youth participation policies, and the development of

young people’s political identities in Australia’, Journal of Youth Studies Vol. 11:5, p. 527 - 542

Juris, J.S. and Pleyers, G.H. (2009) ‘Alter-activism: Emerging cultures of participation

among young global justice activists’, Journal of Youth Studies Vol. 12 (1): p. 57-

75.

Kassimir, R. (2006) ‘Youth Activism: International and Transnational’, in Sherrod,

L.R., Flanagan, C.A. and Kassimir, R. (eds.) Youth Activism: An International

Encyclopedia, p. 20-28. London: Greenwood Press.

Martin, G. (2004) ‘New Social Movements and Democracy’, in Todd, M.J. and Taylor,

G. (eds.) Democracy and Participation: Popular protests and new social movements, p. 29-54. London: Merlin Press.

Morozov, E. (2009) ‘The brave new world of slacktivism’. Accessed 19 May 2010 <

http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/05/19/the_brave_new_world_of_slacktivism>

Shah, N. and Abraham, S. (2009) ‘Digital Natives with a Cause? A Knowledge

Survey and Framework’. Accessed 7 April 2010 < http://www.hivos.net/Hivos-Knowledge-Programme/Themes/Digital-Natives-with-a-Cause/News/New-Publication-Digital-Natives-with-a-Cause>

Sherrod, L.R. (2006) ‘Youth Activism and Civic Engagement’, in Sherrod, L.R.,

Flanagan, C.A. and Kassimir, R. (eds.) Youth Activism: An International

Encyclopedia, p. 2-10. London: Greenwood Press.

Shirkey, C. (2008) Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens and People Come

Together. New York: Penguin Books

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs / UN DESA (2005)

‘World Youth Report 2005: Young People Today and in 2015’. Accessed 7 April 2010 <http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unyin/documents/wyr05book.pdf>

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/beyond-the-digital-understanding-digital-natives-with-a-cause

Digital Natives : Talking Back

nishant — 2015-05-15T11:50:19Z

One of the most significant transitions in the landscape of social and political movements, is how younger users of technology, in their interaction with new and innovative technologised platforms have taken up responsibility to respond to crises in their local and immediate environments, relying upon their digital networks, virtual communities and platforms. In the last decade or so, the digital natives, in universities as well as in work spaces, as they experimented with the potentials of internet technologies, have launched successful socio-political campaigns which have worked unexpectedly and often without precedent, in the way they mobilised local contexts and global outreach to address issues of deep political and social concern. But what do we really know about this Digital Natives revolution?

Press Release

Youth are often seen as potential agents of change for reshaping their own societies. By 2010, the global youth population is expected reach almost 1.2 billion of which 85% reside in developing countries. Unleashing the potential of even a part of this group in developing countries promises a substantially impact on societies. Especially now when youths thriving on digital technologies flood universities, work forces, and governments and could facilitate radical restructuring of the world we live in. So, it’s time we start listening to them.

Because of the age bias and the dependence of a large section of Digital Natives around the world, on structures of authority, there has always been a problem of power that has restricted or reduced the scope of their practice and intervention. For younger Digital Natives, Parental authority and the regulation from schools often becomes a hindrance that thwarts their ambitions or ideas. Even when they take the initiative towards change, they are often stopped and at other times their practices are dismissed as insignificant. In other contexts, because of existing laws and policies around Internet usage and freedom of expression, the voices of Digital Natives get obliterated or chastised by government authorities and legal apparatuses which monitor and regulate their practices. The workshop organised at the Academia Sinica brings in 28 participants from contested contexts – be it the micro level of the family or the paradigmatic level of governance – to discuss the politics, implications and processes of ‘Talking Back’.

What does it mean to Talk Back? Who do we Talk Back against? Are we alone in our attempts or a part of a larger community? How do we use digital technologies to find other peers and stake-holders? What is the language and vocabulary we use to successfully articulate our problems? How do we negotiate with structures of power to fight for our rights? These are the kind of questions that the workshop poses. The workshop focuses on uncovering the circuitous routes and ways by which Digital Natives have managed to circumvent authorities in order to make themselves heard. The workshop also dwells on what kind of support structures need to be developed at global levels for Digital Natives to engage more fruitfully, with their heads held high and minds without fear, with their immediate environments.

The proceedings of the first workshop in Taipei, 16-18th August, 2010 are available at http://digitalnatives.in/

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

Political is as Political does

nishant — 2011-08-04T10:30:51Z

The Talking Back workshop has been an extraordinary experience for me. The questions that I posed for others attending the workshop have hounded me as they went through the course of discussion, analysis and dissection. Strange nuances have emerged, certain presumptions have been questioned, new legacies have been discovered, novel ideas are still playing ping-pong in my mind, and a strange restless excitement – the kind that keeps me awake till dawning morn – has taken over me, as I try and figure out the wherefore and howfore of things. I began the research project on Digital Natives in a condition of not knowing, almost two years ago. Since then, I have taken many detours, rambled on strange paths, discovered unknown territories and reached a mile-stone where I still don’t know, but don’t know what I don’t know, and that is a good beginning.

The researcher in his heaven, all well with the world

This first workshop is not merely a training lab. For me, it was the extension of the research inquiry, and collaboratively producing some frames of reference, some conditions of knowing, and some ways of thinking about this strange, ambiguous and ambivalent category of Digital Natives. The people who have assembled at this workshop have identified themselves as Digital Natives as a response to the open call. They all have practices which are startlingly unique and simultaneously surprisingly similar. Despite the great dissonance in their geo-political contexts and socio-cultural orientations, they seem to be bound together by things beyond the technological.

Each one chose a definition for him/herself that straddles so many different ideas of how technologies interact with us; there are writers who offer a subjective position and affective relation to technologies and the world around them; there are artists who seek to change the world, one barcode at a time; there are optimist warriors who have waged battles against injustice and discrimination in the worlds they occupy; there are explorers who have made meaning out of socio-cultural terrains that they live in; there are leaders who have mobilized communities; there are adventurers who have taken on responsibilities way beyond their young years; there are researchers who have sought higher grounds and epistemes in the quest of knowledge. The varied practice is further informed by their own positions as well as their relationship with the different realities they engage with.

How, then, does one make sense of this babble of diversity? How does one even begin to articulate a collective identity for people who are so unique that sometimes they are the only ones in their contexts to initiate these interventions? Where do I find a legacy or a context that makes sense of these diversities without conflating or coercing their uniqueness? This is not an easy task for a researcher, and I have struggled over the two days to figure out a way in which I can start develop a knowledge framework through which I can not only bring coherence to this group but also do it without imposing my questions, suggestions or agendas on you. And it is only now, at a quarter to dawn, as I think and interact more with the different digital natives that things get shapes for me – shapes that are not yet clear, probably obscured by the blurriness of sleep and the rushed time that we have been living in the last few days – and I now attempt to trace the contours if not the details of these shapes.

Questioning the Question

The first insight for me came from the fact that the Digital Natives in the workshop talked back – not only to the structures that their practice engages with, but also the questions that I posed to them. “What does it mean to be Political?” I has asked on the first day, knowing well that this wasn’t going to be an easy dialogue. Even after years of thinking about the Political as necessarily the Personal (and vice versa), it still is sometimes difficult to actually articulate the process or the imagination of the Political. It is no wonder that so many people take the easy recourse of talking about governments, judiciaries, democracies and the related paraphernalia to talk about Politics.

I knew, even before I posed the question, that this was going to lead to confusion, to conditions of being lost, to processes of destabilising comfort zones. However, what I was not ready for was a schizophrenic moment of epiphany where I tried to ask myself what I understood as the Political. And as I tried to explain it to myself, to explain it to others, to push my own knowledge of it, to understand others’ ideas and imaginations, I came up with a formulation which goes beyond my own earlier knowledges. There are five different articulations of the legacies and processes of the Political that I take with me from the discussions (some were suggested by other people, some are my flights of fancy based on our conversations), and it is time to reflect on them:

Political as dialogue

This was perhaps, the easiest to digest because it sounds like a familiar formulation. To be political is to be in a condition of dialogue. Which means that Talking Back was suddenly not about Talking Against or Being Talked To. It was about Talking With. It was a conversation. Sometimes with strangers. Sometimes with people made familiar with time. Sometimes with people who we know but have not realised we know. Sometimes with the self. The power of names, the strength of being in a conversation – to talk and also to listen is a condition of the Political. In dialogue (as opposed to a babble) is the genesis of being political. Because when we enter a dialogue, we are no longer just us. We are able to detach ourselves from US and offer a point of engagement to the person who was, till now, only outside of us.

Political as concern

This particular idea of the political as being concerned was a surprise to me. I have, through discourses and practice within gender and sexuality fields, understood affective relationships as sustaining political concerns and subjectivities. However, I had overlooked the fact that the very act of being concerned, what a young digital native called ‘being burned’ about something that we notice in our immediate (or extended) environments is already a political subjectivity formation. To be concerned, to develop an empathetic link to the problems that we identify, is a political act. It doesn’t always have to take on the mantle of public action or intervention. Sometimes, just to care enough, is enough.

Political as change

This is a debate that needs more conversations for me. Politics, Knowledge, Change, Transformation – these are the four keywords (further complicated by self-society binaries) that have strange permutations and combination. To Know is to be political because it produces a subjectivity that has now found a new way of thinking about itself and how it relates to the external reality. This act of Knowing, thus produces a change in our self. However, this change is not always a change that leads to transformation. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake can often be indulgent. Even when the knowledge produces a significant and dramatic change, often this change is restricted to the self.

When does this knowing self, which is in a condition of change, become a catalyst for transformation? When does this knowing-changing translate into a transformation for the world outside of us? Just to be in a condition of knowing does not grant the agency required for the social transformation that we are trying to understand. Where does this agency come from? How do we understand the genesis and dissemination of this agency? And what are the processes of change that embody and foster the Political?

Political as Freedom

On the first thought, the imagination of Political as Freedom seemed to obvious; commonsense and perhaps commonplace. However, I decided put the two in an epistemological dialogue and realised that there are many prismatic relationships I had not talked about before I was privy to these conversations. Here is a non-exhaustive list: Political Freedom, Politics of Freedom, Free to be Political, Political as Freedom, Freedom as Political... is it possible to be political without the quest of freedom? Is the freedom we achieve, at the expense of somebody else’s Political stance? How does the business of being Political come to be? Not Why? But How? If Digital Natives are changing the state of being political what are they replacing? What are they inventing? Where, in all these possibilities lies Freedom?

Political as Reticence

We all talked about voice – whose, where, for whom, etc. It was a given that to give voice, to have voice, to speak, to talk, to talk back were conditions of political dialogue and subversion, of intervention and exchange. So many of us – participants or facilitators – talked about how to speak, what technologies of speech, how to build conditions of interaction... and then, like the noise in an otherwise seamless fabric of empowerment came the idea of reticence. Is it possible to be silent and still be political? If I do not speak, is it always only because I cannot? What about my agency to choose not to speak? As technologies – of governance, of self, and of the social constantly force us to produce data and information, through ledgers and censuses and identification cards – make speech a normative way of engagement, isn’t the right of Refusal to Speak, political?

Sometimes, it is necessary to exercise silence as a tool or a weapon of political resistance. The non-speaking subject holds back and refuses to succumb to pressures and expectations of a dominant erstwhile, and in his/her silence, produces such a cacophony of meaning that it asks questions that the loudest voices would not have managed to ask.

The Beginning of a Start; Perhaps also the other way round

These are my first reflections on the conversations we have had over the two days. I feel excited, inspired, moved and exhilarated as I carry myself on these flights of ideation, thought and conceptualisation. It is important for me that these are questions that I did not think of in a vacuum but in conversation and dialogue with this varied pool of people who have spent so much of their time and effort to not only make their work intelligible but also to reflect on the processes by which we paint ourselves political. I have learned to sharpen questions of the political that I came with and I have learned to ask new questions of Digital Natives practice. I don’t have a definition that explains the work that these Digital Natives do. But I now have a framework of what is their understanding of the political and what are the various points of engagement and investment.

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

On Talking Back: A Report on the Taiwan Workshop

praskrishna — 2012-01-03T10:35:34Z

Twenty-two Digital Natives were selected from regions as varied as Kyrgyztan, Pakistan, Vietnam, Jakarta, India, China, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Moldova and Thailand to come together and share their stories at the 'Talking Back' workshop. While we already began pinging everyone on the phone, and online through emails and chat, the participants themselves were encouraged to fraternise digitally before they even met IRL (in real life).

The Great Fire Wall

Two participants were lost to border authorities as they not only disallowed their entry into Taiwan from China but also permanently blocked their movement out of China. Another one from Burma missed out on being present at the workshop as much as we missed not having her with us.

Though admittedly on the first day of the workshop we did have them in on our secret group chat that we infamously termed as a coup d'état. A facilitator also on her way from Egypt was unable to make it through to us. Our Taipei team learned that a certain Chinese Airlines had omitted clearing the visa on arrival for a number of our invitees to the connecting airlines. While some we did insistently manage to pull across, the aforementioned were lost to the borderlines.

In Academia Sinica

So were we all in Academia Sinica, Taipei and under one roof by the night before the workshop? No, not yet. As mentioned above, three participants and a facilitator were unable to make it. On the Monday morning of 16 August 2010, Ritika Arya, a 20 year old Indian national had not yet arrived. She was to come as a participant and had on the previous day arranged for an event by her NGO, My India Empowered, Mumbai, India (MIE). She had already intimated us about her meticulous plans for Independence Day. However, it was Monday and she wasn’t yet there in the workshop! A call made it known that she was in fact at the Taipei airport with luggage transfer issue to be resolved. Ritika shared with us later how she grappled with the thought of losing her luggage and also spending a lot on the taxi fare instead of getting on a bus from the airport to Academia Sinica. Ritika, founder of MIE came in the nick of time really. Kudos to Ritika for the grand success of her event on India's Independence Day and for her landing smack on Day One; just in time for the Birsds of a Feather (BoF) meetings.

The First Day

On the first day of the workshop many presentations were made in quick succession. At end of presentations by facilitators and participants it was apparent that there was a language issue. We had Som Monorum from Vietnam who'd write down in English what he had to say and then say it out aloud to us. He continued adding all his responses to the group at large this way. Pichate from Thailand not only heard out every single presentation from start to end but also shared instances from his country with relevance to topics mentioned. For instance, when Seema Nair spoke of the Pink Chaddi Campaign, India, Pichate was quick to share links to the union labourers who were members of Triumph Employee's Union

An impromptu wake up call for some who were in jetlag daze was the coup de tat which was but a group chat initiated by most of us on whom no amounts of coffee could shake off jet lag. Hardly were we five minutes into the coup d'état when chat members being refreshed from it, one by one returned to 'workshop mode' and slipping out of the group chat resumed focus on the workshop. The smileys and lols remaining in the group chat RAM.

Same Same - But Different

As per the workshop schedule the first day we worked in BoF format. BoF is a type of un-conference model wherein members are grouped by what they share in common, be it the use of technology or the topics of work, each group of participants being assigned one guide.

Later the participants were assigned partners to discuss

What is my political legacy?
Who are the people I engage with?
Who are the others that I am engaging in this?

and make a presentation of the other's work.

Some initial responses briefly in the beginning:

"What do you mean my political legacy? I am apolitical."

“My work is very much so in the realm of the 'political'. I report on politics so of course I understand that I am engaging citizens reporting via mobile tools and the Internet. This is my legacy.”

“But I tell stories and I teach people to depict their own stories using such and such software and the Internet yes. These are any stories and lie in the creative realm and not political really. So how is my work political?”

“I organise teaching slum children and we enroll them into government schools. I do this to help them and have always wanted to help them. What do you mean by my legacy?”

“I feel strongly especially for women’s rights and I research into the changing face of political feminist activism.”

The intense ice breaking BoF meetings were certainly fruitful.


On the second day an impromptu exercise which took us briefly away from the scheduled Barcamp model of conferencing. We were made into random groups and assigned one Global Crisis to each group. We were to plan a solution via campaigning for the crisis with a plan which we were to present at end. The topics assigned varied from Violence to Global Warming.

The last day had a flurry of activities from participant Prabhas Pokharel's birthday to more Barcamped discussions, presentations of our campaigns to solve Global Warming et al. At the end after the vote of thanks we had an open feedback session. Here most importantly was brought to the table the need for sensitivity to language and vocabulary hindrances.

Chips Ahoy!
	Over the three days of discussions, presentations and reflections also at the end, the Taipei team organised visits to the 101 – the tallest building in the world to date, the night market and the participants themselves explored a lot of it on their own.

Travellers who plan to travel to places with cuisines unacquired by their own palate came prepared with a 'Help! What can I eat!' and 'OMG I need a Burger!' and 'Where's the closest Starbucks?' Well we all did dive into the hot pot outlets, mama-papa set meal restaurants and iced oolong tea shops with broad grins. Taiwan has been spoken well of for its Taiwanese cuisine and being an Indian-Chinese I must say even I can’t label it as Chinese food, for it honestly has a style of its own. Parathas on the streets!

The Taipei Team were as attentive to the dietary preferences as anyone could be. On Prabhas's birthday for instance, Miss Mengshan Lee got us three cakes! She said, “We wouldn't want anyone to be left out and to celebrate altogether. With everyone's needs met; eggless and with the egg we made a pretty picture.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/talking-back

Digital Natives Workshop in South Africa - Call for Participation

tettner — 2011-08-04T10:31:05Z

The African Commons Project, Hivos and the Centre for Internet and Society have joined hands for organising the second international workshop "My Bubble, My Space, My Voice" in Johannesburg from 07 to 09 November 2010. Send in your applications now!

An Open Call for Participation

As the Internet and digital technologies become more widespread, the world is shrinking: we are constantly connected to our contexts, our people, our cultures and our networks. And you, yes YOU are a part of this change. In fact, as a Digital Native – someone to whom digital technology is central to life – you are directly affecting the lives of many, sometimes even without knowing about it.

The organisers are calling out to young users of technology to join this global conversation. The three-day workshop will focus on how the young people use the tools and platforms at their disposal to create social change in their environments. We want to hear from you: If you have used digital technologies to respond to problems, crises, or needs in your community or social circles, we want to hear your story. These can be stories where you have made a significant impact by initiating campaigns or movements for a particular cause, stories where you have used technologies for learning, sharing, exchanging and disseminating information, stories where you have either organized or been part of a digitally organized event (online or offline) such as a petition or campaign, or stories where you used social media like blogs, social networks, discussion group, etc., which led to an interesting social outcome.

We invite you to share your perspectives in an informal conversation with people having a similar approach from the neighbouring community. The workshop will involve participants from around Africa, who will be guided by facilitators in an interactive and engaging dialogue. Results from the workshop will be used to establish a network of collaboration and support for Digital Natives.

Participants can register by filling in an online application form by 12 October 2010.

Expenses relevant to the project will be granted to the selected participants. For any questions, concerns or comments please contact digitalnatives@cis-india.org.

Dates: November 07 to 09, 2010
Venue: Johannesburg, South Africa

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/workshop-in-south-africa

The geek shall inherit the earth

praskrishna — 2012-01-03T10:34:03Z

Demystifying the mysterious -agents changing the world around you.

I met somebody last night who called herself a digital dinosaur. She grew up in the ’80s, got her first computer in the ’90s, trained herself as a geek, found a career as a coder (moonlighted as a hacker), helped people create their personal web pages, and has worked in the IT industry for more than a decade now. In her day, she was the cyber-guru, instructing friends, families, acquaintances and people who wrote to her on the dos and don’ts of cyber-living. And now, she finds herself strangely disconnected from Web 2.0, which is expanding faster than we can understand it.

Her relationship with Internet technologies was one of creation; coding, cracking, hacking, controlling the world in binaries, in bits and in bytes, and that world is now receding.

The new wave of Internet users, who are Born Digital, relate to technologies in new ways. Coding has become the domain of the professional developer and programming is limited to a handful of geeks.

These digital natives occupy environments where it is more about game and expression. Their relationship with the internet is about creation and dissemination of information. They create networks and webs of relationships, with machines and people alike. They treat their gadgets as extensions of themselves and map their physical lives on to their virtual worlds. They are different, even from the earlier generation of technocrats, in how they relate to and understand the new technologies.

Digital natives are everywhere. They are in universities and colleges, multitasking, preparing a classroom presentation while chatting with friends and tracking their online gaming avatars. They occupy offices, glued with equal passion, to dating or social networking sites, and moderating geek mailing lists.

We chance upon them in homes and bedrooms, sharing their most intimate details using live cam feeds and audio/video podcasts. If these images are familiar to you, you have encountered a digital native. It might have, recently, been a child who knows how to use the mobile phone more effectively than you do, or a teenager who can connect your machine online while thumb-typing on the cell-phone, in a language which is not very familiar to you.

It could also be the saucy colleague in office, who is always on the information highway, making jazzy presentations or playing games with his virtual avatar, or the taxi driver who has learned the power of GPS maps or even the chaiwallah who uses his mobile phone to download new music and conduct a romantic affair.

It is no surprise then that the digital natives appear mystifying, slightly frightening figures to those around them. Parents are concerned that they are losing touch with these youth who inhabit first and Second Lives seamlessly. Teachers lament that they value everyday cultural production on YouTube and blogs over canons and classics.

Policymakers are worried that they unwittingly break law and regulations through peer-to-peer sharing of information. Cultural industries are startled at how they produce as much as they consume, using easily available inexpensive tools to push the boundaries of cultural production; remixing, distorting, morphing and harvesting the potential of digital objects.

While many of these concerns are serious and need to be addressed, this column tries to focus on demystifying the digital native. Across borders, digital natives have been responsible for changing the contours of our world. They have fought repressive governments, like we saw in Iran’s Twitter revolution. They have mobilised people to challenge fundamentalism (the Pink Chaddi campaign in India). They have come to the aid of the needy and the ailing, like we saw during the recent natural disasters in Chile and Taiwan.

Digital natives are behind awareness initiatives to protect their privacy and right to information on social networking sites like Facebook.

They have changed the way knowledge is produced and consumed on online encyclopaedias like Wikipedia. They demand better education, transform their societies and show us the familiar through strange and uncanny lenses. Around the globe, in developed and developing information societies, digital natives are introducing radical changes that recalibrate our reality even as we live it.

Read the article in the Indian Express

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/geek-inherit-earth

Digital Natives with a Cause?— Workshop in South Africa—FAQs

tettner — 2015-05-15T11:35:11Z

The second international Digital Natives Workshop "My Bubble, My Space, My Voice" will be held in Johannesburg from 7 to 9 November 2010. Some frequently asked questions regarding the upcoming workshop are answered in this blog entry.

1. When and where is the workshop going to be held?

The workshop will take place over three days from 7 to 9 November 2010, in Johannesburg, South Africa.

2. Who should apply?

The organizers, The African Commons Project, Hivos and the Centre for Internet and Society are interested in hearing from young people, who utilize digital technologies to create social change in their societies or social circles.

Further, the regional focus of the workshop is on Africa, hence, only African citizens or those in an African setting should apply.

3. How can I apply?

You can fill an online application. Alternatively, you can email digitalnatives@cis-india.org and ask for an email application.

4. What is Digital Natives with a Cause?

"Digital Natives with a Cause?" is an international, collaborative research project which aims to increase the current understanding of Digital Natives (there is not one single definition, that’s why we’re doing this project! – but it could be understood as people who interact naturally with digital technologies) and their role in their particular societies.

5. What are the objectives of Digital Natives with a Cause? How does this workshop fit in?

"Digital Natives with a Cause?" aims to incorporate a first-person narrative of the use of technology by youth for social change into the ongoing dialogue. To do this, several case studies of varying cultural backgrounds and diverse methodologies will be compiled into a book. The case studies will be the result of three-day workshop conducted across the developing world. Last summer the Asian workshop happened in Taiwan. Next spring the South American workshop will take place in Chile.

"Digital Natives with a Cause?" also aims to incorporate the participants into a broad network of Digital Natives from around the world, with similar methodology and approach. Through this network, Digital Natives will be able to express concerns, share resources, stay connected with peers and learn from each other.

You can read a report on "Digital Natives with a Cause?" here.

6. OK, so what can I expect from this workshop?

You can expect an informal setting where interactive methods of communication help you gain a better understanding of the context of your project. For example, you will get to meet and interact with the participants of the previous workshop in Taipei. You can expect to reflect about your project: Your motivation, methodology, focus, and context, to name a few, and to draw parallels into other projects in the region. You can expect to interact with a varied and diverse group of young people from around Africa, who like you, use technology for social causes. Overall, you can expect to gain a new perspective about yourself, and the importance of your work.

7. Will I learn any new skills in this workshop?

The short answer is no. The "Digital Natives with a Cause?" project does not aim to train or to build existing capacities among youth users of technology. That said, you will definitely gain a lot of perspective on your individual project and you will learn how it relates to ongoing development processes in the region. You will also meet, interact and hopefully befriend other young users of technology like yourself, enlarging your scope and enriching your experience.

8. Will expenses be covered?

Yes. Expenses associated with the workshop (travel and accommodation) will be provided for selected participants.

9. When is the last date to apply?

The last day to apply is Tuesday, 12 October 2010.

10. Where can I get more information?

Do check out www.digitalnatives.in for more information, and please email digitalnatives@cis-india.org for questions and concerns.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digital-natives-workshop-faqs

નિશાંત શાહ: ડિજિટલ પેઢીનો ઉદય

praskrishna — 2011-08-04T10:31:25Z

‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિક’ તેમને કહેવામાં આવે છે જેણે સામાન્ય જનજીવનમાં ડિજિટલ ટેક્નોલોજીના પ્રવેશ થઈ ગયા બાદ જન્મ લીધો છે. ડિજિટલ નાગરિકો દરેક જગ્યાએ છે. હવે સમય આવી ગયો છે કે આપણે એ જાણવાનો પ્રયાસ કરીએ કે આ લોકો કોણ છે, તેઓ શું કરી રહ્યા છે, તેઓ પોતાના અંગે શું વિચારે છે અને કેવી રીતે તેઓ કશું પણ જાણ્યા વગર આપણા ભવિષ્યને નવો આકાર આપવાનું કામ કરી રહ્યા છે.

એક નવા પ્રકારની ‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિકતા’નો ધીમે-ધીમે ઉદય થઈ રહ્યો છે. ડિજિટલ ટેકનિક આપણી નવી પેઢીના સામાજિક ડીએનએનો એક ભાગ બની ચૂકી છે. આ પેઢીએ ટેક્નોલોજીની દુનિયામાં જ જન્મ લીધો હોવાથી તેમનો તેની સાથેનો સંબંધ તેમની અગાઉની પેઢી જેવો નથી. દુનિયાના ઘણા બધા લોકોને અસર કરનારી ઓગસ્ટની એક ઘટના જાણવા જેવી છે. તેઓ જ્યારે પોતાનાં કમ્પ્યૂટરો,પીડીએ, આઈપેડ અને લેપટોપ પર ઓનલાઈન થયાં ત્યારે તેમને અહેસાસ થયો કે તેમની વાતચીત,ગપ્પાંબાજી, ચેટિંગ, શેરિંગ સહિતની અનેક બાબતોની તાસીર કોઈ પણ જાતની પૂર્વ સૂચના વગર રાતોરાત બદલાઈ ગઈ છે.

એક નાનકડા પરિવર્તને અનેક આયામો ખોલી નાખ્યાં છે. દુનિયાના કરોડો લોકો માટે દોસ્તી કરવાનો, સંબંધ બનાવવાનો, વ્યવસાયિક નેટવર્કની સ્થાપના કરવાનો, મનોરંજનનો, યાદોનો સંગ્રહ કરવાનો અને એક-બીજા સાથે આપ-લેનું માધ્યમ બનેલી વેબસાઈટ ફેસબુકે પોતાના પ્રાયવસી સેટિંગમાં એક નાનકડું પરિવર્તન કરીને અનેક લોકોને નવી સુવિધા પૂરી પાડી છે. જેના દ્વારા તેઓ જ્યાં ઇચ્છે ત્યાં ‘જિયો ટેગ’ (એક એવી પ્રણાલિ જેના દ્વારા ફોટા, વીડિયો, વેબસાઈટ જેવા વિવિધ મીડિયા કે આરએસએસ ફીડમાં ભૌગોલિક ઓળખના ડેટાને જોડી શકાય છે) નો ઉપયોગ કરી શકે છે.

બદલાઈ રહેલી દુનિયામાં આ પ્રકારની સુવિધાઓ મહત્વની બની રહી છે. ડિજિટલ નાગરિકો વચ્ચે આ બાબતો ચર્ચા અને કેટલીક વખત અફવાનો વિષય પણ બની જતી હોય છે, જેની પાછળ ચર્ચા કરવામાં યુવાનો પોતાની ઘણી ઊર્જા ખર્ચી નાખે છે. વેબદુનિયામાં તમને એવા અનેક લોકો મળી જશે જે ટિન ફોઈલની ટોપી પહેરીને ફરતા હોય છે અને નવા માધ્યમમાં જૂની માન્યતાઓ અંગે વાતો કરતા હોય છે. તેમને માટે આ નવી ટેકનિકલ સુવિધાઓનો અર્થ છે રોજિંદા જીવનના અનુભવો અને વિચારોને એક-બીજા સાથે વહેંચવાનો વધુ એક નવો વિચાર.

‘જિયો-ટેગિંગ’ જેવી સુવિધાઓનો ઉપયોગ કરતા લોક વાસ્તવિક જીવન અને કલ્પનાઓની સરહદોને એક-બીજા સાથે મિલાવી દેવાનું પસંદ કરે છે. આપણામાંથી ઘણા લોકો એવા હશે જેમને આ બધી બાબતો વિચિત્ર લાગે એમ છે. તેઓ વિચારશે કે આ પ્રકારની પ્રતિક્રિયાઓનું શું કારણ છે? છેવટે લોકો આટલી સામાન્ય બાબતોમાં કેમ રસ દાખવે છે? આ પ્રકારની ફાલતું બાબતો માટે લોકોને સમય ક્યાંથી મળે છે? જે લોકો ડિજિટલ દુનિયાથી અપરિચિત છે કે જેમને તેની સાથે કોઈ સંબંધ જ નથી, તેમની સામે હું માથું નમાવ્યા સિવાય કશું કરી શકું તેમ નથી.

પરંતુ પોતાનો ઘણો બધો સમય ફેસબુક, માયસ્પેસ અને ટ્વિટર જેવી સોશિયલ નેટવર્કિંગ સાઈટ પર વિતાવનારા, ગેમ્સ રમતા, બ્લોગ લખતા કે બીજાના બ્લોગ પર પોતાનો અભિપ્રાય વ્યક્ત કરતા, પોતાના ફોટો એકાઉન્ટને અપડેટ કરતા રહેતા અને પોતાની ડિજિટલ ઓળખને વધુ વિસ્તારતા રહેતા ‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિકો’ માટે આ તમામ બાબતો અત્યંત મહત્વની છે.

કદાચ તમારામાંથી ઘણા લોકોએ આ અગાઉ ‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિકતા’ અંગે સાંભળ્યું નહીં હોય, પરંતુ આ કોઈ કપોળ કલ્પિત વાત નથી. ‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિક’ તેમને કહેવામાં આવે છે જેણે સામાન્ય જનજીવનમાં ડિજિટલ ટેક્નોલોજીના પ્રવેશ બાદ જન્મ લીધો છે. આ કારણે તે કમ્પ્યૂટર, ઇન્ટરનેટ, મોબાઈલ ફોન, એમપીથ્રી જેવી ટેક્નિકલ સુવિધાઓથી સંપૂર્ણપણે વાકેફ છે. સામાન્ય રીતે ૧૯૭૦ બાદ જન્મેલાને ડિજિટલ પેઢી કહેવામાં આવે છે, પરંતુ ૨૧મી સદીની માહિતી ક્રાંતિમાં ઊછરેલી પેઢી માટે આ વ્યાખ્યા ફિટ બેસે છે.

‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિકતા’ શબ્દનો સૌ પ્રથમ ઉપયોગ માર્ક પ્રેન્સ્કીએ વર્ષ ૨૦૦૧માં પોતાના પુસ્તક ‘ડિજિટલ નોટિંગ્સ, ડિજિટલ ઇમિગ્રન્ટ્સ’માં કર્યો હતો. ડિજિટલ નાગરિકોનાં સામાજિક ગુણસૂત્રોમાં જ આ ટેક્નોલોજી સમાઈ ચૂકી છે. તેની સાથે નવી પેઢી એટલી વણાયેલી છે કે તેમને તે કૃત્રિમ ઉપકરણ નથી લાગતાં. આ ટેક્નોલોજી તેમની જીવનશૈલીનો એક ભાગ બની ચૂકી છે. ‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિકતા’ના સૌથી મોટી ઉંમરના સભ્યો તે છે જેમણે પોતાની ઉંમરના ત્રણ દાયકા પાર કરી દીધા છે.

જ્યારે સૌથી નાની ઉંમરના તેમને કહેવાય જેમણે તાજેતરમાં જ દુનિયાને જાણવા-સમજવાની શરૂઆત કરી છે. શક્ય છે કે દુનિયાનાં અનેક મહત્વનાં દસ્તાવેજોમાં હજુ તેમના નામનો સમાવેશ પણ થયો ન હોય. ડિજિટલ નાગરિકો દરેક જગ્યાએ છે. કદાચ તેઓ એવી માહિતીઓ અને જાણકારીઓના સ્ત્રોત છે જેમને આપણે વિકીપીડિયા પર વાંચીએ છીએ.

ડિજિટલ નાગરિકો સંપૂર્ણ રીતે નવી ટેક્નોલોજીમાં ઊતરી ચૂકેલા છે, નિપુણ છે. તેમને માટે ભૌતિક દુનિયામાંથી આભાસી-કાલ્પનિક દુનિયામાં પહોંચી જવું ડાબા હાથનો ખેલ છે. સમય અને સ્થળની મર્યાદાઓ તેમના માટે કોઈ અર્થ નથી રાખતી. તેઓ ધીમે-ધીમે, ચુપચાપ પરંતુ નિરંતરતાની સાથે આપણી દુનિયાની રૂપરેખાઓને બદલી રહ્યા છે. આ ‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિક’ આપણી દુનિયાના સ્થાયી નાગરિક છે અને હવે તેમની વાતો પર ધ્યાન આપવાનો સમય આવી ગયો છે. આપણે એ જાણવાનો પ્રયાસ કરીએ કે આ લોકો કોણ છે, તેઓ શું કરી રહ્યા છે, તેઓ પોતાના અંગે શું વિચારે છે અને કેવી રીતે તેઓ કશું પણ જાણ્યા વગર આપણા ભવિષ્યને નવો આકાર આપવાનું કામ કરી રહ્યા છે.

નિશાંત શાહ, લેખક સેન્ટર ફોર ઇન્ટરનેટ એન્ડ સોસાયટીના સંશોધન ડાયરેક્ટર છે.

This column on Digital Natives by Nishant Shah appeared in the Gujarati newspaper Divya Bhaskar

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digital-native-in-divya-bhaskar

As somebody who thinks he is quite “with it” when it comes to digital technologies, my universe was slightly shaken by a bunch of screen-agers. I asked them if they blogged. There were 10 seconds of awkward silence, in which they exchanged looks, cleared throats and fidgeted. I thought I had perhaps crossed a line and they might be uncomfortable sharing their personal blogs with me. The universe of blogs is often restricted to close friends. I was just about to reassure them that they did not have to share theirs, when a bold one looked me in the eye and said, “You still blog? You must be so old! Blogging is, like, so 20th century!” The school kids, their pockets bulging with iPods, PSPs, cellphones and Bluetooth devices all nodded in unison.

It was a startling realisation that about a decade ago, there were young people, largely in schools and universities, for whom blogging was the coolest thing. Sites like LiveJournal, Blogspot and Wordpress were the hottest addresses. People formed communities, interest groups, meet-up platforms, swap groups and cool-kids’ clubs while providing detailed insights into their personal life and incisive commentary on the world around them. Blogging has been accepted by all sectors of society; governments use them for the dissemination of policies and reports, marketing companies use them to share reviews and invite feedback, schools and universities use them as teaching tools.

However, after this unsettling adventure, I decided to figure out where the younger generation was spending its time. A little bit of prodding and the screen-agers guided me to interfaces that were more than just screens to access the internet. And so I was introduced to FourSquare, the geo-tagging application that rides on your cellphone and publishes information about your physical location. An app which has become a rage around the world. With the easy availability of smart phones and cheap GPRS access, it has become easy to triangulate one’s position using Global Positioning Systems (via satellite) or your Internet Service Providers. FourSquare, like many other applications, blurs the ever decreasing gap between virtual reality and real life, and now allows users to “check in” at locations that they pass through and publish information about their whereabouts, on sites like Facebook or especially dedicated sites.

For the digital native it has become a way of forming a support group and a peer network like never before. Of the six digital natives I spoke to, at least two keep track of their close friends through this app. All of them have participated in flash parties, one met his girlfriend because they happened to be in the same coffee shop and sent each other messages. Two confessed to “stalking” somebody in school using the app. And then one told me the story of how FourSquare helped her in a sticky situation. Let’s call her R.

One night, after a study session with her friends, R and her roommate started their 2 km walk home. On the way, they became aware of a group of boys following them. They were only half-way home and the streets were completely deserted, since it was past midnight. R posted about it on FourSquare, and marked the route she was taking home and sent it to all the people who had checked in at different places on that route. And to her relief and surprise, she immediately received messages on “how to be safe”. One enterprising user asked all the users still awake on the route that R and her friend were taking to come out and stand at their gates. In a matter of minutes, R was delighted to see the streets no longer deserted. On the short walk home, she encountered 17 people, mostly young, standing by and seeing them home to safety. R recalls the incident with pleasure.

When I asked her about the possibility of somebody else harassing them because they knew they were vulnerable, she looked a little perplexed and said, “but they were all my friends,” despite the fact that she did not know any of them and had never met them. They were together in a design of trust that the application provided and because of their digital commonalities, they had become friends and neighbours and communities of support for each other. “And now you are going to blog about it, aren’t you?” asked R, as all of them burst into giggles.

Read the original in Indian Express

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/you-are-here

A digital native coordinating digital natives

tettner — 2011-09-22T11:31:15Z

It’s been about a month since I got to Bangalore, “The Garden City”, and I joined the Center for Internet and Society, with whom I had been talking since late April. At CIS, I’ve been coordinating a project called “Digital Natives with a Cause?” DN is an international (which means I get to travel), collaborative (which means I get to talk to a lot of people) research (which means I get to use my brain) project. So far, being involved with DN has proven to be a very interesting affair, because the exercise has revealed aspects which I had not originally thought to be a part of this experience. I am 23 years old, grew up in Venezuela, studied in the US and now work in India. My understanding of reality is deeply informed by the approach I take to and my engagement with the internet. Being connected to the cloud has become a central part of my persona, a defining aspect of my personality and a central component of my goals in life. I am what my bosses would call a Digital Native, and my job is part of a greater global effort to document how people like myself engage with political and social questions in emerging information societies. My job is to basically study myself. Ok, maybe that is a bit too simplistic, but it is not entirely false. As a digital natives coordinating a social project which aims to document how digital natives engage with social projects I feel like I am part of a M.C Escher painting. I think Douglas Hofstadter will appear to me in a dream one of these days and explain to me how I am just part of infinite loops of DN projects aiming to document DN projects aiming to document DN projects and so on. Maybe it is DN projects all the way down and not turtles. Maybe my project is a meta-project, similar to how Google is not a website but a meta-website (in the sense that it is not a website in itself, but a tool through which one interacts with other websites). These are the kind of thoughts that occur to a digital native tasked with reflecting about himself from 9 to 5.

Whatever the philosophical framework you choose to apply to my situation, there are some cools aspects worth discussing. First, I do get to use myself as a case study. Whenever I have to think how the people with whom I am working with think, all I have to do is think like I would. Secondly, I am privileged enough to learn about myself. I like to use development approaches to describing social transformations, so I like concepts like access to resources, livelihoods, empowerment, decision-making abilities etc. From this stand, digital natives are revolutionizing pre-information age paradigms and shattering off-line civic and political expectations. I find it impossible not to draw parallels between my own life and these greater societal shifts that have been occurring in the last 20 years. Getting to see myself and my identity from a greater, more complex and perhaps more intellectually refined point of view, in which my composition is not a random occurrence but the precise result of multiple developmental processes occurring in the societies where I grew up is, a fantastically eye-opening exercise. This does have its downsides, for sometimes I reach the disappointing conclusion that some of my thoughts are not original: my ideas are not a product of my hard work and creativity; they’re the deterministic result of societal forces greater than me.

Either way, I see the validation of the importance of my project in my own life. If a 23 year old man whose mother language is not English can become a research coordinator in India, anything is possible in this day and age. We are planning an international workshop in South Africa, where digital natives from all over Africa will get a chance to meet, interact, and learn about their social projects. I sorted through over 400 applications, and the end result was a sense of awe and hope, for the amount of young people utilizing the internet and mobile technologies for social and political causes was staggering. If my job is to work with these incredibly talented and driven young men and woman, in a collaborative effort to better understand how they (of should I say we?) are creating new landscapes of action to bring forth development in the world, then I am in a good place.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/a-digital-native-coordinating-digital-natives

Change has come to all of us

nishant — 2012-03-13T10:43:38Z

The general focus on a digital generational divide makes us believe that generations are separated by the digital axis, and that the gap is widening. There is a growing anxiety voiced by an older generation that the digital natives they encounter — in their homes, schools and universities and at workplaces — are a new breed with an entirely different set of vocabularies and lifestyles which are unintelligible and inaccessible. It is time we started pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a digital native.

In this connected world, the geek is everyone — from a grandma on Skype to a teen on Second Life.

Two self-proclaimed digital natives, on a cold autumn morning in Amsterdam, decided to leave the comforts of their familiar virtual worlds and venture into the brave new territories of real-life shopping. Though slightly confused by the lack of click-and-try options and perplexed by the limitations of the physical spaces of shopping, we plodded along, shop after shop, thinking how much easier it is to chat on IM while flying through Second Life as opposed to face-to-face interactions while walking on crowded streets. After we had run out of shops (and patience), we decided that it was time to rely on better resources than our own wits. The Dutch girl fished out her Android smartphone and with the single press of a button, opened up channels of information. She called her mother. She asked for the location of the store that was eluding us. And then she looked at me in silence before bursting into laughter. Her 64-year-old mother, in response to our question, had said, “Why don’t you just Google it?”

We spent five minutes in stunned laughter when we realised that we should have instinctively done that and that we were being asked by somebody from Generation U to “get with it”. Funny (and slightly embarrassing) as it is, it brings into focus, the question, “Who is a digital native?” For those of you who have been reading this column, it has been defined in terms of age and usage. A digital native is generally somebody young, somebody who is tech-savvy, somebody who can perform complicated calisthenics with digital technologies — throwing virtual sheep, having instant relationships, writing complex stories and pirating their favourite movies — in one nonchalant click of the mouse. However, these kinds of digital natives are only stereotypes.

If we move away from these descriptions of novelty, of excitement and of youth, a different kind of digital native emerges for us. A digital native is somebody whose way of thinking (about himself and the world around) is significantly informed because of the presence of and familiarity with the internet and digital technologies. In other words, a digital native is a person who has experienced (and is often led to) change because of their interactions with new technologies.

It can be a middle-aged man whose business changed when he started tracking his supplies using complex and sophisticated databases. It can be a mother of two, finding support and help raising her children on online communities like Bing. It can be a senior teacher re-discovering pedagogy through distributed knowledge systems on Wikipedia. It can be grandparents who interact with their grandchildren over Skype and text messaging, across international borders and lifestyles. It can be a mother telling her digital native daughter to “just Google it!” over the cellphone.

And as things might be, Shamini, my 15-year-old bonafide digital native correspondent from Ahmedabad, recently wrote that she got off Facebook and deleted her account. “It felt like I had retired from a job,” she said. But she was away from Facebook only for four months, dissociated from all the “time, energy and drama that it caused” and was quite enjoying it. After four months of self-imposed exile, she, however, resurfaced on Facebook. And it was to stay in touch with her aunt and uncle, who live in faraway lands, and cannot keep in touch with her unless she is on Facebook. Shamini was surprised at this. After spending much time convincing them about trying to use email and phones to keep connected, she finally gave in and started a new account that nobody knows of. And she asked me the important question: Who is the digital native now?

My grandmother used to tell us, “Nobody is born knowing a language.” I think it is time to start applying the same logic here. Nobody is born with technologies. But there are people — perhaps not yet a generation, but still a population — who are changing their lives and significantly transforming the world by turning Google and Facebook and Twitter into verbs and a way of doing things. So the next time, somebody asks you if you know a digital native, don’t look for somebody out there — it might just be you!

The original column can be read in The Indian Express

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

Centre for Internet and Society

Collaborative Projects Programme

i4D Interview: Social Networking and Internet Access

Mechanism of Self-Governance Needed for Social Networks

Should social networking sites be governed, and if yes, in what way?

What scares a Digital Native? Blogathon

Digital Natives Workshop in Taipei: Only a Few Seats Left!!!

An Open Call for Participation

Application Form

Beyond the Digital: Understanding Digital Natives with a Cause

Digital Natives : Talking Back

Political is as Political does

On Talking Back: A Report on the Taiwan Workshop

The Great Fire Wall

In Academia Sinica

The First Day

Same Same - But Different

Chips Ahoy!

Digital Natives Workshop in South Africa - Call for Participation

An Open Call for Participation

The geek shall inherit the earth

Digital Natives with a Cause?— Workshop in South Africa—FAQs

નિશાંત શાહ: ડિજિટલ પેઢીનો ઉદય

You Are Here

A digital native coordinating digital natives

Change has come to all of us