Centre for Internet and Society

Art and Social Media

radha — 2011-04-05T04:17:50Z

Art Resources and Teaching Trust in collaboration with The Centre for Internet and Society, is organizing a workshop titled "Art and Social Media" on January 16th-17th 2010, to be conducted by Anita Garimella.

Art, Resources and Teaching Trust (A.R.T.) Bangalore and The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore invites you to a two days workshop, “Art and Social Media” by Anita Garimella.

Anita Garimella (http://www.linkedin.com/in/anitagarimella) is an internet and software product management and marketing consultant. After graduating from Stanford University’s Human Computer Interaction Program in 2000, she has worked on several projects in the industry including the creation and design of applications for Wallop, Facebook and Bebo.

The schedule of the workshop is as follows:

Day 1
Social Media, Web 1.0 and 2.0, and Art 11.00 AM - 1.00 PM
•    What is Social Media – and how does it connect with Web 2.0?
•    How is Social Media measured?
•    Virality, and the dangers of this new yardstick
•    Brief overview of Art & Social Media

Lunch 1.00 PM - 2.00 PM

Deep Dive – Case Studies of Art and Social Media 2.00 PM - 4.30 PM
•    Art blogs & discourse
•    Facebook & art
•    Art-making
•    Art marketing
•    Art pedagogy

Day 2
Opportunities & Challenges for Art using Social Media 11.00 AM - 1.00 PM
•    What is art in this context?
•    What are good ways to use social media for art?
•    Importance of defining goals in social media usage
•    Copyrights and public domain
•    Democratization of art – is that really possible?

Lunch 1.00 PM - 2.00 PM

Future of the Internet and technology and their impact on Art 2.00 PM - 3.30 PM
•    Web 3.0: Surf to Search to Subscribe
•    How to penetrate in an increasingly aggregated world
•    New technologies

Find attached a registration form. You can also download the registration form from www.artscapeindia.org. Interested participants can complete the registration form and send it along with a DD of Rs.1800/- (per participant and includes lunch and handout material) to the address given in the form.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/art-and-social-media

Drawing maps for change

radha — 2011-04-04T06:49:53Z

Digital maps can hold immense academic value – an article by Deepa Kurup, The Hindu, 3rd Jan, 2010.

BANGALORE: The mash-up story is an old but compelling one, particularly when used for advocacy as in Tunisia where exile Sami Ben Gharbiais used a GoogleMaps mash-up to paint a different kind of landscape.
So random net surfers were startled to find the Tunisian map dotted with a string of prisoner’s names, their biographies, and videos of their family members telling the story of the human rights situation in the country.
Closer home, rights activist K. Ramnarayan is trying to do something similar. Using GPS and simple mapping technologies, Mr. Ramnarayan maps the location and extent of damage that will be created by proposed hydro-electric projects in Uttarakhand.

“We knew that many projects were announced. But it was only when we began mapping, we found that the 550-odd projects were concentrated in three valleys, and could potentially ruin all the State’s rivers,” he says.

Detailed perspectives

Mr. Ramnarayan believes that mapping technology can provide detailed perspectives, enable analysis — GPS devices are easy to use and collated data can be simply added as layers to existing maps — and create better awareness by sharing data online. Using the more accurate GIS mapping can also hold immense academic value.

It is this potential that “Maps for Change,” a collaborative project hosted by Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and Tactical Tech, endeavours to tap into. Anja Kovacs, a CIS fellow, believes maps are powerful, as they provide the larger picture. For instance, she says, news reports lead one to believe that protests against SEZs are isolated today. Now, put all those protests on a map, and you get the real picture! “Maps for Change” participants are involved in a slew of fascinating projects such as mapping land acquisition patterns in Bangalore, tribal displacement issues and dissident sexualities in Delhi.

Layer of information

So mapping is not a complex cartographer’s job anymore. With cheaper and more efficient GPS devices, in the market and on your cellphones, anybody can map. Pradeep B.V. of MapUnity.org, a site that lets you create your own map, says that ‘neogeographers’ are redefining online maps.

Neogeographers use available online maps such as Google MyMaps or Open Street Maps to add layers of information to a typical mashup.

GIS adds that critical layer of accuracy, and is essential in remote areas which are not mapped by these services. So you collect data (typically latitude, longitude and altitude information), mark your points of interest and upload this on a map, Mr. Pradeep explains.

Using attributes these simple maps can be used, accurately, to tell a story and document several layers of information.

Tracking changes
Say you wish to record access to health facilities in a backward district. A GPS device helps you collate info and create a ‘schema’ of data that can be uploaded directly to any mashup. Open source tools such as JUMP or UDIG can help you work easily with GIS datasets. The map can be interactive, you can track changes and can be as dynamic as you want it to be — for instance, you upload videos of health care facilities or highlight patches of social exclusion.

Link to the original article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/drawing-maps-for-change

Native plays

radha — 2012-01-03T11:08:46Z

Online activist groups are helping change perceptions about the internet generation, says Shweta Taneja, Time Out Bengaluru.

In May 2008, Anivar Aravind, a Bangalore-based software consultant, came up with a strategy to petition for the release of Binayak Sen, the human rights activist who had been jailed by the Chhattisgarh government exactly a year before, in May 2007. Sen, who is known for his efforts in defending the rights of tribal and underprivileged people, had been held for alleged unlawful activities, and the detention was declared in breach of international Amnesty laws. Aravind’s ploy, to hasten Sen’s release, was entirely based in the online sphere. He created the website www.binayeksen.net, where he sought to bring together different groups of people protesting against the arrest. “By that time, it had been a year since Sen had been in jail,” said the 26-year-old, “and activists had exhausted all strategies to no avail. The movement needed to be reintroduced imaginatively.”

The website, said Aravind, was a way of using the digital space and creating an information channel to reactivate people towards the cause of freeing Sen. The website’s team went on to populate pages on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, to call for nationwide protests on specific dates. “We even provided posters and updates on local protests to facilitate people getting together,” said Aravind. Two years after the activist’s arrest, the online movement had resulted in over 60 different protest events. Sixteen of these protests were held outside the country, observed by NRIs outside various Indian embassies. On May 25 this year, Sen was released on bail. “It was the combination of mobilisation of audiences on the web and taking that protest offline and onto the streets that worked,” reflected Aravind.

For Nishant Shah, director of research at the city’s Centre for Internet and Society, Aravind is one among a strain of online users who fall under the banner of “digital natives”. “People like Aravind, who claim to live within, on, through and by the internet and digital technologies are [called] digital natives,” explained Shah. “You might be connected online, but still not be a person whose crucial social, cultural, political and economic activities, as well as imaginations, are informed by new technologies.”

In an attempt to unravel the concept, the CIS recently conducted an extensive research on the subject. “The available definitions of the term ‘digital native’ were simply based on age – children born after the ’80s, or young power-users of technology from a particular class-bracket,” explained Shah. But that was clearly not the case, realised Shah. To help with the study, CIS collaborated with The Knowledge Programme, led by the Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation, a Dutch organisation. The study aimed to examine the identity of digital natives and to understand the manner in which these natives had turned into “e-agents” of change, constantly finding new ways of engaging with different socio-cultural and political crises through digital technologies.

To explore concerns of such web usage in India, CIS recently conducted a workshop at Ranga Shankara, which involved school children, parents, teachers, activists and artists, before releasing a paper titled “Digital Natives with a Cause?” While the study attempts at busting the perception that digital users are a privileged, upper-class, English-speaking group of people who use the internet only for pleasure, it also helped subvert the idea of a generation that is believed to be largely disconnected from reality and lives in bubbles of social networks and online groups. “This new generation is not being taken seriously enough,” said Shah.

CIS has now announced an international conference – to be held next year – that will invite scholars, academics, NGOs, practitioners, policy makers and activists to explore the various contexts occupied by digital natives. The plan also includes a book that will document various successful campaigns of the kind from across the globe. “The study is a first resource tool that hopes to help researchers and practitioners formulate projects that work on youth-technology relationships,” explained Shah.

The paper “Digital Natives with a Cause?” is available as a free download at www.cis-india.org.

Link to the original article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/native-plays

Pushing Buttons

radha — 2011-04-02T13:56:28Z

The coolest device of the decade – From brick-sized to size zero, the cell phone changed our lives forever – an article by Deepa Kurup, The Hindu, 1st Jan, 2010.

Bangalore: Today, it no longer makes news to see your neighbourhood vegetable vendor taking orders on his mobile phone, or for that matter a mason at work as he chatters away on his cellphone.

A decade ago this was unthinkable.

The 10 years which have gone by have found a great leveller in technology, the cell phone being the most ubiquitous of them all. Cellphones crossed over from overpriced, shoebox-sized, upper-class accessory to an affordable easy-to-use gadget for staying connected, getting entertained and, for many, even a way of life. The long queues outside the PCO booth and scrambling for those elusive one-rupee coins is now history. The cellphone is literally in every hand. As of November 2009, India, with the world’s second largest population, registered 506.4 million cellphone connections, (543 million, including landlines), second only to China. Which means half our population has the device.

Tharoor’s take

Twitter-politician Shashi Tharoor regaled the audience at a recent conference, TED India, about this story of a coconut vendor in his home state of Kerala. He wanted a tender coconut and called a vendor he knew, only to discover the man was high up on a coconut palm, still connected to his cellphone!

Old timers still talk about the miles of red tape and the years it took to get a basic landline connection.

So while globally the noughties were about crowdsourcing, micro and macro blogging, e-books, file sharing or the “cloud”, in India, even the internet is only barely there. With a staggeringly low penetration, pegged at around seven to eight percent (over 80 million), the web is not a patch on the omnipresent cellphone.

The next decade

Sunil Abraham, Director of Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, insists that the cellphone will also define the decade that begins today. And like that clever advertisement, text-to-voice and voice recognition can and will be big in providing access to the unlettered, disabled and forgotten sections, he explains.

“Data services and geographic positioning services (GPS) show great promise in connecting the poor to the state and the market,” he said.

On a more futuristic, and indulgent note, Mr. Abraham says micro-projection systems that will work on walls and mobiles will forefront projects in those rural areas with limited or no electricity. This may be the only way to reach the unbanked with mainstream or community currencies, he adds.

Link to the original article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/pushing-buttons

Wired state of mind

radha — 2011-04-02T13:56:55Z

Information technology is the driver of society today — the basic block of innovation and growth in organisations, the mainstay of the 21st century. The decade bygone was only an indicator of the things to come. Whether its ideas or friendships, the future indubitably belongs to linking-up on the web, writes Malvika Tegta , DNA - Digital Edition, Monday - 28th December, 2009.

Did cyberscape make us cogs on a new machinery or liberate us, empower us or make us vulnerable, enrich us with cultural diversity or homogenise us? There isnt a simple answer. Not in a diverse world digitally sewn into a remarkably new pattern. Here what is certain is what is manifest — the emergence of an information society witness to changes in organisation structure, work cultures, community life, lifestyles, medicine, governance, activism, political participation, commercial business, conventional media, spaces for those on the social fringes, emergence of support systems. And a new connected state of mind.

Increased spread of the web and an exponential increase in internet platforms and applications unleashed a world of possibility for the user like never before. You could collaboratively edit a dynamic encyclopedia, collectively write a book on an idea seeded in the US and source ideas for your art project from perfect strangers from across the globe. There were endless ways of connecting with people we never knew existed — an increased consumption of global culture.

A phenomenon that enabled linking up like never before was social networking, invented in a Harvard dorm room in 2004. The Facebook culture that it spawned was drastically going to change our world as we knew it.

Consider how your life changed. A regular college evening in 2000, which was spent on chai, sutta and long walks, was invested in collecting updates about friends living on the same hostel wing on Facebook or Twitter. You were poked if you were being lazy about parting with your current mood update. When you spread out after college, these platforms kept you perpetually in the loop. You knew whod put on weight, whose relationship status had changed, that xyz was feeling crabby today. You, in turn, made sure that you posted one good picture of you in the Jaisalmer deserts for your 369 Facebook buddies to see.

And, all that upload and download of continuous information was negotiated on multiple browser windows, deftly juggled at work, while you waited for your strawberry crop on Farmville to mature.

In short, social lives of the 15% of us (Indians) with internet access were, if not fundamentally altered, certainly uploaded and impacted over the last 10 years. We became comfortable with the idea of trading identities and data about ourselves with companies like Orkut, Facebook or Google in return for the opportunity to realise the last connection on our six degrees of separation map.

Factors that made 24*7 wired lifestyle possible were miniaturisation, therefore portability computers; the smartening up of mobile phones; better broadband and Wi-Fi connectivity, and social media boom. Laptops made way for notebooks, notebooks for netbooks, and cell phone companies rolled out browser-based phones like the Blackberry and Android handsets.

To grasp the changes in the backdrop of the colossal exchange of data was to revisit Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhans line, made famous way before the Internet got big, “The medium is the message”.

Cultural evolution
The Internet grew up fast over the past 10 years, both embodying social values like connectivity, participation, creating, collaborating and self-sufficiency, and in turn affecting them. It went from read-only sites to being driven by user generated content. The user became the creative dynamo, armed with tools like blogs, review forums, and sites like WordPress, Blogspot, Flickr and YouTube.

Then came social media: Orkut, LinkedIn, Facebook, Friendster, Twitter. Peer-2-peer file sharing application BitTorrent and music sharing sites like Napster came to represent the new philosophy. Here, the user became an active supplier of movies or music without the need for an intermediary server, as was generally the case before.

“The three cultural turns that social networking has introduced have been peer-2-peer networking, collaborations and new processes of publication and dissemination. These have changed our notion of history, cultural production and consumption, and knowledge production,” says Nishant Shah, director, research, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. “Sites like Wikipedia have dismantled the processes of knowledge production and learning and introduced new forms of knowledge-sharing, like crowd sourcing. Collaborations have managed new forms of emotional bonding, creative production and interaction which propel the blogosphere and public opinion. These have an impact on questions of consumption, lifestyle patterns, etc.”

24x7 connectivity
The Internet speeded up time and we “drew gratification from speed”. You wanted to look up a breakfast place, a word meaning or answer to the first thing off the top of your head like why are men the way they are? You wanted Google to turn up an answer, and fast.

Since free social working sites became a landmine of data on consumer behaviour, trends, likes and dislikes, they needed to attract and keep the numbers. A few sites maintained a near monopoly; search was to Google, social networking meant Facebook and realtime synonymous with Twitter. Apart from constant re-invention, the sheer potential for large-scale networking was the reason. “My friends stick to Gmail, Facebook and Twitter because we dont want to manage information on too many sites,” says Saurabh Shrivastava, an MBA student.

It was reported that Facebook users woke up to water virtual crops at 4am just to stay ahead on Farmville, or sign into Twitter to see how far the world had come. Instant feedback was the expectation. The experiences and satisfactions were on multiple windows; to be out of that pattern caused anxiety. That was also in part because people fell back upon structures of social support online, which were earlier unavailable; BlackBerry/smartphones to the rescue.

Though the network grew stronger, it essentially comprised weak ties. Technology consultant Atul Chitnis feels that wider reach… reduced real-world interactions are unnatural in the social perspective, and have made social interactions more competitive. “Its more about getting more comments and reactions.”

What writer James Harkin portrayed as the new crack cocaine, professor Clay Shirky saw as not the case of information overload but of “filter failure”.

Virtual & physical
While we became human nodes spending a large part of the day on the network, the physical fed into the virtual world and vice-versa. Shortened attention spans created an attention economy, leading conventional media to get increasingly visual and in some cases sensational.

The response to crisis speeded up and social mobilisation became easier. In Tsunami-hit South and Southeast Asia, people mobilised resources for the disaster-affected. A pub attack on women in Mangalore snowballed into the nationwide Pink Chaddi campaign.

While its constantly said that the Internet connects us virtually and isolates physically, Shah says: “Contrary to popular perception, studies have shown that interface time increases peoples face time because new friendships, alliances and interests are anchored in the physical world.” The quality of interaction, however, will go down, says Chitnis, “due to current social patterns created by loss of cultural distinctiveness, and reduced real-world interaction”. This will especially be true for young adults “who will grow up not knowing a world without social networking”.

Language blends
Shah sites the change in language as the most visible and dramatic. “Easy access to writing and publishing tools has led to the development of new forms of speech and articulation. In countries, where English is not the majority first language, new blends like Singlish (Singapore), Hinglish (India) and Chinglish (China) have emerged as Western contexts, cultural products and ideas proliferated in new vocabularies on the information superhighway. These changes are associated with other changes in terms of new linguistic identities and nationalities,” he says.

Niche goes pop
The growth of the Internet revolutionised the economics of distribution of the media and the entertainment industry, a trend Chris Anderson tracked in his book, The Long Tail. Once it would have been unthinkable to get a copy of a Skinny Puppy CD in the music store because it simply wasnt worth the stocking cost — it wasnt popular enough. And if it wasnt stocked, it was as good as non-existent for a buyer who had never heard of it. That was the era of the blockbuster: what was profitable sold. The Internet changed this: with virtually no space constraints, and the low manufacturing and distribution cost of digital content, a hit became just as good as a miss. Both constituted sales: larger the number the better. Today, Google, Rhapsody, Apple iTunes and Amazon, all operate on that business model. The result: niche worlds have become much more visible and mainstream.

So, as we slow-waltz to the buzz of information, an online etiquette evolves. We gradually learn to turn noise into substance, come to terms with the blurring of private and public, mobilise in crisis, hone the skill of swimming through information to come up with the right find, and learn to direct at least some part of leisure time spent surfing and chatting to tap into the Internets true potential.

Link to the original article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wired-state-of-mind

Want to bring social change? This map shows the way

radha — 2009-12-21T07:55:15Z

By siliconindia news bureau, Tuesday,08 December 2009, 14:13 hrs

Bangalore: A group of 40 people in Bangalore including techies and activists, are creating digital maps called 'Maps for Making Change' that will be used to bring social change in India. The Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, a social organization that studies the connection between the Internet and society, and the NGO Tactical Tech Collective (Bangalore and UK) are creating a map of India that will show hotspots where social change can be brought about.

Individuals working with groups and organizations working for social change across India, including grassroots activists, NGO workers, artists and researchers, sent in 70 high quality and detailed additions to the digital map, reports Renuka Phadnis of Bangalore Mirror. These places across India highlighted issues such as: the socio-economic aspects and consequences of the construction of Bangalore's Metro, fighting for clean rivers, people's rights to livelihoods in the Himalayas, monitoring the national implementation of Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (2005), mobilizing slum dwellers to engage with Mumbai's new Development Plan, human rights violations in Kashmir, identifying land where internally displaced people can be resettled in the North East.

"You don't have to be a professional cartographer. With new technologies such as GPS and the Net, anyone can easily add to digital maps," says Dr. Anja Kovacs, Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.
In a city like Bangalore, the potential of using digital maps is tremendous. For instance, such maps could be used to show which Metro routes and stations Bangaloreans want. The maps could tell us where migrant labor enter the city, where they live and where they move on. Bangalore based techie B.V. Pradeep, who provided technical support to the map team says, "In a map, every person draws what is important to him. One person may draw a mall, another may mark the school and hospital. This map will give visibility to invisible people."

Anyone can access Maps for Making Change. See email list (http://groups.google.co.in/group/maps-for-making-change). The wiki will be up and running in a few days time (maps4change.cis-india.org), said Dr Kovacs. To follow on Twitter, use the hash tag #maps4change.

Link to the original article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/want-to-bring-social-change-this-map-shows-the-way

Web Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective – A G3ict White Paper

radha — 2011-10-19T10:37:07Z

G3ict Publishes International Survey of Web Accessibility Policies White Paper by the Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore, India

With 143 countries having signed the Convention, and 74 ratified it as of today, web accessibility policy making is fast becoming a leading area of concern for governments, disabled persons organizations and organizations operating web sites for the public.

In this timely White Paper, Nirmita Narasimhan, Program Manager at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) in Bangalore, India, provides a very valuable overview of the early policies and programs adopted by a selection of 15 ratifying countries. Packed with references and useful links, the contents of this White Paper will also be made available in the upcoming ITU-G3ict Toolkit for Policy Makers.

Link to the Press Release

Click here to download the White Paper

We would like to thank the following people who have helped preparing this White paper:

Prashanth Ramdas, Asma Tajuddin, G. Aravind ,Katie Reisner, Sucharita Narasimhan, Bama Balakrishnan, Nirmita Narasimhan

Expert Reviewers:
Axel Leblois, Donal Rice, Immaculada Placienca Porrero, Kevin Carey, Licia Sbarella, Sunil Abraham

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/g3ict-white-paper

Open Content and Access in the Knowledge Society

radha — 2011-08-18T05:08:49Z

Open Content and Access: Democratising and Disruptive Impacts on the Knowledge Society - by Madanmohan Rao, Editor, The KM Chronicles - Bangalore; Dec 16, 09

If you are ever in Bangalore on the third Wednesday of any month, you must attend the Bangalore K-Community: the monthly gathering of knowledge management professionals! This time, I invited two speakers from the information industry and ICT4D sectors (see www.Kcommunity.org for speaker profiles). The theme was Internet content models and governance. The Internet is a key game-changer in the knowledge society, through its vast archival and real-time content, applications for social media, and governance models.

N. V. Sathyanarayana (“Sathya”), Chairman & Managing Director of Informatics (India), set the stage by charting changes in the online media landscape. In less than ten years, Google has become the dominant media player, overtaking 100-year old rivals like Thomson/Reuters/Reed/Elsevier. In fact, the top 10 players in the online content industry are all free-content (ad-supported aggregator) companies: GYM (Google, Yahoo, MSN). Free and open content have disrupted the traditional paid content model, but the paid model will work for those content providers who can find an assured base of institutional buyers. The free content model is based on ad revenues which in turn are based on the overall performance of the economy: the current downturn is shaking up the content industry.

The dominant rise of information related to human resource activities as part of the overall content pie is a notable trend in recent years, said Sathya, citing research from Outsell. Online access has completely transformed research and academic activities. Just a few decades ago, researchers had to first monitor and read all available published material before making connections and drawing analyses – now a number of automated tools can provide alerts, search resources, identify trends and help visualise domains of knowledge. The Internet has also greatly extended the shelflife of content; many journal publishers who used to make money only on sales of new copies to libraries now make even more money on digital access to back issues.

Sunil Abraham (http://twitter.com/Sunil_abraham), executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, focused more on the democratic potential of the Internet for knowledge dissemination. He charted out the evolution of the open model for software, content, access and educational resources. He distinguished between “muft” and “mukti” interpretations of the often-misunderstood term “free” – it can mean free of cost or freedom/liberation (translations from Hindi). Sunil dwelt on the implications of copyright, copyleft and copycentre models of IP, as well as governance models such as WikiPedia in English and other languages. These open code and content models are in turn affecting business models of companies ranging from IBM to Apple, and will also impact online content access for marginalised and needy communities.

An interesting discussion followed, touching on “healthy useful piracy,” IP models of scholastic v/s entertainment content, ownership rights of translated materials, “responsible” authorship and metaknowledge in Wikis, outdated information policies and knowledge cultures at companies who block employee access to social media, the need for more knowledge sharing in the fragmented NGO sector, the need for organisations to incentivise not just innovation but also copying/sharing of knowledge, and even Christian v/s Hindu worldviews and binary v/s polytheist interpretations of fee/free/layered content models! Now that’s a profound note on which to end 2009; see you all in 2010!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 6:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Link to the original blog entry

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-content-and-access-in-the-knowledge-society

Open Video Summit

radha — 2011-08-18T05:08:54Z

The Open Video Summit: A one-day workshop to explore issues of intellectual property and telecom policy for video is being organized by The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), iCommons, Open Video Alliance and Magic Lantern on December 15, 2009 at TERI, Bangalore, from 9am to 6pm.

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), iCommons, Open Video Alliance and Magic Lantern are organizing a workshop on December 15, 2009.

This workshop in Bangalore—modelled after a similar meeting in October 2008 at Yale University—draws together experts from tech, art, film, NGOs and business to explore the future of online video.

When: December 15th, 2009

Where: The Energy and Resources Institute- Southern Regional Centre

(TERI-SRC)
4th Main, 2nd Cross, Domlur II Stage
Bangalore- 560071

What: The Open Video Summit is a one-day workshop to explore issues of intellectual property and telecom policy for video. By inviting experts from different fields to participate in the workshop, we aim to create a framework for open video in India and to better understand how the online video medium is developing. We also hope to expand the network of researchers who have open video on the radar and to foster international collaborations. We expect between 30-40 participants to attend.

Participants should bring some specialized knowledge or insight about the state of online video to the event. The workshop is highly interactive and its success will depend on the quality and dynamism of our discussions. This workshop will in turn direct iCommons research efforts in the area of online video policy.

Why: We’re now surrounded by cameras in cellphones, laptops, and everywhere else. Software and storage advances have made video remix an emergent art form. For the first time, huge numbers of people are communicating through video. Video is almost like a new language, a new toolkit for self-expression. This has some pretty profound implications.

But while sites like YouTube have enabled millions of people to broadcast themselves, it offers just a glimpse into the future of the online video medium. Heading into this future, the tools for creating, manipulating, and sharing video must be available to everyone. And while having community-developed, open source versions of these tools is a critical charge, it’s only one part of a larger puzzle. Open video requires that networks and technical, legal and business structures support the ability of huge numbers of individuals to use video in ways that go beyond just watching.

The Open Video Alliance was created to support industry coordination toward an open video ecosystem. OVA members develop free and open source software and conduct policy research to support a more participatory video medium. The OVA also coordinates the Open Video Conference, a multi-day summit of thought leaders in business, academia, art, and activism to explore the future of online video. The first OVC was host to over 800 guests, including 150 workshop leaders, panelists and speakers. Over 8,000 viewers tuned in from home to watch the live broadcast.

Meeting Organizers:

The Open Video Alliance is a coalition of organizations devoted to creating and promoting

free and open technologies, policies, and practices in online video. OVA founding members include Mozilla, the Participatory Culture Foundation, Kaltura, iCommons, and the Yale Information Society Project.

iCommons is a project-based incubator organization dedicated to promoting free culture and the global commons.

The Centre for Internet and Society critically engages with concerns of digital pluralism, public accountability and pedagogic practices, in the field of Internet and Society, with particular emphasis on South-South dialogues and exchange.

Magic Lantern Foundation is a non-profit group working with media and human rights.

This meeting made possible with the support of the Ford Foundation.

Working schedule:

Morning:

Keynote talk and brief discussion
Lightning presentations by selected participants
Breakout discussion groups

Afternoon:

Lunch
Breakout discussion groups
Plenary discussion to identify focus areas and summarize

Evening:

Film Screening

Space is limited. Please RSVP to conference@openvideoalliance.org, and feel free to contact us with any questions you may have. We look forward to meeting you in Bangalore.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-video-summit

Mozilla Open Web Talks

radha — 2011-04-05T04:19:15Z

Give a talk, or just listen - On December 16 in Bangalore, Mozilla and The Centre for Internet and Society are holding an evening of talks about the future of the open internet.

We're inviting you to to give a 5 minute talk, or just to come listen:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Drumbeat/CIS-Bangalore

Presentations will either:

Explain the open web and why it matters and
Describe a concrete project idea that will make the web better.

If you're interesting in giving a talk, please sign up here:

http://fcroadshow.net/?page_id=7

If you'd like to simply attend and listen, please RSVP here:

http://bit.ly/51OOXf

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/mozilla-talks

Present, tense: Future classrooms

radha — 2011-04-02T14:11:51Z

An article by Nishant Shah in the December issue of Teacher Plus - the magazine for the contemporary teacher.

In the world of education, the emergence of Wikipedia – an online, user generated, knowledge production referencing system – has drawn strong battle lines. The divide is fairly well drawn between those who swear by Wikipedia and those who swear at it. On the one hand are the students and teachers (more students than teachers) who look upon the democratic modes of knowledge production, the easy access to information, and the multiple perspectives that get embedded in the global system of producing knowledge, as one of the most revolutionary moments in the history of teaching and research in the world. On the other hand are the teachers and students (more teachers than students) who grow green in the face, pointing out the errors and problems within Wikipedia, often layering their objections with much more complex problems of plagiarism, lack of research ethics and absence of rigour.

Especially in classrooms, where students often bring in information retrieved from Wikipedia to cope and engage with their curricula, there seems to be a strained sense of tension where the students are increasingly depending upon Wikipedia (or other such user generated knowledge production spaces) for their first introductions to different knowledges, and the teachers, used to the sacredness of books and library based research, feel a sense of despair at the click-copy-paste cultures that the students bring to the classrooms. This tension between the students and the teachers, and the concern over authenticity and accuracy, is symptomatic of a much larger changing relationship between students and teachers within academia in emerging information societies.

While it is possible to, almost infinitely, perpetuate these debates, there is a certain transformative moment which is being lost in the cacophony that emerges from both the sides trying to prove their points, and often delving into pointless, albeit intelligent, chatter. It is this moment that I am interested in articulating, because it captures, for me, a change in the learning-teaching environments in classrooms that is not very clearly articulated in the Wikipedia (or at a much larger level, Internet) and education debates.

The classroom, across cultures and geographies has been marked by a romantic imagination of being a hallowed space of elevated learning and knowledge. While this is indeed true, it is necessary to place the classroom in another more pragmatic context of Knowledge production industries and services. While there are often certain intangible and affective bonds of faith between the teacher and the students, it is necessary to remind ourselves that the classroom is essentially a site of knowledge industries, where certain information, knowledge and skills are transferred from the teacher – who serves as the access point to relevant data – to the students who need to be trained and taught into becoming possessors of knowledge.

And it is this particular relationship that the Internet technologies are changing – this hitherto accepted role of the teacher as the bearer of knowledge and the student as a recipient of the same. I want to look at three particular ways in which Wikipedia and other similar spaces have challenged our understanding of the classroom and the teacher-student relationship in the traditional classrooms.

Wikipedia, which is at the centre of the debates, is actually more demonstrative of this changing knowledge structure because of its contours as well as the larger aesthetics and politics it embodies. In the world of Wikipedia, there are no hierarchies of knowledge dependent upon personal credentials or antecedents. All contributors, are, instead, sorted on the basis of their skill for research, writing, and providing evidence. More often than not, an article on Wikipedia is a collaborative effort which plays on the strengths of many different collaborators. Each contributor is not expected to be a proficient scholar with all the required skills. Instead, different contributors take on different roles and help in producing collaborative knowledge. Such a system of knowledge production challenges the dominant understanding of knowledge production and contribution, especially in the school and university set-ups, which are contingent upon individual genius and comprehensive skills.

A space like Wikipedia thus, produces not only a level field of learning, collaborating and sharing knowledge, which is often at logger-heads with the classrooms as we know them, it also leads to a new flow of knowledge. In traditional classroom conditions, the teacher is envisioned as an expert and the flow of information is meant to be one-way, imitating a broadcast model that earlier technologies like print and cinema have embraced. With Wikipedia, there is a shift from education to learning. Everybody on Wikipedia is imagined to be a valuable person who pools his/her skills into a common database, from which knowledge is now produced and perfected. This dismantling of the teacher figure, the placing of the teacher in a condition of learning rather than teaching is the source of much anxiety that internet technologies bring forth. The recognition that the experiences, the skills, and the information that the students have are equally, if not more valuable, in the process of knowledge production and dissemination, is a significant shift in our understanding of the classroom.

The last point that I want to touch upon is the way in which the accepted role of curricula is challenged with the emergence of such easy access to different knowledge systems. For younger users of technology, who are being exposed to alternative voices, politics of dissent and a wider horizon of theory and practice, the prescribed curriculum becomes often restrictive and sometimes redundant. Because information is now easily available, the premium is on knowledge – abilities to analyze, sift, research and thinking through questions – thus changing the role of teachers, especially in schools. Many teachers are often faced with situations where the students have more information at their finger tips than is in the text-book or indeed, is available to the teacher around a particular area. In such instances, new forms of coping with curriculum, novel ways of understanding classroom pedagogies, and creative ways of incorporating the students’ experiences and information in the teaching practices need to be developed.

There is no denying the fact that the emergence of internet technologies are leading to different crises in the classrooms. However, instead of formulating it in binaries – virtual classroom versus physical classroom, Wikipedia versus Encyclopaedia Britannica, Information versus Knowledge, etc. – it is more fruitful to examine the ways in which these technologies are helping us revisit the classroom as one of the most crucial sites of the knowledge industries, and questioning many concepts and ideas that we had taken for granted in our existing education and teaching systems.

The author is the Director – Research at The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. He is currently working with the Networked Higher Education Initiative on a project on technology and education on networked campuses in India. He can be reached at itsnishant@gmail.com.

Link to the original article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/present-tense-future-classrooms

Techies mapping change

radha — 2011-04-04T06:51:49Z

A group of 40 Bangaloreans, including techies and social activists, are creating digital maps that will be used to bring social change in India - an article in the Bangalore Mirror by Renuka Phadnis - Monday, December 07, 2009.

Here is an example of how technology can be misused and used. A year ago, following the Mumbai blasts, everyone was talking about how terrorists had misused information from Google maps. Now, a group of 40 people in Bangalore including activists and techies, are creating digital maps that will be used to bring social change in India.

Called “Maps for Making Change” the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, a social organisation that studies the connection between the Internet and society, and the NGO Tactical Tech Collective (Bangalore and UK) are creating a map of India that will show hotspots where social change can be brought about.

Individuals working with groups and organisations working for social change across India, including grassroots activists, NGO workers, artists and researchers, sent in 70 high quality and detailed additions to the digital map. These places across India highlighted issues such as: the socio-economic aspects and consequences of the construction of Bangalore’s Metro, fighting for clean rivers, people’s rights to livelihoods in the Himalayas, monitoring the national implementation of Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (2005), mobilising slum dwellers to engage with Mumbai’s new Development Plan, human rights violations in Kashmir, identifying land where internally displaced people can be resettled in the North East.

“You don’t have to be a professional cartographer. With new technologies such as GPS and the Net, anyone can easily add to digital maps,” says Dr Anja Kovacs, fellow, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

Bangalore Angle

In a city like Bangalore, the potential of using digital maps is tremendous. For instance, such maps could be used to show which Metro routes and stations Bangaloreans want. Or, it could show how BBMP’s reserved wards are delineated (example, the population profile in Bellandur or Girinagar). The maps could tell us where migrant labour (masons, carpenters, plumbers) enter the city, where they live and where they move on (information that could be useful for Unique Identification Authority of India too!). It can also show where marginalised people live in Bangalore in slums, along railway tracks, by the lakes.

Says Bangalorean techie B V Pradeep, who provided technical support to the map team, “In a map, every person draws what is important to him. One person may draw a mall, another may mark the school and hospital. This map will give visibility to invisible people.”

Bangalorean Rekha Shenoy, who has been involved in rehabilitating earthquake-affected people in Kutch for the past eight years, says, “Such digital maps are a good resource of marking places and social issues that other people know nothing of.”

Any one can access Maps for Making Change. See email list (http://groups.google.co.in/group/maps-for-making-change). The wiki will be up and running in a few days time (maps4change.cis-india.org), said Dr Kovacs. To follow on Twitter, use the hash tag #maps4change.

Link to the original article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/techies-mapping-change

10 tactics for turning information into action

radha — 2011-04-05T04:19:46Z

Tactical Technology Collective (TTC) with The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Alternative Law Forum, is happy to announce the Bangalore launch of TTC's newest toolkit - '10 tactics for turning information into action'.

‘10 tactics’ explores the use of technology and social media platforms such as Google Earth, Twitter and Facebook on human rights advocacy in the developing world. The film presents ten strategies for turning information into action and is aimed at global human rights advocates, as well as campaigners of all kinds.

The launch will be in the form of a screening organised by Tactical Technology Collective- India, CIS and ALF. After the screening, there will be an open discussion on the use of social media for advocacy.

This documentary is very important and timely viewing for all and most relevant to advocates working in the grassroots, campaigners, information actvists...

This event is open to all. Admission is free. Attendees will receive a copy of the toolkit in its offline form.

For more information about the film and the event log in to: http://www.informationactivism.org/, or call 080 4153 1129.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/10-tactics-for-turning-information-into-action

ICT, transaction cost and development: The flip side

radha — 2011-08-20T22:56:05Z

Prof. Pradoshnath from NISTADS was at CIS, Bangalore on Nov 25th, 2009 and gave a presentation on ICT, transaction cost and development: The flip side. His bio and the abstract of the talk are given in this blog.

Abstract

The main observation is that the connectivity matters if and only if it connects the right way. The danger of being at the flip side looms large, if connected wrong way.

The conclusion is based on a rigorous theoretical understanding of the role of network technology in general and ICT in particular for augmenting the process of social and economic transformation. The theoretical framework also allows us to discover the danger of flip side of the network technology, and tells us that it is not always hunky-dory between ICT (or any network technology for that matter) and social and economic backwardness. Colonial plundering was possible through the adoption of network technologies in colonies.

ICT is believed to contribute to economic development by reducing the transaction and information cost associated with any economic activities. Transaction cost arises when transactions are made away from the market. There are two streams of arguments here; one, that suggests minimisation of transaction cost as means towards economic efficiency, and the other that considers the act of transactions away from the market is actually the process of value creation of a capitalist enterprise. We argue that both the arguments can be synchronised by partitioning the transaction costs in two broad components of production activities, namely, production (the value creation component, where in lies profit) and procurement. It is in the latter component where transaction cost can be minimised for efficiency, whereas in case of former transaction cost is created by a value creating capitalist enterprise. In reality both the processes are concurrent, and one complements the other.

It is this comprehensive perspective that enables us a fresh look at the ongoing programmes, and, therefore a general observation that ICTisation in less developed economies in effect make market operations friendlier for the capitalist ventures or inroads in the marginal economies, and create new varieties of distortions in the system. We call this distortion – the flip side of ICTisation, because in the absence of factors that enable make use of connectivity for economic and social gains, the marginalised population of a marginal economy runs the risk of falling in to a new dynamics of exploitation.

Profile of Prof. Pradosh Nath

An economist working on issues related to applications of science and technology for social and economic development. He is a scientist at National Institute of Science Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS), New Delhi. At present affiliated to the Centre for Culture Media and Governance, Jamia Millia University, New Delhi as Senior Research Fellow, ICSSR, New Delhi. His present research interest is in the area of application of ICT for social and economic development of the marginal economies. He has published widely in both national and international journals. He has co-authored two books and edited another. He has worked as consultant for IDRC, Canada, WAITRO, Copenhagen, Denmark, and ITU, Geneva. He has been the coordinator of the WAITRO sponsored international programme on ‘Knowledge management for R&D organisation’ conducted in different countries in Asia and Africa.

Videos

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/advocacy/other-advocacy/talk-by-prof-pradoshnath

Creative Commons Casestudies, Featuring Status.Net

radha — 2011-08-18T05:08:58Z

The Centre For Internet and Society and JAAGA organised a CC Salon on 02nd December, 2009 at 7.30pm.

Creative Commons Casestudies, Featuring Status.Net

CIS and JAAGA organised a CC Salon (http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Salon) by Jon Phillps on Creative Commons Casestudies, Featuring Status.Net

Venue: JAAGA
Time: 7.30pm

The aim of this get together was to share knowledge and experiences of alternative copyright licensing. Artists, lawyers dealing with copyright licensing and others are encouraged to highlight their own work, experiences and queries about Creative Commons and other alternative licenses.

An abstract of the presentation and the bio of Jon is given below.

ABSTRACT:

Creative Commons Casestudies, Featuring Status.Net

Creative Commons is a well-known nonprofit organization that increases sharing and improves collaboration. Its key tools are six licenses that fit between public domain and complete control, copyright, to give you control over how your work is shared with the world. This presentation explores high level case studies that use Creative Commons licenses to make a successful project. The key featured case study is Status.Net, a new status updating hosted service and open source software that uses Creative Commons licensing for content.

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Salon

BIO:

Jon Phillips is a community and business developer contributing to society and building meaningful relationships. In 2002 he helped launch the open source drawing tool, Inkscape and founded the Open Clip Art Library. From 2005 until 2008 he built Creative Commons’ community and business development projects and is currently a Creative Commons Fellow. Currently, he is growing the media company Fabricatorz with Cantocore Art Exhibitions, Laoban Open Soundsystems, and is recently assisting with an upcoming re-launch of Status.Net (Identi.ca). He is known for growing successful open communities globally, leading international business development in Asia (particularly China), and developing Open Marketing.

http://rejon.org/bio/#images

Videos

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/creative-commons