Centre for Internet and Society

Conference Blogs

nishant — 2011-08-20T23:18:52Z

The conferences that CIS participates in, individually or institutionally, and the ideas that emerge from them.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs

Conference Blogs

nishant — 2011-08-20T23:19:42Z

The conferences that CIS participates in, individually or institutionally, and the ideas that emerge from them.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/blog

Courses Taught and Designed by CIS

nishant — 2011-08-20T22:47:13Z

not only introduce the area to students but also capture technology as crucial to the practices of producing knowledge and of class-room teaching. CIS hopes to partner with different spaces in Indian and Asian academia to design unique courses, workshops and seminars that are geared towards multidisciplinary understanding of technologies and the technologised nature of the world that we live in.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/publications-automated/curricula/courses-taught-and-designed-by-cis

The Digital is Political

nishant — 2012-03-21T09:14:23Z

Technologies are not just agents of politics, there is politics in their design, writes Nishant Shah in this article published in Down to Earth in the Issue of June 15, 2011.

The links between digital technologies and politics, especially in the light of the recent West Asian-North African uprisings, have been well-established. But there is a pervasive belief that the technologies of computing, in themselves, are apolitical. There are two warring groups when it comes to debates around political participation and social change that the digital and Internet technologies have fostered.

On the one hand are people who celebrate the negotiation- and intervention-making power of these technologies and attribute to them great power that can change the world. On the other are those who look at these developments with suspicion, trying to make a case for the power of the human will rather than the scope of technology design.

Both sides remain convinced that there is a cause-and-effect link between technology and politics, but nobody talks about the politics of technology. The functional focus on digital technologies—economic prosperity, time-space shrinkage, transparent interaction and governance—has been overwhelming. This fosters a pervasive belief that technologies of computation and communication are agnostic to politics: there is a disconnect between everyday practices of technology and spectrum of politics within which we operate.

Let me give an example to explain this. Take a blank sheet of paper. To all appearances, it is completely agnostic to the uses it can be put to. It can become a letter of love, it can become a note of dismissal, shattering the dreams of somebody who is fired, it can be a promissory note facilitating legal and economic transactions, or it can become the rag to mop a spill on your desk. It is generally presumed that the piece of paper does not have any design or agency. And yet, it is obvious from history that this sheet of paper did indeed revolutionise the world.

The advent of the printing press, the ability to mass-produce paper, the possibility of sending disembodied messages, the power of the paper to store information which can then be retrieved, has been transforming the world the last 500 years. It is a technologised platform that, by its very design possibilities and limitations, is able to shape, not only how we have communicated with each other, but also how we think. Let us remember the first proof of our identity is not in images or in sounds, but in a document, printed on a piece of paper, that declares us human and alive and legally present—the birth certificate.

We have grown so used to the world of writing and of printing that we have appropriated paper as an integral part of the human socio-cultural fabric. However, technology interfaces and products have not only a political agenda in their design, but also the power to shape the ways in which human history and memory function. The blank sheet of paper, in its inability to capture oral traditions, eradicates them. The tyranny of a piece of paper brings a fixity to articulations which are fluid. To think of the paper as bereft of political design, ambition and destiny, would be to neglect the lessons learned in history.

The digital interface needs to be understood through similar prisms. It is presumed that the digital interface in itself is not political in nature. Or politics is reduced to the level of content. In the process certain significant questions remain unanswered: who owns the digital technologies? Who supports them? Who benefits from them? Who controls them? Who remains excluded? Who is being made to bear the burdens?

Questions about exclusion and discrimination, built into the very structure of technology, are often overlooked. How do technologies determine who gets a voice? How do the digital webs exclude those who shall always remain outcasts? What happens to our understanding of the relationship between the state and the citizen? What are our digital rights? How does the technology design mitigate social evils? How does technology emerge as the de-facto arbitrator of law?

Politics plays a part in the very presence and design of these technologies. It is perhaps time to proclaim that like the personal, the “The Technological is the Political.”

Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/digital-is-political

Say 'Password' in Hindi

nishant — 2012-03-21T09:18:19Z

English might be the language of the online world, but it’s time other languages had their say, writes Nishant Shah. The article was published in the Indian Express on June 5, 2011.

On skype the other day, a friend narrated an incident that made the otherwise familiar terrains of the internet, uncanny. His grandmother, who had recently acquired a taste for Facebook, had signed off on a message saying “Love, Granny”. For people of the xoxo generation, this sounds commonplace, in fact it might even be archaic. However, for my friend, who had never thought of his emotions for his grandmother as “love”, it produced a moment of sheer strangeness.

In Gujarati, it would have been silly to think of your emotions for family as “love”. There are better nuances. The emotional connect between lovers is different from the affective relationship with parents. The fondness for siblings is different from the bond with friends. And it was unnerving, for him, to have this range of emotions suddenly condensed into “love”. Like many of us polyglots who work in the rapidly digitising world of the World Wide Web, he was experiencing the gap between the mother tongue and the other tongue. It is an experience that is quite common to non-native speakers of English, who have to succumb to de facto English language usage on the global web and often find themselves at sea about how to translate emotions, histories and experiences into a language which does not always accommodate them.

This experience only becomes more intense for people who are fluent neither in the English language nor in international online English. This question of localisation of language remains one of the biggest gating factors of the internet. It also remains, after literacy and skills, the biggest impediment to including people from non-mainstream geopolitics in discussions online. Several global linguistic majorities have dealt with this by producing different language webs. Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and German are among the largest non-English language internets which are in operation now. However, in post-colonial countries like India, where linguistic diversity is the order of the day, the efforts at localisation have been sporadic and not very popular.

There are many facets to the implementation of localisation practices. It requires developing local language fonts so that people don’t have to merely transliterate local words using an English language script. These fonts further need to be made translatable into other languages, identified by machine translations. Keyboards and hardware infrastructure, which grants ease of access to the users need to be built. Tool kits to de-Anglify the computer language, code, browser signs etc. are being developed. There are many attempts being made by public and private bodies in the country to produce this ecology of localisation, both at the level of hardware and software.

And yet, adoption of localisation tools, despite a growing non-urban user base, remains low. Most people engage with the digital and online services through English, even though their fluency with the language might be low. One of the reasons why localisation of Indic language content is facing so much resistance is because of a narrow understanding of localisation as linguistic translation. Most attempts at localisation in the country merely think of translating English terms like “browser”, “code”, or “password” into the regional languages. In many instances, the term is merely rewritten in the local script.

Such an approach to localisation ignores the fact that the language of technology does not only produce new expressions and words, but also new ways of thinking. While localising the English language content, care also has to be given to translating the contexts, which the words and phrases carry. Do a simple exercise. Take the word “Password”. Try and translate this into your local language so that it makes complete sense to a native speaker. You will realise that just saying “Password” doesn’t mean much and that it requires background information to make that word intelligible to a community.

The second is that localisation is not merely about giving rights to generate content online. While the Web 2.0 wave of user-generated content is ruling the internet now, we must realise that most people come online to consume as much, if not more than, what they generate. Policies that promote local language information production, translation projects etc. need to be in place so that the minimum threshold of information is available online in languages other than English. Government documents, state records, public artifacts, etc. need to be digitised and made available in local languages so that people can access data online.

Localisation is not only about language and translations. It is about changing the top-down approach; instead of forcing existing concepts on to material realities which don’t always fit them, it is time to see that the true power of digital technologies is in building bottom-up models where everyday practice can be captured through localised vocabularies that allow for users to say, “I love you,” to anybody, in a language, and meaning that makes sense to them.

Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/password-in-hindi

Power to the People

nishant — 2012-03-21T09:35:54Z

The digital revolution has helped make NGOs and civil society more influential, independent and transparent, writes Nishant Shah in this article published in the Indian Express on Sunday, May 15, 2011.

The rise and spread of internet and digital technologies has invigorated the voluntary sector in the country, granting them better mobility, access to resources and wider visibility through digital networks. With the rise of the internet, augmented by easy access, civil society needs to claim its stake in the World Wide Web. Visibility and presence have become the buzzwords. There is a concentrated effort to become a Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsible and Transparent (SMART) organisation that doesn’t operate in remote silos but reaches out to an audience and a resource base.

While NGOs in the more developed countries have taken to digital technologies more easily, there is no doubt that the digital revolution has finally come to the civil society in India and it is offering unprecedented opportunities for social change and political participation. From the Bell Bajao campaign, which brought to the fore domestic violence in the urban middle class, to the recent demonstrations for Anna Hazare, we see many examples of the ways in which civil society and NGOs can still mobilise support from the public.

What has also been interesting is how collectives rather than registered organisations have played an important role in the public delivery of such campaigns.

Here is a look at three ways in which engagement with digital technologies, has led to new models of making public interventions and processes of initiating change for civil society collectives and NGOs.

Birds of a Feather

With the networked effect of the digital technologies, something as simple as building a Facebook page puts out the concerns and draws the attention and resources of a larger population. NGOs need no longer confine themselves to finding people in immediate environments and are extending their support base to large online networks. The Bangalore-based Blank Noise Project that started off as a public art intervention by Jasmeen Patheja has now emerged as a large volunteer-based network that harnesses the power of peer-to-peer networks to mobilise young urban dwellers, to talk about gender, safety and urban space. Not yet a formal NGO, it uses blogs, Twitter, Facebook, mailing lists etc. in order to bring people together for public interventions as well as digital dissemination. With more than 4,000 volunteers running the project in different cities, BNP proves the power of the Web to find “people like us” for a common cause.

Beyond Patronage

With the kind of outreach and visibility afforded by the internet, NGOs are turning to public support and individual contributions to carry out their work. Take Kickstarter, for example — a site where any NGO wanting to launch a creative project, can put up a project description and a budget. They can then invite people from around the world to “pledge” money by swiping credit cards, beginning with a contribution of $5. If, within a given time-span, enough people pledge enough money to cover the project’s budget, the organisation receives the money through electronic transfers. They become, thus, accountable not to individual donors or private development agencies. Instead, they become transparent and responsible towards the larger public who, as stakeholders and supporters can now endorse, amplify and track the activities of the organisation.

Transparency Unlimited

With the rise of information technologies, citizens have started asking for more details about organisations that seek to represent them in different sectors. It has become necessary for NGOs to become accountable at two levels — one is at the level of financial integrity and the second is at the level of public responsibility. The consortium Credibility Alliance is one example by which the voluntary sector can disclose certain minimum information to its public in order to build transparent governance structures. NGOs have also become more sensitive to the politics of representation and how to involve communities they work with, in their processes rather than becoming self-appointed vanguards. The field of collaboration has opened up and we see the rise of networks rather than individual players in the field.

Digital and internet technologies amplify, augment and enhance the existing processes. In the voluntary sector, like almost any other walk of life, many of these practices already exist. What these systems of the digital age have done is provide new ways by which the everyday citizen can participate and contribute to the processes of change.

Read the original published by the Indian Express here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/power-to-people

Public Talk by Dr. Ian Brown on Privacy, Trust and Biometrics

nishant — 2011-04-04T07:15:29Z

Trust is hard to build, but easy to lose. What factors affect individuals' trust in new technologies? How can governments create citizen trust in biometric security tools? Can biometrics be designed to be privacy-friendly? And how did these questions lead to the cancellation of the UK's national identity scheme, after a decade of development costing tens of millions of pounds? About the speaker: Dr Ian Brown's research is focused on public policy issues around information and the Internet, particularly privacy and copyright. He also works in the more technical fields of communications security and healthcare informatics.

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

Clicktivism & a brave new world order

nishant — 2011-04-02T01:02:51Z

THE FIRST decade of this century has been one of accelerated change. The proliferation of the Internet has ushered in ubiquitous transformations in the way we live. And yet, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Certain human values remain sacred. As a result, more and more people have come out to voice their support for equality, justice and non-discrimination. The last ten years have seen the rise of individuals empowered by the Internet to effect change around them. Across the world people have used the power of the digital revolution to fight for issues that are relevant to them. From human rights advocacy to fighting corruption, from mobilising masses for greater participation in the electoral process to campaigning to save the environment, cyber activism has taken many shapes. These instances are shaped as much by the peoples intentions as they are by the regional contexts of the interventions. You too can become a cyber activist, but first, you must first grasp the four principles that power the participation of citizens in the processes of social change and political transformation.

The FOAF Phenomenon

As our lives become more networked because of Facebook, Twitter and Orkut, our contact lists have become more prolific and diverse than the little black book of phone numbers. We have always belonged to different groups, but now digital networks have introduced a phenomenon that is popularly called Friend of a Friend (FOAF). When you add people to your social network, you gain access to their networks and groups, forming weak but significant ties. Most people in the networks inherit at least seven levels of FOAF, thus expanding the scope of their reach. This ability to disseminate messages and ideas across a vast number of people — going viral — is the basis of cyber activism.

Power of Clicktivism

In the digital world, people who might not have the time or resources to participate directly in causes they believe in, find a way of being valuable. Platforms such as Twitter and Tumblr offer participants the ability to relay information and messages to create awareness. People who think of clicktivism as a way of shirking responsibilities in the real world fail to recognise that these clickers have been behind mass mobilisations of opinions and resources.

Virtual Reality Imitates Life

Cyber activism does not mean that the actions remain confined to online spaces. Most successful cyber activism campaigns collapse the real life-virtual reality differences. They seamlessly work in the physical and digital domains, playing on the strengths of both the spaces. They invite and mobilise people to perform actions that range from signing petitions and participating in policy making, to performing random acts of kindness and coordinating flash-mobs as signs of protest.

No Information Fatigue Please!

Even as we droop with information fatigue, there is no denying that the information highway has given us new ways of thinking about the world around us. It is easy now to find an audience for our opinions through blogging platforms such as Wordpress and Blogspot, and the rise of user-generated content sites like Wikipedia and YouTube enable people to question their own assumptions. As a multiplicity of ideas emerge, it paves the way for the rise of a more conscious citizen, aware of their rights and keen for change. At the end of the day, cyber activism is a reminder of the fact change, like charity, begins at home. And the Internet helps in building S.M.A.R.T. (Simple. Moral. Accountable.

Responsible. Transparent) structures that empower citizens to stand up for what they think is right. It reminds us that there is power in words and that powerful words can lead to transformative actions. Cyber activism foregrounds the fact that we do not inherit the world from our ancestors, we borrow it from the future generations, and that we have the power to protect and preserve it.

Read the original article in Mail Today here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/clicktivism-a-brave-new-world-order

Make a Wish

nishant — 2013-04-16T06:37:16Z

It is that time of the year again, where we ring in the new, ring out the old, and say goodbye to another year that has passed us by. The earnest will take the time to reflect on things gone by, the romantics will look forward with hope to the future and the realists will point out that we are now one decade into the 21st century, and the world is changing. However, if you are a true digital native, you are probably going to head over to a website that helps you figure out 43 things that you want to do, not just in the next year, but in your foreseeable future.

43things.com is a unique social networking site, where you make a to-do list of things that you want to do in life. The list is a zeitgeist of possibilities: from losing that extra weight that has always bothered you, to spending quality time with your family to getting that degree you have desired for long from the university of your choice, to finding bliss. The lists are varied, unique and challenging. In almost six years of its existence, this website has drawn more than 2 million users from 82 countries, who have created a list of more than 30,000 unique goals that people want to fulfil in their lives.

Why is making such a list important? And why would you want a website to do it? Probably because in our humdrum lives, where every minute is spent in thinking about the next, we often forget the dreams that are important. On an everyday basis, the most interesting or important things in our lives are always things that we shall do “tomorrow”.

43 Things injects life back into the passions and hopes that we have for our future. It helps people to take a step back from routine life, to reflect on what is important to them. It works on the old idea of birds of a feather flocking together, this time enabling it through the power of the Web. People find connections because other people want to do the same thing as them. People describe their experiences, their failures, obstacles and the strategies they deployed in order to reach goals they thought were unreachable. There are stories being told and lessons being learned. And if nothing else, you are bound to get “cheer” from a passing stranger because your goal made them smile. Often a unique goal becomes a source of inspiration for others who might shape their lives around it. Sure, some goals will lose their charm, some will be replaced, and some will never be achieved, but you will always have the space to know that you have a dream, and you shared it with somebody else.

My favourite story is of a 22-year-old friend who, ever since she was three years old, wanted to be a fairy. As she grew up, she realised that it is not something that you can share with everybody. She knew that she would be laughed at, if she ever made it public. Earlier this year, she stumbled across 43 Things and just on a whim, put down as one of her goals “I want to become a fairy”. To her surprise, she discovered other adults around the world who have the same goal. They don’t really want to become fairies, but it is a dream about how they see themselves, and they all got together to voice it on the website. They connected and started talking about what attracted them to fairies, and why there is more to fairies than magic wands and gossamer wings.

They realised that what attracts them to thinking about themselves as fairies are kindness, generosity and the happiness in helping each other. From this discussion, 19 people from 11 countries, who were involved in the conversation, decided to do 12 random acts of kindness through 2010. And as the year draws to an end, they tell the stories of how in their role as fairies, they brought joy and smiles to strangers because they went out of their way to do something special for them. As my friend tells me the story, her eyes sparkle, and there is a big grin on her face. “I know this sounds stupid, but I feel like a fairy,” she wrote in her notes, as she was going through her goals. And somewhere out there, 18 other people also put a small tick-mark against their goals and dreamt of fairy dust.

Read the original in the Indian Express

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

3G Life

nishant — 2012-05-10T10:54:02Z

You can video chat, stream music and watch TV on your phone. Offering high-speed internet access, 3G would change the world of mobile computing. Nishant Shah's article was published in the Indian Express on 14 November 2010.

In the days of dial-up connections in the late 1990s, this was the procedure for downloading a picture from the Internet:
Step 1: Switch on the modem and make sure the phone line is working.
Step 2: Press connect on the dialog box and wait with bated breath to hear the sound of the “handshake” connecting the modem to the server.
Step 3: Try three-five times to finally get that connection. Increase your ability in creative swearing in the meantime.
Step 4: Hope that nobody calls on the landline while the connection is running. If somebody calls, go to Step 2. Type the URL, press Enter. Go to the kitchen. Brew a cup of coffee and come back.
Step 5: Click on the link of the picture you want to load. Go for a walk, take a long shower, eat your dinner and get back to the screen. Swear profusely because the connection went kaput in the middle of loading the picture and all you can see are pixellated patterns. Begin at Step 2, promise to be a better person who will be kind to puppies and smile at strangers.

And this is only the truncated version. If your karma was on a particular bad spin, you might have other additional steps (including turning your modem or computer on and off, because it had hung) that would increase your faith in god. To all of us who grew up in those days, the arrival of broadband was an answer to the collective prayers sent by geeks across the (mother)board in the dark hours of internet despair. The world changed with broadband, as email, blogs, sharing of pictures and information, making voice-over IP calls and connecting with people from different parts of the world became a matter of clicks.

True, there were the irritations of buffering and the heartfelt angst of that slight lag between Send and Receive over IM and email, but the accelerated speeds changed our notions of time and space. Instead of Bulletin Boards, which were more like post-it notes on refrigerators, left and collected within 12-hour intervals, we moved to Instant Messaging, which was like passing notes in the classroom to see immediate reactions and responses. For us in India, the World Wide Web opened up, for the first time, not only as something we consume but we also contribute to, adding data, providing alternative perspectives and questioning the existing views. Since the arrival of broadband, geographies have shrunk, time zones have blurred, lifestyles have become homogeneous, the singular silence of solitary voices has been replaced by the cacophony of multiple presences and everybody knows just a little bit more about their neighbours than is beneficial to anybody.

What broadband did to the snail-paced but exciting world of text-based communication and slow information transfers, 3G promises to do to the burgeoning world of mobile data access. 3G, which stands for third generation, promises to change the face of mobile computing drastically. The interface of the computer has become increasingly mobile in the past few years. Smartphones and PDAs have already unanchored us from the tyranny of sitting in one position to use the Net. Mobile technologies combined with access to the internet have led to interesting ways in which digital natives have straddled physical and virtual worlds. It has also led to new forms of participation where first-hand witnesses, citizen journalism and new interaction channels have resulted in structures of good governance and democracy. Wireless networks of mobile phones also mean that remote areas with poor infrastructure are now able to get on the Infobahn to access information.

The opening up of the 3G spectrum and the easy availability of high-speed data access on devices like smartphones, tablets, laptops, netbooks, e-book readers, etc, promises to accelerate these advantages. With extremely high-speed internet available on mobile devices with rich browsing capacities, one of the paradigm shifts will be in how we visually relate to the internet. We often forget that cyberspace, even though it is a visual medium, is also a text-heavy medium. This emphasis on text means that it excludes a lot of people who might not be conversant with English, the de facto language for most international discussions. It also excludes people who might be visually or print-challenged. 3G is hopefully going to change the way in which we interact with information online and bring in more multimedia, audio and video elements into it. And this means that video chatting on phones is now just a dial away.

In countries like Japan, North Korea, Syria, Singapore and the US, where 3G has been rolled out, there have been dramatic changes. Content generation and cultural production have gone up tremendously. As more inexpensive devices offer internet gateway through 3G, people think of themselves as not mere consumers but also producers of online content. Citizen journalism has flourished and events that are often glossed over by mainstream media find visibility and space in an international dialogue. 3G promises easy, affordable and extensive networking possibilities to communities and people who often exist in remote and isolated areas.

Technologies in themselves do not change the world. However, there is no denying that ease of access, scope of expanse and affordability that the 3G spectrum brings is going to create populations, and eventually generations, who are one step closer to Singularity — the vision of creating perfect networks where human memories, thoughts and ideas work in synchrony with technology networks. This Diwali, when Tata Docomo offered 3G services in 20 cities, the biggest bang was in the noisy silence of data travelling at huge speeds in the ether. New service providers will transform your digital device into a magic box, combining entertainment, interaction, communication and information access to stitch you in better into the fabric of a world that is quickly becoming digital.

The ABC of 3G...
How will 3G change the way I use my phone?

3G enables you to access internet on your phone at extremely high speeds. Which means, you can play a YouTube clip on your phone without buffering; check PDF files and attachments on your BlackBerry with ease; download music and transfer files faster. Video calls from one network to another will become easier, and more popular. You can also watch television on your cellphone.

Will CDMA and GSM phones support 3G?

3G will be available to both GSM and CDMA customers, if you are on a 3G network.

Can I use my existing handset to get 3G speeds?

Only if your handset (whether a smart-phone or not) is 3G or 3.5G-ready.

How can I make video calls?

You will need a 3G-enabled handset and a front-facing camera. The person you are calling should have a 3G handset and be on a 3G network. If you don't have a front-facing camera, you will be able to watch the person you are speaking to, but he/she won’t be able to see you. If your phone supports Skype, you will be able to make free calls to another Skype user.

Is a front-facing camera a must on all 3G phones?

It is if you want to make video calls. If you are only going to use 3G speeds to access email, check Facebook, and share documents, you won’t need it.

How does 3G change entertainment options?

Worldwide, the biggest consumption on 3G networks is of television. And not without reason: there is plenty of bandwidth available and phones with 3” to 4” screens make watching TV on the go a pleasure. Most mobile TV users in 3G countries are people who use public transport. But with many urban Indians still driving to work, I don’t know if mobile TV will catch on. You can, though, check the latest news or catch one over of a Test match between meetings.

How does 3G affect the way I interact with my environment?

A friend in Singapore saves approximately $100 every month on parking fees, as his 3G connection tells him about the cheapest parking options in and around his geographical location, at the press of a qwerty key. Similarly, you can find out about places to dine out, the deals the nearest mall is offering or the location of the nearest ATM. In India, such location-based services have not taken off, though some malls and shopping centres send you information about their deals of the day on Bluetooth.

Will I need to pay separately for 3G?

Yes, there will be a subscription charge for data access, above your current voice plan. Though the operators have not revealed price plans, you should typically look at plans in the range of Rs 300 per month and upwards for 3G usage.

Will I be able to use 3G on my PC?

If your phone allows using you to tether its internet connection to your personal computer (or Mac), you can access internet at 3G speeds on your PC. Some laptops now also include a SIM card slot, in which you can slide a 3G SIM to get 3G connectivity. Devices like Apple’s iPad with a 9.7” screen, the Samsung Galaxy Tab (7”) and the Olivepad (7”) can also connect to 3G networks, letting you surf, stream music or videos, or work on the move.

Do I need 3G?

Like with each technology, there will be late movers and early adopters. I know of a lot of people like me who would like to have high-speed internet access on the move. And I also know of people who don’t want to check email more than once a day. It will depend on where and when you want to get connected.

What kind of speeds can I expect?

Depends on your service provider, but you can expect an average of 1 megabits per second download speed, allowing you to stream videos and music without buffering, as well as do high-speed file transfers. There might be a limit of 300 Kbps on upload speeds. So sending large files may still take more time, but downloading will be faster.

What tariff plan should I choose?

If you are going to use 3G mostly for video calls, choose a service provider with a good tariff plan for video calls. If you are going to use 3G to access internet services such as Flickr, YouTube and Facebook, and are a heavy Web user, unlimited data transfer plans make more sense.

What are the 3G plans available now?

Currently, MTNL provides 3G services in Delhi and Mumbai; BSNL offers it across the country. Tata and Reliance have high-speed USB data cards, which work on the 3G platform but provide data access to PCs, not phones. Tata Docomo launched its 3G services in select circles this month. Aircel, Airtel and Vodafone also plan to start 3G services by early next year.

Read the original article in the Indian Express here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/3-g-life

Identity, Identification and Media Representation in Video Game Play: An Audience Reception Study

nishant — 2011-04-04T07:22:52Z

Adrienne Shaw from the Annenberg School for Communication, who is a visiting fellow at MICA is giving a public talk on research on representation in video games on 27 November 2010 at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore.

Adrienne Shaw

Adrienne Shaw received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication in 2010. Her research focuses on popular culture, the politics of representation, cultural production and qualitative audience research. Her primary areas of interest are video games, gaming culture, representations of gender and sexuality, and the construction of identity and communities in relation to media consumption.

Abstract

Research on minority representation in video games usually asserts:

the industry excludes certain audiences by not representing them;
everyone should be provided with characters they can identify with; and
media representation has knowable effects.

In contrast, this dissertation engages with audiences’ relationship to gamer identity, how players interact with game texts (identification and interaction), and their thoughts about media representation. This dissertation uses interviews and participant observation to investigate why, when and how representation is important to individuals who are members of marginalized groups, focusing on sexuality, gender and race, in the U.S. The data demonstrate that video games may offer players the chance to create representations of people “like them” (pluralism), but games do not necessarily force players to engage with texts that offer representation of marginalized groups (diversity), with some rare and problematic exceptions. The focus on identity-based marketing and audience demand, as well as over-simplistic conceptualizations of identification with media characters, as the basis of arguments for minority media representation encourage pluralism.

Representation is available, but only to those who seek it out. Diversity, however, is necessary for the political and educative goals of representation. It requires that players are actively confronted with diverse content. Diversity is not the result of demand by audiences, but is rather the social responsibility of media producers. Media producers, however, can take advantage of the fact that identities are complex, that identification does not only require shared identifiers, and that diversity in a non-tokenistic sense can appeal to a much wider audience than pluralistic, niche marketing. In sum, diversity can address both the market logic and educative goals of media representation. I conclude by offering three suggestions bred from this analysis. First, researchers should be critical of this emphasis on pluralism rather than diversity. Second, rather than argue that video games should include more diversity because it matters, producers should include it precisely because representation does not matter in many games. Finally, those who have invested in diversity in games should not just prove the importance of representation in games, but rather argue for it without dismissing playfulness.

VIDEOS

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

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

The Future of Journalism: EJC @ Picnic 2010

nishant — 2010-10-13T07:13:29Z

Nishant Shah was a speaker at the PICNIC 2010, in Amsterdam, where he made a presentation titled "Citizens in the time of Database Democracies : Information ecology and role of participatory technologies in India"

The relationship between citizenship and government informatics have historically been shaped through a series of debates around questions of citizenship, security, State-market collaborations, and right based discourse in India. Even before the information explosion caused by the emergence of digital and internet technologies, there has been a strident discourse around participatory democracy and technology mediated governance as ways of empowering the citizen's access to rights and resources in the country. With the emergence of new technologies of storage, retrieval and dissemination, these expectations have become more visible. The Indian Government has officially accepted the transition to become a S.M.A.R.T. (Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsible and Transparent) State, with the rise of 'Netizens' who, in their access to new digital and internet technologies will change the very shape and structure of governance.

However, as the digital infrastructure develops and new kinds of citizen services and consumption come to the fore, battle-lines are being drawn between stakeholders. On the one hand are those who believe that this might be the opening of a Pandora’s Box for a country like India where a stark digital divide might create great inequality in citizens' access to State services and resources, producing unjust and discriminatory structures based on access, bandwidth and education. . On the other hand are those who celebrate the need for transparency, participation and access to governmentality that these e-governance initiatives usher in, addressing long standing questions of plutocratic governance, bureaucratic systems of denial of rights and widespread corruption. Both the warring factions draw upon partial data – of failed attempts and projects by different government initiatives to pilot studies initiated by different government and civil society organisations respectively – to make their arguments for and against the emergence of a 'Database Democracy' .premised on participatory politics facilitated by new media practices in the country.

Especially with the current rolling out of a Unique Identity Project (named Aadhar – The Hindi word for ‘Support’) these discussions have become more severe and the arguments have become angrier. It is not only timely but also necessary to examine the ecology of participatory technologies and processes in the country in order to look at the different sides of the debates and explore the role that new media practitioners and stakeholders would play in efficiently and responsibly establishing a protocol of open and transparent governance structures without compromising either the privacy, rights or safety of the citizens. This presentation explores the project Aadhar as symptomatic of a changing relationship between the State and its Citizens mediated by ICT technologies and stakeholders, to look at the ways in which new Citizenships are being forged in emerging information societies like India.

More news about the panel on Future of Journalism, arranged by the European Journalism Commission, is available at

http://futureofjournalism.net/index.php/EJC_at_PICNIC2010

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/picnic

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

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