Centre for Internet and Society

October 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-25T04:53:06Z

Welcome to the Centre for Internet and Society newsletter! In this issue we bring you the updates of our research, events, media coverage and videos of some past events organized by us during October 2011.

Digital Natives

Digital Natives with a Cause? examines the changing landscape of social change and political participation in light of the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South:

Key Research

On Fooling Around: Digital Natives and Politics in Asia
by Nishant Shah, Director-Research
Youths are not only actively participating in the politics of its times but also changing the way in which we understand the political processes of mobilisation, participation and transformation, writes Nishant. The paper was presented at the Digital Cultures in Asia conference at the Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.

Links in the Chain

Analog Relics in the Digital Age, volume 8, issue 4
Guest Editor: Nilofar Ansher
“The scale of inventions has not really leaped, so much as mutated. We had Twitter and Facebook ... (remember notice boards, community centers and pamphlets); they just weren’t so instant, hyperlinked and global in scale. We still use the medium of a mouthpiece and speaker to talk to each other long distance, the difference is in the changed aesthetics of the 21st century – it’s all squarish curves and scratch-proof glass that are more appealing today. Blackboards, writing material, listening devices and memory aids have undergone unprecedented transformations of function and usage, but it’s still about having a blank canvas to write upon with a chalk, pen, paper or iClick”, writes Nilofar in this issue of the Digital Natives newsletter.

Articles/Columns

In Search of the Other: Decoding Digital Natives: Nishant Shah charts the trajectories of our research at the Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore, India) and Hivos (The Hague, The Netherlands) to see how alternative models of understanding these relationships can be built. This blog post by Nishant Shah was published in DML central on 24 October 2011.

Staff Quoted in the Media

The Write Stuff , Deccan Chronicle, 14 November 2011. Nishant Shah has been quoted in this article.

Accessibility

India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and electronic accessibility policies:

Publication

e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities (Russian Version)
Edited by Nirmita Narasimhan
The e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities is now available in Russian. The handbook is a joint publication of ITU, G3ict and the Centre for Internet and Society, in cooperation with the Hans Foundation. Dr. Hamadoun I. Toure, Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union wrote the preface, Dr. Sami Al-Basheer, Director, ITU-D wrote the introduction and Axel Leblois, Executive Director, G3ict wrote the foreword.

Blog Entry

The case for Accessible Banking by Dinesh Kaushal.

Access to Knowledge

The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers, developing countries, human rights, and creativity/innovation from excessive regimes of copyright, patents, and other such monopolistic rights over knowledge:

Key Research

Of Jesters, Clowns and Pranksters: YouTube and the Condition of Collaborative Authorship
by Nishant Shah, Director-Research, Centre for Internet and Society
The idea of a single author creating cinematic objects in a well-controlled scheme of support system and production/distribution infrastructure has been fundamentally challenged by the emergence of digital video sharing sites like YouTube, writes Nishant in this essay published in the Journal of Moving Images.

Openness

The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software:

Featured Research

Know Your Users, Match their Needs!
As Free Access to Law initiatives in the Global South enter into a new stage of maturity, they must be certain not to lose sight of their users’ needs. This blog post gives a summary of the “Good Practices Handbook”, a research output of the collaborative project Free Access to Law — Is it Here to Stay? undertaken by LexUM (Canada) and the South African Legal Institute in partnership with the Centre for Internet and Society. Rebecca Schild and Prashant Iyengar from CIS were part of the research team.

Event Organised

Open Access to Academic Knowledge, organised by the Indian Institute of Science and CIS at National Centre for Science Information, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore on 2 November 2011. Tom Dane participated in this event.

Event Participated

3rd Canadian Science Policy Conference, organised by Canadian Science Policy Conference from16 to 18 November 2011 at the Ottawa Convention Centre. Sunil Abraham spoke in the session on Global Implications of Open and Inclusive Innovation.

Announcement

The Wikimedia India Program Trust. A new entity, the “Wikimedia India Program Trust”, has been registered in Delhi. Sunil is a trustee.

Internet Governance

The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes:

Comments / Submissions

CIS Comments on Finance Committee Statements to Open Letters on Unique Identity: The Parliamentary Finance Committee responded to the six open letters sent by CIS through an email on 12 October 2011. CIS has commented on the points raised by the Committee.
Comments on the National Policy of Information Technology: The NPIT 2011 has the laudable goal of making India a ‘knowledge economy with a global role’ by developing and deploying ICT solutions in all sectors to foster development within India and at a global level. CIS appreciates this initiative of the Department of Information Technology and offers brief comments to strengthen the draft.
CIS Comments on the Draft National Policy on Electronics: CIS submitted its comments to the request for comments put out by the Department of Information Technology on its draft 'National Policy on Electronics'.

Statement

India's Statement Proposing UN Committee for Internet-Related Policy: India made its statement at the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly, its proposal for the UN Committee for Internet-Related Policy was presented.

Podcast

Professor Balaram talks Open Access : Tom Dane spoke with Professor P Balaram, Director of the Indian Institute of Science about the Open Access movement. A podcast of the interview is available for download.

Event Report

The 2nd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series — A Post-event Report : The 2nd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series was organised by the Indian Journal of Law and Technology and CIS on the 21st and 22nd of May 2011 at the National Law School of India University, Nagarbhavi, Bangalore. The main theme for this year was Emerging Issues in Privacy Law: Law, Policy and Practice.

Peer Review

Material Cyborgs; Asserted Boundaries
by Nishant Shah, Director-Research
Nishant explores the possibility of formulating the cyborg as an author or translator who is able to navigate between the different binaries of ‘meat–machine’, ‘digital–physical’, and ‘body–self’, using the abilities and the capabilities learnt in one system in an efficient and effective understanding of the other. The essay was published in the European Journal of English Studies, Volume 12, Issue 2.

Articles / Columns

What is Dilligaf? On the web, time moves at the speed of thought: Groups emerge, proliferate and are abandoned as new trends and fads take precedence. Nowhere else is this dramatic flux as apparent as in the language that evolves online. While SMS lingo – like TTYL (Talk To You Later) and LOL (Laughing Out Loud)– has endured and become a part of everyday language, new forms of speech are taking over. This article by Nishant Shah was published in GQ India.
The Book of Jobs The man who made the computer personal, who changed the face of the digital media industry, who was inspired by Zen philosophy to create an eight-billion-dollar empire, Steve Jobs, died last month. Just a few weeks before his death, in the midst of his painful illness, he told Walter Isaacson, the man chosen to write his authorised biography, “I really want to believe that something survives”. And Isaacson wrote him a fairy tale which will make sure that Jobs will be remembered beyond the gizmos and gimmicks, writes Nishant Shah in this article published in the Indian Express on 12 November 2011.

Staff Quoted in the Media

Is Facebook tracking your virtual footprints? by Sheetal Sukhija in MidDay, 22 November 2011. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this article.
M-governance gains momentum by Vasudha Venugopal in the Hindu, 20 November 2011.
Learn it Yourself: The peer-to-peer world of online learning encourages conversations and reciprocal learning, writes Nishant Shah. The article was published by the Indian Express on 30 October 2011. Nishant Shah is quoted in this article.
SOPA: The bill that could kill the Internet by Suw Charman-Anderson in Firstpost.Technology, 16 November 2011.
Broadband user base still has a long way to go, by Leslie D’Monte & Deepti Chaudhary in Livemint, 15 November 2011. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this article.
Not mandatory’ but maids, guards get fingerprinted by Hemanth Kashyap in Bangalore Mirror, 9 November 2011. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this article.
Netizen Report: Transparency Edition by Rebecca MacKinnon in Global Voices Online, 7 November 2011.
Blocking online content: Google gets more requests than govt by Pallavi Polanki in Firstpost.com, 2 November 2011. Pranesh Prakash has been quoted in this article.

Blog Entries

Sources of CIS Funding by Pranesh Prakash on 9 November 2011.

TRAI urged to take action against P2P throttling and DNS hijacking by Anand on 9 November 2011.

Events Organised

Exposing Data: Art Slash Activism organised by Tactical Tech and CIS at CIS office in Bangalore on 28 November 2011. Ward Smith and Stephanie Hankey (Co-founders of TTC), Ayisha Abraham (Filmmaker, Srishti School of Art Design) and Zainab Bawa (Research Fellow, CIS) gave a lecture.
Droidcon India, first Android Conference in Bangalore, organised by CIS in collaboration with Droidcon.com, Bangalore Android User Group, MobileMonday Bangalore and Android Advices on 18 and 19 November 2011 at the MLR Convention Centre, Bangalore.

Events Participated

Western Ghats Portal: Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics organised by the Western Ghats Portal team at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment, 25 November 2011. Sunil Abraham spoke in the session on Scientific Commons and Policy.
Names Not Numbers Mumbai, 26 November 2011. Nishant Shah spoke in a panel on “The New Digital Individual: Is New Technology Liberating or Enslaving?”. The event was organised by Editorial Intelligence and partners which included the British Council and Financial Times, BBC World News, Mumbai first, Vodafone, Trident and Godrej India Cultural Lab.

Video

Facebook Resistance Workshop at CIS. This was a workshop for people to learn on how to think beyond the rules and limitations of Facebook, to tweak and play around the features and design to generate useful, creative, and funny concepts and explore how this creative intervention can be turned into a real software developed by the Facebook Resistance.

Telecom

While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum:

Article / Column

Telecom Path-Breaker?
Does the draft National Telecom Policy-2011 reflect true brilliance or smoke-and-mirrors? It will be a game-changer if a shared network is implemented effectively, writes Shyam Ponappa in this article published in the Business Standard on 3 November 2011.

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Join the CIS group on Facebook
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CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

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

May 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T10:23:01Z

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

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who want to critically engage with the dominant discourse on youth, technology and social change, in order to look at the alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. It also aims at building new ecologies that amplify and augment the interventions and actions of the digitally young as they shape our futures.

New Blog Entry by Samuel Tettner

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

What Scare a Digital Native Blogathon?

Accessibility

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

New Blog Entry

Universal Service — An Instrument for Accessibility

Openness

CIS believes that innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration and is committed towards promotion of open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software. Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:

Internet Governance

Although there may not be one centralized authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cyber crime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as “the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:

Column in Indian Express

Nishant Shah, Director-Research will be writing a series of columns on Internet and Society issues. His first column on transparency, technology and NGOs in India came out on Sunday:

Power to the People [Indian Express, May 15, 2011]

New Blog Entries

Killing the Internet Softly with Its Rules [By Pranesh Prakash in Indian Express, May 9, 2011]
Rebuttal of DIT's Misleading Statements on New Internet Rules
CDT Provides Answers to Questions on Internet Neutrality

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

Featured Research

Limits to Privacy

Conference Report

Privacy By Design — Conference Report

Workshop

Second IJLT-CIS Lecture Series, National Law School [National Law School of India University, Nagarbhavi, Bangalore, May 21-22, 2011]

Upcoming Conferences

Panel Discussion on UID – Its Feasibility, Utility and Legality [May 26, 2011]
Privacy Matters - A Public Conference in Hyderabad [The English and Foreign Languages University (TBC), Hyderabad, June 18, 2011]

Telecom

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

Column

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

Spectrum reforms - Good & Bad news [published in the Business Standard on May 5, 2011]

Miscellaneous

Public Lecture

The Task of the Translator after Google [CIS, April 30, 2011]

News & Media Coverage

Sunil Abraham, CIS : "Avec l’e-G8, Nicolas Sarkozy veut promouvoir de nouvelles restrictions à la liberté d’expression" [LE MAG IT, May 24, 2011]
As Simple as a Tweet [Deccan Chronicle, May 24, 2011]
A Network of Chains [Outlook, Issue of May 30, 2011]
Bangalore-based NGO files RTI query asking list of websites blocked by Indian govt [Daily News & Analysis, May 18, 2011]
IT Act if enforced will leave internet use in India no freer than in China [Daily News & Analysis, May 15, 2011]
Your Privacy is Public Property [Mail Today, May 15, 2011]
Point By Point Rebuttal Of Indian Government’s Statement On Internet Control Rules [Medianama, May 13, 2011]
New rules to ensure due diligence: IT dept [Times of India, May 11, 2011]
Indian civil liberties groups are now geared to fight the draconian IT Rules [Weekend Leader.com, Vol 2 Issue 18, 6 - 12 May, 2011]
New Internet rule: 'Objectionable' content can be removed without notifying users [dailybhaskar.com, May 11, 2011]
India Chills Online Speech [digitalcommunities, May 3, 2011]
Consumers International World Congress - Day 3 roundup [Consumer's International Blog, May 5, 2011]
Digerati See Censorship in New Web Rules [Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2011]
Free expression [Watertown Daily Times, May 2, 2011]
India curbs on Bloggers and Internet [TruthDrive, April 29, 2011]
Bright lights, geek city [Hindu, April 28, 2011]
India Cracks Down on Internet Free Speech [April 28, 2011]
India's cyber cafes going porn-free [msnbc.com, April 28, 2011]
Thousands queue for iPad 2 across Asia [AFP, April 28, 2011] [News hosted by Google]
New internet rules open to arbitrary interpretation [Times of India, April 27, 2011]
India Puts Tight Leash on Internet Free Speech [New York Times, April 27, 2011]
India Can Restrict 'Objectionable' Web Content under New Rules [TMCnet Legal, April 27, 2011]
Iraqi Minister meets Secretary, Indian Ministry of Panchayat Raj [Karnataka News Network, April 27, 2011]
The world is your oyster, by invitation only [Livemint, April 26, 2011]
No access to pornography in cyber cafes, declare new rules [Times of India, April 26, 2011]
India Proposes Restrictions on Tapping Telephone Calls [PC World, TechWorld and CIO, April 26, 2011]

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Follow CIS on identi.ca
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

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

November 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-07T11:46:10Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society!

News Updates

The internet’s new billion: New web users — in countries like Brazil and China — are changing the culture of the internet.
http://bit.ly/hKUb5n

‘Piracy is now a mainstream political phenomenon': “Piracy has become a mainstream political phenomenon,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society in the city. The piracy that he was referring to was not the piracy of the high seas but the piracy of intellectual property.
http://bit.ly/gMC1Br

Open standards policy in India: A long, but successful journey: Last week, India became another major country to join the growing, global open standards movement. After three years of intense debate and discussion, India's Department of IT in India finalized its Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance, joining the ranks of emerging economies like Brazil, South Africa and others. This is a historic moment and India's Department of Information Technology (DIT) deserves congratulations for approving a policy that will ensure the long-term preservation of India's e-government data.
http://bit.ly/dGo6Qo

Information, the world's new capital - Digital Natives: Information is the new capital and currency of the world, Nishant Shah, of the India-based Digital Natives with a Cause, told Bizcommunity.com yesterday, 10 November 2010, as the three-day workshop on digital and internet technologies that brought together young delegates from nine African countries ended in Johannesburg, South Africa. "If the 20th century was the age of the industrial revolution, the 21st century is now actually the age of the knowledge information," Shah said.
http://bit.ly/dpXIKY

What it means to be a child today: They move seamlessly between reality and virtual reality. The digital landscape they inhabit comprises generations — not of family — but of technology such as Web 2.0, 3G, PS4 and iPhone5. Their world has moved beyond their neighbourhood, school and childhood friends to encompass a 500-channel television universe, the global gaming village, the endless internet. These are the children born in the last decade and half — possibly the first generation that has never known a world without hi-tech.
http://bit.ly/cz3nBJ

Report: Digitally Open: Innovation and Open Access Forum, 23 Oct 2010, Doha, Qatar: A summary of the event "Digitally Open: Innovation and Open Access Forum" held in Doha.
http://bit.ly/catHoi

DOC 2.0: A Resources Sharing Mela by NGO Documentation Centres: A Resource Sharing Mela and Meet of DCM (Document Centres Meet) at the Centre for Education & Documentation in Domlur, Bangalore.
http://bit.ly/dnwQMf

Wi-Fi Direct promises range, bandwidth higher than Bluetooth: Sharing, printing and connecting for Wi-Fi devices is going to be more convenient than ever with soon-to-be-launched technology Wi-Fi Direct, which enables devices to connect to each other without a conventional Wi-Fi hub. This article by Ramkumar Iyer was published in the Hindu on 31 October 2010.
http://bit.ly/aUul9f
Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property: Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property charts the rise of the access to knowledge movement, a movement in which Open Society Foundations have played a key role. It maps the vast terrain of legal, cultural, and technical issues that activists and thinkers aligned to the movement negotiate every day.
http://bit.ly/9nkQFM

Social Mashup!: Save the Date Join us to meet India’s most passionate, innovative, and curious start-up social entrepreneurs for two groundbreaking days of conversations, connections and inspiration. This event will be held on 2-3 December 2010 at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad.
http://bit.ly/bKKcar

Digitally Open: Innovation and Open Access Forum: Promoting Openness in Today's Digital World
http://bit.ly/961Ieg

Crisis for identity or identity crisis?: The hurry with which the government is pushing its most ambitious project to assign a number (UID) to every citizen without any feasibility study or public debate has raised many questions. http://bit.ly/8Zt9mf

Upcoming Event

Identity, Identification and Media Representation in Video Game Play: An Audience Reception Study: Adrienne Shaw from the Annenberg School of communications, 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.
http://bit.ly/909xkU

Research

My Bubble, My Space, My Voice Workshop - Perspective and Future
The second workshop for the “Digital Natives with a Cause?” research project named “My Bubble, My Space, My Voice” took place at the Link Center of Wits University, in Johannesburg, South Africa from 6 November 2010 to 9 November 2010. Samuel Tettner, Digital Natives Co-cordinator shares his perspective on the workshop.
http://bit.ly/bPX6Xd

Archive and Access: Call for Review
The Archive and Access research project by Rochelle Pinto, Aparna Balachandran and Abhijit Bhattacharya is a part of the Researchers @ Work Programme at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. The project that attempts to look at the ways in which the notion of the archive, the role of the archivist and the relationship between the state and private archives that has undergone a transition with the emergence of Internet technologies in India has been put up for public review. http://bit.ly/d4o809

Just Where We Like It
The micro space for status updates might become the new public space for discussion. Nishant Shah's column on Digital Natives was published in the Sunday Eye of the Indian Express on 21 November 2010.
http://bit.ly/96cK8q

Taking It to the Streets
The previous posts in the Beyond the Digital series have discussed the distinct ways in which young people today are thinking about their activism. The fourth post elaborates further on how this is translated into practice by sharing the experience of a Blank Noise street intervention: Y ARE U LOOKING AT ME?
http://bit.ly/ciyiiR

Talking Back without "Talking Back"
The activism of digital natives is often considered different from previous generations because of the methods and tools they use. However, reflecting on my conversations with The Blank Noise Project and my experience in the ‘Digital Natives Talking Back’ workshop in Taipei, the difference goes beyond the method and can be spotted at the analytical level – how young people today are thinking about their activism.
http://bit.ly/bHAvDE

The 'Beyond the Digital' Directory
For the past few months, Maesy Angelina has been sharing the insights gained from her research with Blank Noise on the activism of digital natives. The ‘Beyond the Digital’ directory offers a list of the posts on the research based on the order of its publication.
http://bit.ly/b3TK3C

First Thing First
Studies often focus on how digital natives do their activism in identifying the characteristics of youth digital activism and dedicate little attention to what the activism is about. The second blog post in the Beyond the Digital series reverses this trend and explores how the Blank Noise Project articulates the issue it addresses: street sexual harassment.
http://bit.ly/cM1HFf

Change has come to all of us
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.
http://bit.ly/9J82YY

Accessibility

e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities
The Centre for Internet and Society is proud to announce the launch of its first publication, the “e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities" in collaboration with the G3ict (Global Initiative for Inclusive Information Communication Technologies) and ITU (International Telecommunications Union), and sponsored by the Hans Foundation. The handbook is compiled and edited by Nirmita Narasimhan. Dr. Hamadoun I. Toure, Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union has written the preface, Dr. Sami Al-Basheer, Director, ITU-D has written the introduction and Axel Leblois, Executive Director, G3ict has written the foreword.
http://bit.ly/gfKNYO

Intellectual Property

Statement of CIS on the Work of the Committee in the 21st SCCR
The twenty-first session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights was held in Geneva from 8 to 12 November 2010. Nirmita Narasimhan attended the conference and represented the Centre for Internet and Society.
http://bit.ly/fJVNPI

We’ve All Got Some Baggage
America’s newest trade agreement is not going to kill only iPods. The article appeared in the Tehelka Magazine Vol 7, Issue 45, Dated November 13, 2010
http://bit.ly/cVrpWd

Internet Governance

Consumer Privacy - How to Enforce an Effective Protective Regime?
In a typical sense, when people think of themselves as consumers, they just think about what they purchase, how they purchase and how they use their purchase. But while doing this exercise we are always exchanging personally identifiable information, and thus our privacy is always at risk. In this blog post, Elonnai Hickok and Prashant Iyengar through a series of questions look through the whole concept of consumer privacy at the national and international levels. By placing a special emphasis on Indian context, this post details the potential avenues of consumer privacy in India and states the important elements that should be kept in mind when trying to find at an effective protective regime for consumer privacy.
http://bit.ly/eEs5Qx

CIS Responds to Privacy Approach Paper
A group of officers was created to develop a framework for a privacy legislation that would balance the need for privacy protection, security, sectoral interests, and respond to the domain legislation on the subject. Shri Rahul Matthan of Tri Legal Services prepared an approach paper for the legal framework for a proposed legislation on privacy. The approach paper is now being circulated for seeking opinions of the group of officers and is also being placed on the website of the Department of Personnel and Training for seeking public views on the subject. The Privacy India team at CIS responded to the approach paper and has called for the need for a more detailed study of statutory enforcement models and mechanisms in the creation of privacy legislation.
http://bit.ly/eVTwVC
Privacy and Banking: Do Indian Banking Standards Provide Enough Privacy Protection
Banking is one of the most risky sectors as far as privacy is concerned due to the highly sensitive and personal nature of information which is often exchanged, recorded and retained. Although India has RBI guidelines and legislations to protect data, this blog post looks at the extent of those protections, and what are the areas that still need to be addressed.
http://bit.ly/flq09V

Privacy and Telecommunications: Do We Have the Safeguards?
All of you often come across unsolicited and annoying telemarketing calls/ SMS's, prank calls, pestering calls for payment, etc. Do we have any safeguards against them? This blog post takes a look at the various rules and regulations under Indian law to guard our privacy and confidentiality.
http://bit.ly/hnTwKp

Privacy, Free/Open Source, and the Cloud
A look into the questions that arise in concern to privacy and cloud computing, and how open source plays into the picture.
http://bit.ly/awpCyF

Privacy Concerns in Whole Body Imaging: A Few Questions
Security versus Privacy...it is a question that the world is facing today when it comes to using the Whole Body Imaging technology to screen a traveller visually in airports and other places. By giving real life examples from different parts of the world Elonnai Hickok points out that even if the Government of India eventually decides to advocate the tight security measures with some restrictions then such measures need to balanced against concerns raised for personal freedom. She further argues that privacy is not just data protection but something which must be viewed holistically and contextually when assessing new policies.
http://bit.ly/9rvQPt

American Bar Association Online Privacy Conference: A Report
On 10 November 2010, I attended an American Bar Association online conference on 'Regulating Privacy Across Borders in the Digital Age: An Emerging Global Consensus or Vive la Difference'. The panelists addressed many important global privacy challenges and spoke about the changes the EU directive is looking to take.
http://bit.ly/dy41zc

Telecom

3G Life
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.
http://bit.ly/gyxaW2

Ideology and ICT Policies
For better policies, decision-makers need to know their own and others’ biases, and consider what others are doing, writes Shyam Ponappa in an article published in the Business Standard on 4 November 2010.
http://bit.ly/dbl3Ai

Looking forward to your feedback. Please feel free to write to us for any queries or details required. If you do not wish to receive these emails, please do write to us and we will unsubscribe your mail ID from the mailing list.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/november-2010-bulletin

October 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-07T12:02:11Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society!

News Updates

Internet, szabadon
A polgárjogi aktivisták konfrontálódtak és panaszkodtak, a Google és a Facebook hárított és panaszkodott az Internet at Liberty konferencián, amelyet kedden és szerdán rendezett a Google és a CEU Budapesten.
http://bit.ly/dwNhRw
Hogyan szűrik a kormányok az internetes tartalmakat?
Az internet szabadságáról tartanak háromnapos konferenciát Budapesten a Google és a Közép-Európai Egyetem (CEU) szervezésében. Kedden az internetes tartalmak szűrése volt a legfontosabb téma a rendezvényen.
http://bit.ly/aFApER
Konferencia az internetes szólásszabadságról Budapesten
Az internet és szólásszabadság viszonyát vitatják meg Budapesten, a Közép-Európai Egyetem és a Google szervezte, háromnapos konferencián
http://bit.ly/9evwE4
How the UID project can be a cause for concern
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), headed by Nandan Nilekani, is the UPA government's most ambitious project, where one billion Indians are branded with a unique identity number.
http://bit.ly/bl7INY
In new Facebook features, a comeback for community
Nearly 750 tweets bombard the web every second. Internet traffic is growing by 40 per cent a year. People post 2.5 billion photos on Facebook every month. Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded on YouTube. But who owns all that data? Until now, big business was in complete control and used the data to monetise operations. But all that is set to change. With Facebook launching two new features, ‘Groups' and a ‘Download your information,' the community is making a comeback.
http://bit.ly/arEi4V
Stiff Resistance Dogs India's ID Plan
An article about the UID project by Indrajit Basu in Asia Times Online.
http://bit.ly/bMcOSs
Data Activism and Grassroots Empowerment in India
Glover Wright of the Center for Internet and Society talks about Data Activism and Grassroots Empowerment in India at the Innovate/Activate Unconference in New York Law School on 24 September 2010.
http://bit.ly/alnjsn

Upcoming Events

Enabling Access to Education through ICT
ICT workshop in Delhi....Registrations open!
http://bit.ly/9flyEK

Network Culture: Archaeological and Artistic Interventions Public Seminar – Talk by Kristoffer Gansing and Linda Hilfing
Kristoffer Gansing and Linda Hilfling will give a talk on Network Culture on 8 November 2010 in the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.
http://bit.ly/cEmOZw

Research

City in the Internet 1: Geography Imagined (Part 1)
“The estuaries that flirt with the land mass before they finally perish in the vast deep blue ocean beyond were perfect in their shape and grace. And you know what; from top it appears like a surreal landscape that is so restive and peaceful, almost heaven. The countryside is actually very beautiful”, says Pratyush Shankar in his latest blog post. A random conversation between two persons discovering the joys of seeing our existence through Google Earth!
http://bit.ly/9klUn1

A Digital Native coordinating Digital Natives
Samuel Tettner, joined CIS as a Research Coordinator for the Digital Natives project. He has written a blog entry about his experiences in the project.
http://bit.ly/cpJMQq
You Are Here
Geo-tagging applications are creating new and impromptu communities of true, says Nishant Shah in his column on Digital Natives in the Indian Express.
http://bit.ly/a64kj7
નિશાંત શાહ: ડિજિટલ પેઢીનો ઉદય
‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિક’ તેમને કહેવામાં આવે છે જેણે સામાન્ય જનજીવનમાં ડિજિટલ ટેક્નોલોજીના પ્રવેશ થઈ ગયા બાદ જન્મ લીધો છે. ડિજિટલ નાગરિકો દરેક જગ્યાએ છે. હવે સમય આવી ગયો છે કે આપણે એ જાણવાનો પ્રયાસ કરીએ કે આ લોકો કોણ છે, તેઓ શું કરી રહ્યા છે, તેઓ પોતાના અંગે શું વિચારે છે અને કેવી રીતે તેઓ કશું પણ જાણ્યા વગર આપણા ભવિષ્યને નવો આકાર આપવાનું કામ કરી રહ્યા છે. (A column by Nishant Shah in the Gujarati newspaper Divya Bhaskar)
http://bit.ly/9HnyBa

Digital Natives with a Cause?— Workshop in South Africa—FAQs
The second international Digital Natives Workshop "My Bubble, My Space, My Voice" will be held in Johannesburg from 7 to 9 November 2010. Some frequently asked questions regarding the upcoming workshop are answered in this blog entry.
http://bit.ly/c1XJHO

The silent rise of the Digital Native
In late August, this year, the world shook for many when they went online (on their computers, PDAs, iPads, laptops) and realised that the comfortable zone of talking, chatting, sharing and doing just about everything else, had suddenly, without a warning, changed overnight (or afternoon, or morning, depending upon the time-zone they lived in). With a single change in its privacy and location settings, Facebook, home to billions of internet hours consisting of relationships, friendships, professional networks, social gaming, entertainment trivia, memories and exchanges, allowed its users to geo-tag themselves when on-the-move.
http://bit.ly/bHY72Y

The geek shall inherit the earth
Demystifying the mysterious -agents changing the world around you...A column on Digital Natives by Nishant Shah in the Indian Express.
http://bit.ly/aq2BqY

Digital Natives Workshop in South Africa - Call for Participation
The African Commons Project, Hivos and the Centre for Internet and Society have joined hands for organising the second international workshop "My Bubble, My Space, My Voice" in Johannesburg from 07 to 09 November 2010. Send in your applications now!
http://bit.ly/d0rl7E

Telecom

Broad-basing Broadband
Education and training through the Internet need Commonwealth Games-like crisis management, says Shyam Ponappa in an article on broadband for education and training published in the Business Standard on 7 October 2010.
http://bit.ly/dnMtpU

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/october-2010-bulletin

August 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-10T10:40:34Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society. We bring you news and media coverage, research and event updates for the month of August 2010

News Updates

RIM Offered Security Fixes
In India Talks, BlackBerry Maker Said It Could Share Metadata, Notes Show
http://bit.ly/ahT7jD

New Project to Assess Potential of Creating Open Government Data Initiatives in Chile, Ghana and Turkey
Steve Bratt, CEO of the World Wide Web Foundation (founded in 2009 by Tim Berners-Lee) has made an announcement on moving forward with a project to assess the potential of creating open government data
initiatives in Chile, Ghana, and Turkey - the first step of what we hope to be a global initiative focusing on low- and middle-income countries.
http://bit.ly/d337Ex

Govt and BlackBerry firm wait for the other to hang up
Sunil Abraham speaks to Archna Shukla on the stand-off between the Government of India and RIM. The news was published in expressindia.com.
http://bit.ly/cGeipL

Call, text, email complaint against rogue auto driver
Harassed by an auto driver? Helplines give you no relief? Here's the people's way to help you out. Just report your issue online, call or even SMS sitting in a noisy restaurant, and be heard.
http://bit.ly/atiiGW

Call to increase awareness of intellectual property rights
We need more knowledge on IPR itself, says IT Secretary
http://bit.ly/avxY16

Civil Society groups urge State Judicial Academy to restructure agenda for Judges' Roundtable meet
Some of the Civil Society groups in the country have urged the Maharashtra State Judicial Academy to restructure the agenda for the 'Judges Roundtable on Intellectual Property Rights Adjudication' being held in Mumbai on July 24 and 25 to promote public interest and a deeper understanding of intellectual property amongst judicial officers. FICCI is the joint organiser of the event.
http://bit.ly/dCDZl0

More Debate on UID Project Needed
A press conference on UID was held at the Press Club in Bangalore on 26 July, 2010. It was co-organised by Citizen's Action Forum, Alternate Law Forum and the Centre for Internet and Society. Mathew Thomas and Vinay Baindur spoke about the UID. Proceedings from the conference was covered in the Hindu on 27 July, 2010.
http://bit.ly/cSEsaP

UID coverage in Udayavani
A press conference was held at the Press Club in Bangalore on 26 July, 2010. It was co-organised by Citizen's Action Forum, Alternate Law Forum and the Centre for Internet and Society. Mathew Thomas and Vinay Baindur were the speakers. Leading Kannada newspaper Udayavani covered this event.
http://bit.ly/c3AU5s

Open is the Future
The third Open World Forum will gather together decision-makers from the open digital world, in Paris. 1,500 participants from 40 countries will come together to analyze the technological, economic and social impact of Open Source, the invisible engine behind the digital revolution. The aim: to interpret future trends and cross-fertilize initiatives.
http://bit.ly/amY9Qc

Upcoming Events

No UID till Complete Transparency, Accountability and People's Participation: A Public Campaign
An interactive meeting on UID's lack of a feasibility study, cost involved and dangers of abuse is being held in New Delhi at the Constitution Club Auditorium, Rafi Marg on 25 August, 2010. The meeting is jointly organised by INSAF, PEACE, Citizens' Action Forum, People's Union for Civil Liberties - Karnataka, Slum Janandolana - Karnataka, Alternate Law Forum, The Centre for Internet and Society and concerned individuals.
http://bit.ly/8YsBIJ

Internet Governance and Human Rights: Strategies and Collaborations for Empowerment
Leading up to the 2010 IGF, The Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Global Partners, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles are hosting, on 13 September 2010 in Vilnius, an event on 'Internet Governance and Human Rights: Strategies and Collaborations for Empowerment'.
http://bit.ly/aoOkPR

Freedom of Expression or Access to Knowledge: Are We Taking the Necessary Steps Towards an Open and Inclusive Internet?
The Centre for Internet and Society is co-organising a workshop on Freedom of Expression or Access to Knowledge: Are We Taking the Necessary Steps towards an Open and Inclusive Internet? at the Internet
Governance Forum on 14 September, 2010.
http://bit.ly/dl1WRL

Sexual Rights, Openness and Regulatory Systems
The Centre for Internet and Society is co-organising a workshop on Sexual Rights, Openness and Regulatory Systems at the Internet Governance Forum on 14 September, 2010.
http://bit.ly/dl1WRL

Data in the Cloud: Where Do Open Standards Fit In?
The Centre for Internet and Society is co-organising a workshop on Data in the Cloud: Where do Open Standards Fit In? on 16 September, 2010 at the Internet Governance Forum.
http://bit.ly/94AF4h

International Conference on Enabling Access to Education through ICT
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore in cooperation with the Global Initiative for Inclusive ICT (G3ICT), a flagship advocacy organization of the UN Global Alliance on ICT and Development (UN-GAID), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), UNESCO, Digital Empowerment Foundation, Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment and the Deafway Foundation is organizing an international conference, Enabling Access to Education through ICT in New Delhi from
27th to 29th October, 2010....Registrations to begin soon!
http://bit.ly/9flyEK

Research

Political is as Political does
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.
http://bit.ly/9hY9sR

Digital Natives: Talking Back
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?
http://bit.ly/bZNoSX

Beyond the Digital: Understanding Digital Natives with a Cause
Digital Natives with a cause: the future of activism or slacktivism? Maesy Angelina argues that the debate is premature given the obscured understanding on youth digital activism and contends that an effort to
understand this from the contextualized perspectives of the digital natives themselves is a crucial first step to make. This is the first out of a series of posts on her journey to explore new insights to understand youth digital activism through a research with The Blank Noise Project under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge Programme.
http://bit.ly/b1GS7F

Accessibility

Access to Knowledge: Barriers and Solutions for Persons with Disabilities in India
Consumers International, Kuala Lumpur and Consumers Association of India in association with Madras Library Association organised a seminar on Access to Knowledge on 31st July, 2010 at the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Auditorium in Guindy, Chennai. The Principal Secretary to the Government of Tamil Nadu Department of Information Technology was the chief guest. Former Central Vigilance Commissioner N. Vittal gave the keynote address. Prof Subbiah Arunachalam, Nirmita Narasimhan and Pranesh Prakash participated in the seminar. Nirmita and Pranesh made presentations on access to knowledge.
http://bit.ly/cJXSX8

Intellectual Property

Privacy and the Indian Copyright Act, 1857 as Amended in 2010
In this post the author examines the issue of privacy in light of the Indian Copyright Act, 1857 as amended by the Copyright Amendment Bill in 2010. Four key questions are examined in detail and the author gives
suitable recommendations for each of the questions that arise.
http://bit.ly/cJXSX8

Internet Governance

Does the Government want to enter our homes?
When rogue politicians and bureaucrats are granted unrestricted access to information then the very future of democracy and free media will be in jeopardy. In an article published in the Pune Mirror on 10 August,
2010, Sunil Abraham examines this in light of the BlackBerry-to-BlackBerry messenger service that the Government of India plans to block if its makers do not allow the monitoring of messages. He says that civil society should rather resist and insist on suitable checks and balances like governmental transparency and a fair judicial oversight instead of allowing the government to intrude into the privacy
and civil liberties of its citizens.
http://bit.ly/dkVHoS

UID Project in India - Some Possible Ramifications
Having a standard for decentralized ID verification rather than a centralized database that would more often than not be misused by various authorities will solve ID problems, writes Liliyan in this blog entry. These blog posts to be published in a series will voice the expert opinions of researchers and critics on the UID project and present its unique shortcomings to the reader.
http://bit.ly/bOyBS8

Civil Liberties and the amended Information Technology Act, 2000
This post examines certain limitations of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (as amended in 2008). Malavika Jayaram points out the fact that when most countries of the world are adopting plain English instead of the conventional legal terminology for better understanding, India seems to be stuck in the old-fashioned method thereby, struggling to maintain a balance between clarity and flexibility in drafting its laws. The present Act, she says, is although an improvement over the old Act and seeks to address and improve on certain areas in the right direction but still comes up short in making necessary changes when it comes to fundamental rights and personal liberties. The new Act retains elements from the previous one making it an abnormal document and this could have been averted if there had been some attention to detail.
http://bit.ly/croc9T

Feedback to the NIA Bill
Malavika Jayaram and Elonnai Hickok introduce the formal submission of CIS to the proposed National Identification Authority of India (NIA) Bill, 2010, which would give every resident a unique identity. The submissions contain the detailed comments on the draft bill and the high level summary of concerns with the NIA Bill submitted to the UIDAI on 13 July, 2010.
http://bit.ly/bhinUB

Openness

Open Access to Science and Scholarship - Why and What Should We Do? The National Institute of Advanced Studies held the eighth NIAS-DST training programme on “Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Science, Technology and Society” from 26 July to 7 August, 2010. The theme of the project was ‘Knowledge Management’. Dr. MG Narasimhan and Dr. Sharada Srinivasan were the coordinators for the event. Professor Subbiah Arunachalam made a presentation on Open Access to Science and Scholarship.
http://bit.ly/ciohYy

Civic Hacking Workshop
CIS, with the UK Government's Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office Team for Digital Engagement, and Google India, is organizing a workshop on open data (or the lack thereof) and 'civic hacking'.
http://bit.ly/c3TF2t

Telecom

'Containing Inflation' - A myth
We need problem-solving, not confused rhetoric or misguided action, says Shyam Ponappa. The article was published in Business Standard on 7 August, 2008.
http://bit.ly/9frC8q

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2010-bulletin

March 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-13T05:02:42Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! We bring you updates of our research, news, and events for the month of March 2010 in this bulletin.

News Updates

An Open Answer to Office
OpenOffice with its new features is giving Microsoft Word tough competition, says Deepa Kurup in this article published in The Hindu.
http://cis-india.org/news/open-office

Upcoming Events

CPOV: Wikipedia Research Initiative
The second WikiWars conference will be held in Amsterdam from 26 to 27 March 2010
http://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/cpov

CI Global Meeting on A2K
CIS is a co-sponsor of the Consumers International Meeting on A2K to be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on April 21 and 22, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/events/ci-global-meeting-a2k

Research

India Game Developer Summit Bangalore 2010
The India Game Developer Conference held at Nimhans Convention Centre on the 27th of February, 2010 was attended by Arun Menon who is working on The Gaming and Gold Project at The Centre for Internet and Society. The Developer forum brought together game developers from different sectors of the Game Production Cycle, with hardware manufacturers like Nvidia demonstrating their latest 3d technology and Software developers like Crytek and Adobe demonstrating the latest in developer tools for creating and editing games on multiple platforms.
http://cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories/gaming/india-game-developer-summit-in-bangalore-2010

10 Legendary Obscene Beasts
Nishant Shah analyses a peculiar event of vandalism which has now become the core of free speech and anti-censorship debates in mainland China. Looking at the structure of user generated knowledge websites and the specific event on the Chinese language encyclopaedia, 'Baidu Baike', he shows how, in cities where spaces of political spectacle and public protest are quickly diminishing, the Internet has become a tool for producing new public spaces of demonstration and protest.
http://cis-india.org/research/grants/ISShanghai/itcity4

WikiWars - A report
In this blog, Nishant Shah analyses about the WikiWars, the first of the three events held in Bangalore on January 12 and 13.
http://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/wwrep

Telecom

Understanding Spectrum
What is spectrum and how do government and commercial decisions on this scientific phenomenon affect public facilities and costs? Shyam Ponappa examines this in his latest blog published in the Business Standard on March 4, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/telecom/blog/understanding-spectrum

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/march-2010-bulletin

Digitally Analogue

nishant — 2015-04-24T12:00:09Z

Why there is nothing strictly analogue anymore, examines Nishant Shah in this column that he wrote for the Indian Express.

It is a given, that in the fight between the digital and the analogue, you have a certain perspective or an opinion. If you are a bibliophile and crave for the smell of second-hand books and the feel of freshly uncut pages, you probably object to e-readers and tablets which give you a book-like experience that is not quite the same. If you enjoy photography, you still value old film rolls, techniques of complex editing, and the sepia-coloured flatness that the film has to offer. If you are a cinegoer, you cherish a secret fondness for those days when the camera attempted to capture a realism which was stark and more believable than reality. You might miss receiving and writing letters, might get annoyed by the lightning fast expectations of communication, and are horror struck at the idea of buying clothes online, foregoing the pleasures of window shopping.

For each argument that is made in favour of the analogue, there will be an equally strong and strident voice that elucidates the joys and possibilities that the digital has to offer. The techno-savant will point out that the easy availability of digital technologies has democratised the realms of cultural production, granting more access and diversity to expressions from different cultures. It should be mentioned that the huge possibilities of manipulating, reproducing and transferring digital data, without any loss to the original has resulted in new forms of intricate and subversive cultural production. The speed of access and communication has mobilised resources and people in unprecedented ways, to make changes in their environments, empowering the citizen as an agent of change rather than a beneficiary of change.

In all these debates, there will be valid and contradictory arguments that will coexist, each extolling the virtues of their analogue or digital positions. While there is no correct position to take in this debate, there is something else that I want to draw our attention to. In both these debates, which seem to be about technologies, there is a presumed focus only on consumption of technology products. Or, in other words, in this over-emphasis about whether the final product should be consumed using digital or other technologies, there is a complete and total neglect of technologies of production that shape these cultural objects. This betrays two things for us to ponder over.

The first is about our relationship with the technologies that we use. As technologies, especially digital technologies become ubiquitous, easily affordable and available to us on mobile interfaces, and emphasises ease of access, there also seems to be an alienation of the user from conditions and modes of production. We seem to position ourselves only as consumers of tech products — often reducing our interaction with these technologies as spectators, or audiences or users. This is ironical because, it seems to perpetuate the schism between the digital and the analogue, while actually hiding the fact that most of our so-called analogue products have undergone dramatic change in their modes of production, which are facilitated and shaped almost entirely by digital technologies. You might enjoy the tactical experience of picking up a print book, but it might be good to realise that the entire book was put together by using digital interfaces. And while the book might seem to be a non-digital object, even the way it reaches the last mile — through e-commerce websites like Flipkart, or even your local stores, where it gets stored, sorted, and indexed — is also through a digital environment.

The second thing that this faux debate exposes to us is the futuristic dream of convergence. Convergence as a concept has been bandied around for about a decade now, where all our existing modes of living, facilitated by different technologies, are to be translated into the digital, thus seamlessly available through a single device which can perform everything. Convergence is the Holy Grail that marks our aspirations of the future. And debates of the analogue versus the technological sustain that illusion that it hasn’t really been achieved yet. However, as you look around you, you quickly realise that the analogue networks that we fantasise about very rarely exist. The analogue-digital divide is often reduced to the physical-virtual dichotomy and this is a false one. Analogue referred to certain kinds of technological practices where the human agent, by using the technological network could perform certain functions. So the older telephone networks, for instance, were electronic but analogue. However, our telecommunication went digital way before the phone became smart.

While those of us who were not born digital natives — we still remember what an audio cassette looks like and the smell of screen printing — will negotiate with the form of our access to cultural objects, it is also time to realise that being non-digital is no longer an option. And that what we think of as analogue, is often only a form, because the mode of production, design and distribution has gone digital when we were not looking. So it is good that you are reading this in print, as a part of a newspaper, but this column (like all other items in this publication) was conceived, written, delivered and printed entirely using digital interfaces. These are objects which now need to be thought of as digitally analogue.

Read the original published by the Indian Express on May 27, 2012

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/digitally-analogue

IT and the cITy

nishant — 2009-09-18T10:45:27Z

Nishant Shah tells ten stories of relationship between Internet Technologies and the City, drawing from his experiences of seven months in Shanghai. In this introduction to the city, he charts out first experiences of the physical spaces of Shanghai and how they reflect the IT ambitions and imaginations of the city. He takes us through the dizzying spaces of Shanghai to see how the architecture and the buildings of the city do not only house the ICT infrastructure but also embody it in their unfolding. In drawing the seductive nature of embodied technology in the physical experience of Shanghai, he also points out why certain questions about the rise of internet technologies and the reconfiguration of the Shanghai-Pudong area have never been asked. In this first post, he explains his methdologies that inform the framework which will produce the ten stories of technology and Shanghai, and how this new IT City, delivers its promise of invisibility.

Shanghai. City of bits, bytes and Baozi. China’s home-grown success story that eclipses the colonial legends of HongKong. The city that was, until the Bejing Olympics, the showcase city which is now working hard at recovering some of its stolen glory as it prepares for the World Trade Expo in 2010. A city that is constantly at war with itself, trying to museumise its past, eradicate pockets of history and times, and running to escape its present and live in a futuristic tomorrow. A city that broke the distinctions of the public and the private, by privatising all that was public, and by encouraging the private to be constructed for a public spectacle. There are many stories of Shanghai to be told, but the one that needs to be told now, is about the space of the city and how, in its attempt to become an IT city, it has become a city of surfaces, all reminding you, in an overwhelming hypervisual way that is the predominant aesthetic of cyberspaces, that it is the city that not only houses technology but also embodies it, becoming, possibly, the only city in Asia that brings the IT back into the City.

A cursory glance around you, perhaps travelling in the uber efficient metro system that feeds into the mobile metaphor of accelerated speed and space that Shanghai has become, or just walking down the more touristy XinTianDi where the rich and the famous of Shanghai’s society hang out, or walking down the HuaiHai Road where sky-scrapers fortress the sky and shopping malls greet you with neon-lit spaces of consumption, you are overwhelmed at the significant and ubiquitous presence of internet technologies. The buildings are designed to be interfaces, rather than walls, covered constantly with the graffiti of digital advertisements, live weather and stock updates, displaying the latest block-buster movie, or just presenting a kaleidoscopic array of lights spiralling in a dizzying, schizophrenic style on the surfaces of the buildings. As you walk through the sci-fi inspired urban landscape, you try and suppress the feeling of being inside a giant-size arcade game, waiting for a gobbling monster to come and devour you, and continue browsing at the city that never remains the same – either the surfaces mutate so that not even signboards or billboards remain the same, or the very buildings disappear into rubble under the shadows of gigantic cranes, as a concentrated demand for real estate necessitates a constant recycling of limited space (The estimate says that 60 per cent of Shanghai gets rebuilt every ten years), or high speed transport dissolves the city into a blur so that only the biggest and the brightest buildings stay as north-stars to the fluid geography of the city.

If you happen to stand on the magnificent Bund in PuXi (The older Shanghai), you keep on looking down at the ground beneath your feet, making sure that it is still there, because the slightly lurid but dazzling sky-line that faces you, with huge LCD screens mounted on buildings, lights flirting with low lying clouds on the top of gigantic buildings, and a constant buzz of electricity breaking the waves in the Huangpu river, you know that you are in a city that gives IT its address. No other city in Asia – not even the almost-not-Asia spaces of Tokyo or Singapore – gives you the assurance of being completely and totally immersed in the glory of Internet technologies. Shanghai stands, networked, connected, mobile, accelerated, and in a time-less vacuum that hoovers the future into the present, as a city that technology studies will have to reckon with in a paradigm of its own.

And so strong is this seduction of technology that conversations about technology and its place in Shanghai, always revolves around the surface – about the building of the surface, about the dissolution of depth (temporal or spatial), and about imagining the city only in terms of light, connectivity, and speed. So that the historicity in PuXi becomes a flat display of the Chinese Way (Zhongguo Fangshi) and the work-in-progress present in PuDong remains a quest for the future. In this split discourse, the questions and concerns - about governance, about citizenship, about regulation, about cultural production and political negotiation - become invisible. Like the buildings, which get guised in digital cloaks, the questions that pressingly need to be asked but are always postponed, also get cloaked in the rhetoric of development propelled by ICTs and globalisation. In a city that was constructed to eternally deflect attention, ownership or voices, how does one begin to scratch at the surfaces (Literally and figuratively) to search for something more than narratives of consumption, solipsist self-gratification, and self-congratulatory development?

It is with this agenda, in this city, torn and marked and seamlessly stitched by technology, that I start to unravel my questions about Internet and Society in China, trying to look at relationships between technologies, city spaces and identities, drawing from seven months spent at the Centre for Contemporary Studies at the Shanghai University. These stories, written with retrospective memory and embellished by the privilege of hindsight, posit a set of questions about Internet technologies, construction of city spaces, and manifestation of identities in China, but especially in Shanghai, to locate potentials of social transformation, political participation, engagement and discourse, which has not been transplanted on technology studies in China. In the process it also lays down a framework to understand how, in an oppressive or authoritarian regime, the cultural becomes the grounds upon which foundations of new political intervention and social change can be built.

This blog, in its ten different entries, relies on academic and popular discourse, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, field work, conversations, and personal experiences that I collected in my stay there, trying to deal with the double translations of culture and language. Whenever I have been unsure – and those moments have been many – I have tried to discuss and debate ideas with colleagues, friends, peers and participants, to ensure that the observations or arguments are qualified by more than just a neo-colonial meaning making sensibilities. Despite that rigour, if faults remain, they are all mine, and hopefully will serve as points of entry into a fruitful discourse.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/research/grants/the-promise-of-invisibility-technology-and-the-city/itcity

China's Generation Y : Youth and Technology in Shanghai

nishant — 2009-09-21T14:09:16Z

Within the context of internet technologies in China, Nishant Shah, drawing from his seven month research in Shanghai, looks at the first embodiment of these technologies in the urbanising city. In this post, he gives a brief overview of the public and academic discourse around youth-technology usage of China's Generation Y digital natives. He draws the techno-narratives of euphoria and despair to show how technology studies has reduced technology to tools and usage and hence even the proponents of internet technologies, often do a disservice to the technology itself. He poses questions about the politics, mechanics and aesthetics of technology and offers the premise upon which structures of reading resistance can be built. The post ends with a preview of the three stories that are to appear next in the series, to see how youth engagement and cultural production can be read as having the potentials for social transformation and political participation for the Digital Natives in China.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/research/grants/the-promise-of-invisibility-technology-and-the-city/GenerationY

Fill The Gap: Global Discussion on Digital Natives

nishant — 2010-01-22T10:54:13Z

More often than not people don't understand the new practices inspired by Internet and digital technologies. As such a series of accusations have been leveled against the Digital Natives. Educators, policy makers, scholars, and parents have all raised their worries without hearing out from the people they are concerned about. Hivos has initiated an online global discussion about Digital Natives. So, to voice your opinion, start tweeting with us now #DigitalNatives.

If you cannot attend Fill The Gap, you can also join us in a global discussion on some of the issues being discussed at #DigitalNatives

1. Are you an apolitical consumer, or do you have ambitions?

http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNatives

2. Are you a little prince or princess, who only wants to talk to like minded people or are you different?

http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesPrincess

3. Is Wikipedia your bible or do you really know something?

http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesWiki

4. Are you a digital dinosaur? They say you don’t know anything about ICT!

http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalDinosaur

5. Why use the Internet, why don’t you march the streets?

http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesProtest

6. Plans to change the world? What do you need?

http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesChanceTheWorld

If you are in Amsterdam, here is the information you will need to attend the event:

Fill the Gap! - 7

R U Online?

Date: 15 January 2010

Time: 12.30 until 17.00 hour

Location: Het Sieraad, Postjesweg 1, Amsterdam

The seventh edition of Fill the Gap! is all about the power of youth and IT in developing countries. How can their skills be strengthened and put to use for a better world? Hivos, apart from cohosting the event, will be involving digital natives to hear their stories about ICT and engagement.

An Open Space event on the potential of new (mobile) media and youth in developing countries. For everyone in politics, the profit and the non-profit sectors who is interested in ICT and international development cooperation.

The use of new (mobile) technology is the most natural thing in the world for the youth of today.

Shaped by the digital era and at ease with creativeity, these innovators use new media to change the world. Just think of the Twitter revolution in Iran. What can the international development sector learn from this? How could international development cooperation use the potential power of youth to tackle development problems?

The seventh edition of Fill the Gap! is all about the power of youth and IT in developing countries. How can their skills be strengthened and put to use for a better world? The kick-off will be hosted by Jennifer Corriero, co-founder of Taking IT Global: the international platform for youth and the use of new media for a better world. Then the floor is open to discuss your own ideas with people from new media, the business world and the international development sector during the Open Space sessions. Join in: come to Amsterdam on Friday January 15th and be inspired during Fill the Gap!

Registration is free. The programme is in English.

» Fill the Gap

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/research/grants/digital-natives-with-a-cause/dntweet

Digital Native: Twin Manifestations or Co-Located Hybrids

praskrishna — 2011-12-23T04:36:40Z

Samuel Tettner reviews ‘Digital Natives and the Return of the Local Cause’ from Book 1: To Be. The essay is authored by Anat Ben-David.

Ben-David’s piece is a well-articulated and informed attempt to resolve two of the several conceptual fuzziness of the term “Digital Native”. She attempts this in a philosophical manner: trying to move away from the ontological “who are Digital Natives?” to an epistemological “when and where are Digital Natives?” Her reasoning is that this perceptive change will allow us to unpack the duplicity of a hybrid term and to understand if it refers to a unique phenomenon in the world worth exploring.

To answer the when and the where, Ben-David situates the term into its constituencies: digital and native, contextualizing the words using two approaches; historiographical (when) for the digital and geopolitical (where) for the native.

The digital is semantically pin-pointed in the short but active history of information technology within an activism framework, to use a broad word. The author then places two events side to one: First the 1999 manifestations against World-trade Organization protests in Seattle and then the 2011 Tahir Square protests in Egypt. Are these two phenomena different in nature? Is Tahir Square a more technologically advanced version of Seattle? Are the basic mechanisms the same, albeit with new faces and shinier phones?

Ben-David postulates three reasons for placing the manifestations on a different trajectory. First, “The Internet” of 1999 and “The Internet” of 2011 are distinctively not the same thing. The second is that the demographic constituting the protest are not the same: in 1999 they were mostly Civic Society Organization (CSO) employees and volunteers, while in Tahrir they were mostly civilians and concerned citizens connected through their local networks.

The third concerns the spatial and symbolic nature of the protests. In Seattle, the protests were against large transnational corporations; Seattle was chosen because it hosted the World Trade Organization that year. In Egypt, the protest was directed against local corruption and concerned itself with local governance issues. Tahir Square was chosen because the protests were directly about, of and in Egypt.

Which brings us to the where. The ‘Native’ is used by Ben-David to refer to the ongoing structural shifts towards localized activism campaigns. This change came with the growing realization that transnational activism campaigns that tried to effect change across loosely cohesive cross-sections of the world, tended to lose touch with their points of origin and remain in suspended animation. Local campaigns seem to be more responsive and agile, specially in their ability to enter into dialogues with the needs of local populations. The spontaneity of action, the granular level of the causes, and the lowered threshold of the agents and initiators are some of the aspects Ben-David sees in emergent campaigns, which are critically different from activism campaigns in the past.

Of course, the location and the time intertwine eventually. A growing trend in the development of the digital world has been the localization of frameworks, methodologies and approaches. The author’s use of Richard Roger’s four stages of the evolution of politics about the web is outstanding: It shows us without telling us that the distinction between when and where is purely analytical and that they really are a single entity of the time-space continuum.

Ben-David succeeds in contextualizing both the digital and the native as different sides of the same coin: as two manifestations of the growth and maturation process that technology-mediated activism has been through over the last 10 years. The result is an internally-consistent perspective which sees Digital Natives habituating hybrid-timespaces alongside heterogeneous actors, where the relationship between the local and the global is contingent, transitory, dynamic – and knowledge can be transformed and adapted to fit actors and their causes.

This review is part of the Tweet-a-Review event organized by the ‘Digital Natives with a Cause? Project and is republished here from Samuel Tettner’s blog.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/twin-manifestations

On Natives, Norms and Knowledge

praskrishna — 2011-12-23T04:40:10Z

Philip Ketzel reviews Ben Wagner's essay "Natives, Norms and Knowledge: How Information Technologies Recalibrate Social & Political Power Relations Communications" published in Book 4: To Connect.

Using digital technologies has become so convenient that with the rise of the so called digital revolution arose also the need to reflect it. A very impressive compilation of reflections dealing with the role and impact of the “user” (or digital native, as it is now called) comes in the form of a four book collective called Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? by the Centre for Internet & Society and Hivos. The fourth book features Ben Wagner’s essay Natives, Norms and Knowledge: How Information and Communications Technologies Recalibrate Social and Political Power Relations. It is a text I strongly recommend, especially to those interested in the reasons behind contemporary policies that try to regulate digital activism such as the US SOPA Act.

Wagner starts out by recapitulating the fact that, as any technological progress, the digital revolution has produced profound cultural changes. In order to make these changes more visible and to question their implications, he analyses the ways in which they can be understood as shifts of "sociological, normative and knowledge boundaries" (p. 22).Yet behind every boundary lies a legitimising process setting it up. Hence, Wagner is also interested in the discourses and institutions that legitimise these shifts of boundaries.

So where and how are the boundaries being shifted?

For example, there is the fact that now more people have the power to influence what we call reality or history. Wagner points out that this new power is socially seen less evenly distributed than one would hope. He says "it seems that the existing elite has simply expanded and been complemented by an additional 'digital elite'." (p. 22) Though the old-school elite still holds some aces up their sleeves in order to keep this new 'digital elite', respectively digital natives, under control. This is for instance, according to Wagner, reflected in the ways the media keeps producing and sustaining stereotypes of the unsocial nerd, which makes it possible to easily stigmatise subversive elements such as Mr. Assange.

Analysing the effects of this newly gained power, Wagner looks at the norms set up by digital natives. Instead of pining down a list of certain norms, he has a much better approach by saying:

[T]he tools provided by the internet have unmasked pre-existing norms which were not previously evident. The tools of the internet bring these norms to the surface by allowing for their practise an environment which seems to offer endless opportunities to those connected to it. (p. 24)

So we’re dealing with a new playground on which the digital natives seem to dominate the rule defining process. This makes it problematic for the political system, as its purpose is to keep social order and also to acknowledge, reflect and integrate certain shifts of norms. As an example for such a critical discourse, Wagner refers to the rise of the Pirate Party.

However, this establishment of a new social order is strongly correlated with a re-bordering of knowledge, as Wagner states. On the one hand there are those who seek to open up knowledge borders by for example sharing files, while on the other hand there are those who call for more restrictions because they fear a digital "wild west culture" (p. 26) or a destruction of their position. Both sides have valid points, and Wagner correctly highlights the conflict a society faces when this re-bordering process "takes place outside of realms where it can be contested." (p. 28)

This review is part of the Tweet-a-Review event organized by the ‘Digital Natives with a Cause? Project and is republished here from Philip Ketzel’s blog.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/on-natives-and-norms

Bangalore + Sustainability Summit

denisse — 2015-04-17T10:48:52Z

The power of technology to create youth engagement and positive social change were discussed at the Bangalore + Sustainability Summit on September 21, 2013 at the Centre for Internet and Society(CIS) , Bangalore. The event, in conjunction with the Social Good Summit that took place in New York during the same weekend, explored creative and tech-based avenues to solve sustainability challenges and promote social good.

Our interest in understanding the role of digital natives in our society stems from the possibilities technology brings for the social good. This concept, a variation of the notion of the ‘common good’, is nowadays a popular and widely utilized term, both in its secular and religious variations. It conveys values and actions that benefit the well-being of society and in Mill’s utilitarian view: one which promotes the moral, intellectual and active traits of its citizens. Nowadays, its social justice undertones are part of the human rights discourse that characterizes twenty-first century civil society and citizen action, which are at the same time becoming increasingly connected in the context of network societies, leading to the new socialized form of the common good. The buzzword was there at the core of the Social Good Summit that took place in New York from September 22 to 24, as well as of the Bangalore + Sustainability workshop, organized by Ashoka India in partnership with Green Lungi and IDEX on September 21 at CIS office in Bangalore.

Local leaders and change-makers in Bangalore discussed the power of technology and its potential to provide sustainable solutions for the city’s greatest challenges at the event. The workshop was dynamic in structure and inspiring in content, as the participants were divided into make-a-thon sessions to collaboratively design technology-based prototypes that tackle the problems with feasible and impactful solutions. In the opening session Meera Vijayann, consultant for Ashoka India, commented on the nature of sustainability and how technological design must tackle all of its fronts, including environmental, government, public and citizenship engagement, to name a few, establishing a working framework for the day. This was followed by four panelists who gave brief talks highlighting their professional backgrounds and some of the lessons learned in the pursuit of social good.

The first to present was Kuldeep Dantewadia, founder of Reap Benefit, a start-up that provides low-cost solutions to encourage behavioural change around waste, water and biodiversity management. Inspiring attendees to “be fools”, and take chances, based on Ranjan Maliks’s talk: The Fool and his kind of Innovation, he spoke about environmental issues as a man-made disease with behavioural solutions, as opposed to an external crisis requiring intervention. His social approach within a workshop discussing the power of technology was, as the representative of IDEX, Daniel Oxenhandler said, a great entry point to start thinking of the leaps of good-will and risks to be taken in the field of social change. Encouraging the participants to be foolish, he invited them to be bold and inventive with their ideas throughout the day.

He was followed by Raahul Khadaliya, who defines himself as a thinker, observer and explorer of design for sustainability. He delved on the ultimate purpose of design and framed it as a problem-solving tool that ought to bring benefits for the masses. Stressing that design is not only concerned about how tools works, but instead on “how they work in a given environment” he brought up the importance of context and historicity in design, an important discussion point , incidentally also explored by the ‘Making Change’ project by CIS in conjunction with the HIVOS Knowledge Program. Digital technologies and derived platforms do not carry value in themselves when pursuing social change, unless they speak to the locality and respond to the crises lingering in their given ecosystem. Khadaliya ended his presentation with a slide that read “design is a behaviour”, adding to the recurring theme of the day: the need for citizen behavioural change, being it in creation, participation or conservation of resources.

Coming from a different angle, Kalpana Kar, who contributed to the Bangalore Agenda Task Force in an urban governance project, gave an insightful account of the role of public policy and private-public partnerships. Her talk came across as an insightful set of advice tackling considerations around space and how it intersects with collectives and their sense of entitlement and territoriality. Notions of power, pride and hierarchical arrangements are determining accessibility to public spaces, a highly relevant reflection that also applies to digital participation in online platforms, as explored in the Digital Natives framework. She added that creating technological solutions with social impact calls for a change in our behaviour and how we gauge our individual needs against the social good. “Enthusiasm can take you far, but not further”, for which she appealed to participants to “be real, practical and foolish” in their interventions and focus on designs that have impact with scale and economic viability. This vision puts the private sector on a par with sustainability state policies, and sets the ground for mechanisms of social accountability as an important complement of technological design.

The last panelist Sharath Chandra Ram, researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society and instructor at the Srishti School of Art, Design & Technology brought the aforementioned points together and based his talk on alternatives to bridge the distance between the citizen and the state through online-offline interventions. He focused on the enabling of citizen voices and freedoms in governance as a fundamental mandate for tech innovators of our times. “Models must maintain cultural specificities and have a holistic approach” to facilitate engagement in the globalized socio-political arena. He provided three of examples of citizen involvement in information and state governance: citizen journalism, citizen uprisings and citizen governance, coupled with a showcase of low-cost technologies designed at the CIS Metaculture Media Lab that would allow larger online access and offline participation if made pervasive. His pragmatic approach provided tangible and innovative examples, using every day apparatuses, to enable connection and overcome the social and political roadblocks in our networks; an interesting and inspiring segue into team formation and the make-a-thon to come up next.

Following the panel, the 40+ participants divided into working groups moderated by the organizers and delved into discussion on one out the five proposed problem statements: road safety, waste management, gender-inclusive spaces, forestation and public infrastructures. Brainstorm props provided, the groups created mind maps, Lego structures and comic strips to shape, frame and later pitch their idea to the rest of the workshop. While the use of technology was mandatory, the social good impact brought forward by these apps and campaigns took precedence in the presentations. The event all in all embodied an opportunity to bring ideas, skills and experience together from their different walks of life and yield innovation. In fact, as Ira Snissar, Venture Associate for Ashoka mentioned in her closing speech: three or four of the presented ideas had the potential to comprise business plans for future start-ups. The remark concluded the session by highlighting the need to create marketable and economically viable solutions to ensure sustainability of social good tools in market systems, defeating the long-standing tensions between corporate interests and social responsibility.

The four themes brought forward by the panelists: audacious innovation, large-scale design, power negotiations and citizen governance, as well as the group discussions reiterated a fundamental idea throughout the day: the need for behavioral change in the name of social good. While the state, the private sector and of course technologies were present as important actors in the making of change, the citizen was framed as the main engine and beneficiary of these processes. Stronger citizen engagement, improved negotiation between individual and collective needs, and diminished contestation in spaces of power are among the main objectives to attain these long-sought social good objectives. Technological solutions come across as enablers and amplifiers, perhaps necessary in a networked environment, yet not sufficient if not coupled with sustainable behavioural change. In this respect the question that should precede events like this one should focus on the substance behind the summit’s buzzword: what does ‘the social good’ entail? And attempt to understand the alignments of these understandings considering different models of citizenship and activism.

As of now, the implications and nuances of the social good remain under-theorized and lack epistemological consensus, yet the concept still represents an interesting pathway of research within the Digital Natives project. Is it possible to instill the need for behavioural change in the social imaginary? Is it feasible to establish solidarity networks through pervasive technologies? These are some of the avenues to be taken at the aftermath of the Bangalore + Sustainability event. The willingness to work together towards what benefits all was very prominent in the summit, suggesting that the feel-good nature of the concept and its social justice foundations make it a powerful drive to mobilize people and ideas. The challenge remains on how to extrapolate it and as advised by the panelists, have it derive into large scale impact among the masses.

Sources:

“7 Definitions 4 Social Good” Armchair Advocates. Last modified August 21^st, 2012. Accessed September 23^rd, 2013http://armchairadvocates.com/2012/08/21/the-7-definitions-4-social-good-back2school-yourself-series/
“Mill’s Moral and Political Philosophy” Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Last modified October 9^th, 2007. Accessed September 23^rd, 2013 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/#LibDemComGoo
Shah, Nishant “Whose Change is it Anyways? Hivos Knowledge Program. April 30, 2013
“Social Good Summit 2013” accessed September 23^rd, 2013, http://mashable.com/sgs/#about
“Social Good Summit: Ashoka India”, accessed September 23^rd, 2013, http://www.plussocialgood.org/Post/social-good-summit-ashoka-india/836a3a1e-ea21-4a96-bdbd-bb4fe58a8612

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/bangalore-sustainability-summit

The Digital Other

nishant — 2015-05-14T12:07:42Z

Based on my research on young people in the Global South, I want to explore new ways of thinking about the Digital Native. One of the binaries posited as the Digital ‘Other’ -- ie, a non-Digital Native -- is that of a Digital Immigrant or Settler.

I am not comfortable with these terms and they probably need heavy unpacking if not complete abandonment. Standard caricatures of Digital Others show them as awkward in their new digital ecologies, unable to navigate through this brave new world on their own. They may actually have helped produce digital technology and tools but they are not ‘born digital’ and hence are presumed to always have an outsider’s perspective on the digital world order.

As I’ve interacted with young people in the Global South, one thing suddenly started emerging in dramatic fashion -- that many of the youth working extensively with digital technologies in emerging ICT contexts often shared characteristics of the Digital Other. In countries like India, where the digital realm became accessible and affordable to certain sections of the society as late as 2003, there is a learning curve among youth that does not necessarily match the global thinking on Digital Natives. Even though these young people might be considered Digital Natives, because they are at the center of the digital revolution in their own countries, there is no doubt they are also Digital Others relative to Global North and West conceptions of young people in digital networks.

There is a very popular tweet that was making the rounds recently, which suggested that Digital Natives don’t have an account of the digital just like fish don’t have a theory of water -- they take to the digital as fish take to water. In this analogy lies a very important distinction between Digital Others and Digital Natives. Out of necessity, Digital Others have a relationship of production, control and design with the technologies they work with. They have a critical engagement with technology, as they code, hack, design, and create protocols and digital environments to suit their needs and resources. Digital Natives, on the other hand, have a purely consumption based interaction with the technology they use.

I want to repeat that. The Digital Natives I’ve observed have a purely consumption based interaction with the technologies they use. I know this sounds weird in the face of widespread perceptions that Digital Natives have participatory, engaged, intuitive relationships with technology. We are supposed to be living in prosumer times, where the user on the Infobahn is a consumer and producer of information. But Web 2.0 entities like Facebook have created a business where the user is not just consuming but indeed the user is the consumed. While Facebook and Twitter revolutions are interesting in how users have been able to ‘abuse’ information censorship and create new communities of political protest, we still have to remember that the technologies that supported these revolutions were closed, proprietary, and coercive -- often even putting users in danger.

From my perspective and my research, we have conflated access to information with access to technology, and we have misread this increased access as a sign of intimate relationship with digital technology and the Internet. However, for many youth, media production and information sharing are actually merely forms of consumption.

What is most alarming to me is that the individual’s relationship with original production and design of technology is on the decline. More and more, technology platforms and apps that Digital Natives interact with are closed hardware and software systems. Private corporations produce and shape the tools of interaction, producing seductive interfaces and information engagement choices that make opaque the actual working of the technologies we use. I am concerned that, increasingly, Digital Natives are acting as pure consumers of technology and gadgets, and seem willing to do so.

Banner image credit: World Bank Photo Collection http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldbank/3492673512/

Nishant wrote the original blog post in DML Central. Read it here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/the-digital-other

Digital (Alter)Natives with a Cause? — Book Review by Maarten van den Berg

praskrishna — 2015-05-15T11:30:47Z

‘Digital (Alter)Natives with a cause?’ is a collection of four books with essays published by the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, and the Dutch NGO Hivos. The books come in a beautifully designed cassette and are accompanied by a funky yellow package in the shape of a floppy disk containing the booklet ‘D:coding Digital Natives’, a corresponding DVD, and a pack of postcards portraying the evolution of writing - in the sentence ‘I love you’, written with a goose feather in 1734, to the character set ‘i<3u’ entered on a mobile device in 2011.

Digital Natives

The publication is the outcome of a programme initiated by the two organizations to investigate the potentials for social change and political participation in emerging societies through the use of internet and communication technologies (ICTs). The programme is particularly interested in the strategic use of ICTs among young people, those who are born and have grown up with ‘things digital’ – hence, the ‘digital natives’, a term coined by Marc Prensky in 2001.

But in the preface of the collection and the introduction to the first book, entitled ‘To Be’, the editors Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen are quick to stress that by naming digital natives, they do not want to exclude any position whether defined by age, gender, class, language or location. Still, ‘we continue with the name’, they say, ‘because we believe that replacing this name with another is only going to be an epistemic change which tries to disown the earlier legacies and baggage that the name carries’. I am not quite sure what that means. I take it they just like the hashtag #DigitalNatives – and I can’t blame them.

Testimonies

So who are these digital natives or how have they become? The booklet ‘D:coding Digital Natives’ portrays some of them. For instance, there is Frank Odaongkara from Uganda. He says that already in primary school he had the feeling that computers would change his life. Now Facebook is his homepage, and he has 1000 ebooks on his laptop, of which he’s read 350 already. Or there is Leandra Flor from the Philippines who says she became more dynamic and in touch with her surroundings because of the ‘wonders of technology in communication’. She has built her social life around it.

What emerges from these testimonies, what many of the digital natives share is the sense of empowerment. They feel empowered by ICTs to connect to others, to learn something, to engage with the world and build social lives. Contrary perhaps to the aspirations of the editors, I do find that the digital natives in emerging societies portrayed in the publication tend to come from relatively well-to-do families. The digital divide is still very real, when it comes to access to ICTs and their life-changing potentials.

Personal > political

That digital natives feel empowered by ICTs to build a social life does of course not necessarily entail that they bring about social change or pursue political goals. But one thing can lead to the other, even accidentally. Take the story of Manal Hassan, an Egyptian woman who found herself trapped in Saudi Arabia when her family went to live there. She started a blog to write about her problem and got in contact with other Egyptian bloggers and digital activists. Women rights organizations adopted her cause, a lawyer took up her case, and she made news in the mainstream media. She had become a political actor.

There are more such stories in the publication. In the digital age, it seems, social change has gone viral. Digital natives can become political actors by sheer coincidence. I believe there is an important lesson to learn from that for sociologists and political scientists. We have to come to terms with the serendipity of collective action.

Digital methodology

For social scientists, there is more to be learned from the publication. In the introduction to the essays brought together in the chapter ‘To Think’ the editors pose that the rise and spread of digital and online technologies elicit new methods of understanding and research. And they are quite right. In the essay ‘Digital methods to study digital natives with a cause’, Esther Weltevrede uses Twitter as a platform to study digital natives and their practices. And because the retweet is a practice adopted by digital natives to forward, or give voice to a message, she proposes that for the researcher the retweet becomes a way to quantify those messages that have ‘pass-along value’.

Mob rule 2.0

As many of the authors are themselves digital natives and activists of sorts, most of them cannot hide their excitement about the opportunities that ICTs afford. But there is some room for skepticism too. Thus, essayist Yi Ping Zou rightly observes that ‘the newly imagined communities that we call digital natives […] may not be all progressive, liberal and striving to make a change for the better’. In her contribution she warns us for ‘mob rule 2.0’ as the very digital technologies that allow us ‘to create processes of change for a just and equitable world’ are also technologies that ‘enable massively regressive and vigilante acts that exercise a mob-based notion of justice’.

That vision thing

And as is the case with any form of collective action, digitally mediated or not, there is the question of purpose. In an essay that compares the youth-led ‘revolution’ of 1968 and the Arab Spring of 2011, David Sasaki observes that both are essentially anti-establishment movements and that, so far, the latter has prioritized the removal of the current political class without offering a concrete vision of what ought to come next. As far as this author is concerned, the digital natives have yet to develop a vision of their own future – and the future of their governments.

I believe that we should not expect from today’s youth what yesterday’s young ones did not accomplish. Let us consider the digital natives and the technologies they employ for what they do, not for what they ought to be doing. And after reading some of the testimonies of digital natives in this publication, I cannot but conclude – as Eddie Avila does in the last book – that what brings them together is “a vision that the everyday technologies in their lives can help them make changes in their immediate environments”. Such is not a vision about politics writ large. It is about change at the personal level, the ability to connect and engage with others, and, from there, the possibility to act collectively – and give it a larger direction.

'Digital (Alter)Natives with a cause?', Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen (eds), is available for download in four parts at the website of the Hivos Knowledge Programme.

The review by Maarten van den Berg was published in "The Broker" on September 19, 2011. Please click here to read the original review.

About the author

A political scientist by training (University of Amsterdam, York University, Canada), Maarten van den Berg is senior editor of The Broker,an independent magazine on globalization and development. Before he joined The Broker in 2011, Maarten worked as a communication and knowledgement professional for a variety of international organizations, and still has his own consultancy, RISQ. After work, Maarten loves to cook and shares in the care of his son Titus.

Photo credit main picture: Postcard 'Digital Natives' designed by Jonathan Remulla.

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