Centre for Internet and Society

National Privacy Workshop

Admin — 2017-12-05T14:24:16Z

Centre for Internet & Society is organizing a round-table to discuss the potential impact of numerous policy developments with wide ranging implications for recognition and governance of privacy in India. The round-table will be held on December 9, 2017 at India International Centre in New Delhi, 10.30 a.m. to 5.00 p.m.

Background

The recent past in India has seen numerous policy developments with wide ranging implications for recognition and governance of privacy in India. The emphatic and unanimous avowal of the right to privacy by the Supreme Court, the government’s stated commitment to a data protection law and the formation of the Sri Krishna Committee are developments which will continue to inform policymaking around privacy in India for a long time to come. The Supreme Court’s conception of a robust right to privacy encompassing different element - spatial, decisional and informational, and its guidance on strict limiting tests may have a wide impact on a range of issues. The impact of this judgment and a data protection law on informational privacy in India will be immense and it is important to delve in challenges and issues that it may throw up. In last year, we have also seen instances of purported conflict between the transparency instruments such as the right to information and the right to informational privacy. How these conflicts are resolved in law and practice will be key to these two essential human rights in the modern information society. Further, while these general consensus on privacy principles, the appropriate ways to govern and enforce privacy remains an open issue, and the success of any data protection framework will depend as much on what kind of privacy governance models are adopted.This roundtable will look to discuss the potential impact of these policy decisions, what theories should guide the data protection law in India, what models of privacy governance are workable and how privacy can co-exist with transparency principle and robust RTI regime.

Agenda

10.30 - 11.00	Tea
11.00 - 11.30	Welcome and setting the scene
11.30 - 12.30	Session 1: Policy Developments around Informational Privacy in India What do different policy developments indicate about privacy in India? What are the (potential) impacts of these developments? What questions are being asked and are these the right questions to ask? How do we expect the ‘state of privacy’ to change in India in response to these policy developments?
12.30 - 13.30	Session 2: Approaches to Privacy and Data Protection for India What are different approaches to privacy and government the Indian government can take? What cultural/political etc. aspects should be taken into consideration when thinking through this question? What are the pros and cons to different approaches? What are the pros and cons to the below approaches: - Privacy as control - Data as property - Utilitarian approaches - Technological Solutions
13.30 - 14.30	Lunch
14.30 - 15.30	Session 3: Transparency and Privacy How can transparency from the private sector enable the right to privacy? What are key principles that can guide this relationship? Where is transparency from the private sector most needed with respect to privacy? What are incentives that governments can adopt to encourage privacy?
15.30 - 16.30	Governance Models for Data Protection What kind of institutional framework is required for governance of privacy in India? How do we address questions of liability, penalties and enforcement? What role do sectoral players have in a data governance framework? What is best way for other stakeholders like industry, civil society and academia in collaborative governance of privacy?
16.30 - 17.00	Tea and snacks

Speakers

Usha Ramanathan
Rahul Sharma
Apar Gupta
Malavika Raghavan
Shankar Narayanan
Ujwala Uppaluri
Rebecca MacKinnon
Nikhil Pahwa
Kamlesh Bajaj
Manasa Venkatraman
Smitha K Prasad

Download the Agenda

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/national-privacy-workshop-at-india-international-centre

Elements of a Decentralized Web

Admin — 2017-11-23T14:16:26Z

Gene Kogan will deliver a talk on the elements of a decentralized web at the Centre for Internet (CIS) office in Bengaluru on December 11, 5.30 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

The internet is broken. Straying far from the original vision of democratizing access to knowledge, large tech companies now resemble the industrial barons of the 19th century, presiding over what many scholars regard as a public utility but nevertheless unregulated. As machine learning has entered the picture, the usual suspects like Facebook, Reddit, and Quora, have begun training sophisticated algorithms on personal data to route traffic in order to maximize attention, leading to a web which is more atomized, addictive, and anxiety-inducing.

In response to this, some have begun writing about, conceptualizing, and implementing the open-source protocols of what they consider the future web 3.0. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts have expanded their focus to more generalized blockchains which enable trust in decentralized platforms, while initiatives like IPDB and IPFS ambitiously promise to make hosting, storage, database querying, and even computation itself possible inside of peer-to-peer networks. But all is not well in this techno-utopia -- as the speculative bubble around this "internet of money" grows, so too does interest from the very institutions these new initiatives seek to overcome. The landscape is beginning to look like Silicon Valley of the 1990s and the threat of a crash looms. It's up to us to determine which way this one will play out.

Gene Kogan

Gene Kogan is an artist and a programmer who is interested in generative systems, computer science, and software for creativity and self-expression. He is a collaborator within numerous open-source software projects, and gives workshops and lectures on topics at the intersection of code and art. Gene initiated ml4a, a free book about machine learning for artists, activists, and citizen scientists, and regularly publishes video lectures, writings, and tutorials to facilitate a greater public understanding of the subject.

Links:

genekogan.com

twitter.com/genekogan

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/elements-of-a-decentralized-web-talk-by-gene-kogan

Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence & Healthcare

Admin — 2018-01-02T13:49:14Z

Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is organizing a roundtable on artificial intelligence (AI) and healthcare at 'The Energy and Resources Institute' (TERI) in Bengaluru on November 30, 2017 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. The roundtable seeks to discuss the various issues and challenges surrounding the implementation of AI and related technologies in the Indian healthcare sector.

The Indian healthcare industry, powered by Artificial Intelligence, is moving into a new era of increased innovation and independence. With multiple new healthcare start-ups and large ICT companies such as Microsoft, IBM, and Google offering AI solutions to healthcare challenges in the country, it is evident that AI is attempting to enhance the accessibility, affordability, quality and awareness of healthcare in India. Major target areas sought to be enhanced by use of AI in healthcare include addressing the uneven ratio of skilled doctors to patients and making doctors more efficient at their jobs, delivery of personalized and high-quality healthcare to rural areas, and training doctors and nurses in complex procedures.

Through the application of machine learning, data mining, natural language processing (NLP), and advanced analytics, AI can help doctors in speedy diagnosis of diseases. AI is also mobilised as ‘smart advisors’ or virtual humans who are capable of making informed decisions by better comprehending data and information through sensing interfaces and analytics, in various forms.

Some of these forms include ‘customer service agents’ that can expedite simple tasks like appointment scheduling, or more complex decisions like selecting health plan benefits, ‘clinicians’ that can help with primary screening in understaffed rural areas possibly substituting for human labour, and ‘cognitive agents’ that can efficiently manage existing clinical knowledge alongside physicians, nurses and researchers, thereby reducing the cognitive load on humans. AI based Indian healthcare start-ups such as SigTuple, Aindra, Ten3T, Touchkin and many others are offering a range of solutions including automation of medical diagnosis, automated analysis of medical tests, detection and screening of diseases, wearable sensor based medical devices and monitoring equipment, patient management systems, predictive healthcare diagnosis and disease prevention.

However, AI in healthcare raises many potential concerns, a common one being the lack of comprehensive, representative, interoperable, and clean data - a challenge that is beginning to be addressed through the Electronic Health Records Standards developed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in 2016 by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Other major challenges include patient adoption and the need for personal interaction with doctors, concerns over mass-scale job losses, distrust in technology, and ethical concerns.

It is imperative to note that implementing AI in healthcare, which is bound to disrupt it, does not imply replacing doctors but augmenting their efforts to create a more efficient healthcare landscape in the country. A harmonious collaboration of man and machine is expected to bring about a meaningful and long-lasting impact and stakeholders should be prepared to adapt to this change and the challenges that come with it.

Roundtable Agenda

Thursday, November 30, 2017, 2:00pm - 5:00pm

2:00 - 2:30: Introduction and setting the scene

2:30 - 3:30: Discussion on the AI landscape in health in India:

Manner and extent of integration of AI into products/services of healthcare companies.
Relevant stakeholders and their roles in implementing AI into products/services of healthcare companies.
Future of AI and related technologies in the healthcare sector

3:30 - 4:30: Discussion on challenges and solutions towards regulating AI in India:

Challenges faced in the conception and implementation of the AI product/service, and reasons for such challenges.
Regulatory provisions for implementation of AI in healthcare products/services under the existing laws, and need for reforms.
Challenges posed by AI to existing policy and regulatory frameworks in the Indian as well as the global context, and possible solutions.

Click to download the invite

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/roundtable-on-artificial-intelligence-and-healthcare

Geographical Indications in India Edit-a-thon

praskrishna — 2016-01-26T15:19:56Z

Between 25 January and 31 January 2016, CIS-A2K is organizing an edit-a-thon to celebrate India's republic day. The goal of this edit-a-thon is to create and improve Geographical Indications articles.

Expectations

We expect that if you participate in this edit-a-thon, you'll create or expand at least 3 articles. However you may work on as many as articles you want.

Rules

For an article to be considered as part of this Geographical Indications in India Edit-a-thon, it must adhere to the following rules

The new article must be created between 0:00 UTC on 25 January 2016 and 23:59 UTC on 31 January 2016.
Creation/Expansion rule: If you are creating a new article the new article must have a size of at least 3,500 bytes and a minimum length of roughly 300 words (the word count excludes templates, infoboxes, references, etc.), If you are expanding an existing article, you need to expand this article by at least 3000 bytes, (the word count excludes templates, infoboxes, references, etc.)
The articles should not copyvio content and should follow verifiability and other important policies of Wikipedia.
The articles should have decent references;
The article must not be purely machine translated.
There should not be any maintenance tags in the articles
The article must have a direct relation to Geographical Indications in India (see Proposed articles).

Participants

Please add your username below. If you can not find your community name, please add a section using level 3 header (eg. === Ukrainian Wikipedia ===). We also encourage you to start an event page on your Wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/geographical-indications-in-india-edit-a-thon

Public Debate on 'Differential Pricing': Series 1

vidushi — 2016-01-27T13:51:06Z

The Centre for Internet and Society, in association with ICRIER and the Department of Civics and Politics, University of Mumbai, is pleased to announce “A Series of Public Debates on Differential Pricing” in the cities of Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi. The first public debate will be held at the Centre for Internet & Society office in Bangalore on February 1, 2016.

In light of the recent consultation paper released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the objective of these debates will be to deconstruct the issue of differential pricing through a discussion on the variety of views this subject has attracted. Speakers will also discuss possible implications of differential pricing policy on questions of access, diversity, competition and entrepreneurship.

Each debate will comprise three rounds. In the first round, speakers will present the body of their arguments over 10 minutes each. The second round will be a rebuttal round, with each speaker being given 5 minutes. The third and final round will see the floor being opened to the audience who will engage the speakers with comments and questions.

Download the Invite

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/a-series-of-public-debates-on-differential-pricing-series-1

The Zen of Pad.ma: 10 Lessons Learned from Running Open Access Online Video Archives in India and beyond

sneha-pp — 2016-01-28T08:25:18Z

Sebastian Lütgert and Jan Gerber, the co-initiators of, and the artists/programmers behind the pad.ma (Public Access Digital Media Archive) project will deliver a lecture at CIS on Wednesday, February 03, 6 pm, on their experiences of learnings from running open access online video archives in Germany, India, and Turkey. Please join us for coffee and vada at 5:30 pm.

The Zen of Pad.ma

Eight years after the launch of Pad.ma and three years since the inception of Indiancine.ma, Sebastian Lütgert will take a closer look at some of the strategies -- decisions and decision making processes, foundational principles and accidental discoveries -- that may have helped make these projects sustainable. While most of the lessons begin with concrete questions related to software and technology, most of them will end up pointing beyond that: towards a general theory of collaboration, towards strategies against premature separation of labor, and towards a few practical proposals for successful self-organization on the Internet.

Biographies

Sebastian Lütgert, media artist, programmer, filmmaker and writer, lives and works in Berlin. Co-founder of Bootlab, textz.com, Pirate Cinema Berlin, Pad.ma and Indiancine.ma. Lecturer at the Academy of the Sciences in Berlin, various publications on cinema, copyright, radical subcultures and the politics of technology.

Jan Gerber, video artist and softwate developer, lives and works in Berlin. Co-initiator of Pirate Cinema Berlin, Pad.ma and Indiancine.ma, author of numerous Open Source software projects, most recently Open Media Library. Involved in a variety of open-access archive projects around the world.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/the-zen-of-padma

IP Meetup #01: Prof. Biswajit Dhar on 'Intellectual Property issues: The Way Forward post Nairobi WTO Ministerial'

sinha — 2016-02-04T13:25:34Z

Prof. Biswajit Dhar will deliver a short talk on what the WTO Nairobi Ministerial means for intellectual property issues, and the way forward, on Sunday, February 7, 2016 at the Centre for Internet & Society's Delhi office, at 4 p.m.

We would like to invite you to the inaugural session of a series of IP focused meetups. The meetups are aimed at bringing folks together working within or interested in IP law, to discuss recent developments with reference to access to knowledge, climate change, health, trade, etc.

The talk will be followed by a round of discussion, after which the floor will be thrown open for other pressing/relevant IP developments.

Please join us for tea and refreshments at 3.30 pm.

Please RSVP by dropping a line at anubha@cis-india.org.

CIS Delhi's location on Google Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/nPKkoQFhRSt

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/ip-meetup-01-prof-biswajit-dhar-on-intellectual-property-issues-the-way-forward-post-nairobi-wto-ministerial

RAW Lectures #02: Anil Menon on 'Speculative Fiction and Freedom' - Video

sneha-pp — 2016-02-09T08:38:19Z

Anil Menon spoke on 'Undermining the Tyrant’s Protocols: Speculative Fiction and Freedom' at the second event of the RAW Lectures series in Bangalore on January 13, 2016. Here is the video recording of the talk and the discussion that followed.

RAW Lectures

The Researchers at Work programme initiated the RAW Lectures series to take stock, reflect, and chart courses into the studies of Internet in/from India. The lectures address the experiences and practices of Internet in India as plural and intertwined with longer-duration processes. The lectures also critically respond to the questions around the methods of studying Internet in/from India, and the opportunities and challenges of studying Indian society on/through the Internet.

Lecture #02 - Undermining the Tyrant’s Protocols: Speculative Fiction and Freedom

Anil Menon’s research work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Intl J. of Neural Networks, Neural Proc. Letters, IEEE Trans On Evolutionary Computation, Foundations of Genetic Algorithms, British J. of the History of Science, and Small Business Economics. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies including Interzone, Interfictions, Strange Horizons, Jaggery Lit Review, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. His stories have been translated into German, French, Chinese, Romanian and Hebrew. His debut novel The Beast With Nine Billion Feet (Zubaan Books, 2010) was short-listed for the 2010 Vodafone-Crossword award and the Carl Brandon Society's 2011 Parallax Award. Along with Vandana Singh, he co-edited Breaking the Bow (Zubaan Books 2012), an international anthology of speculative fiction inspired by the Ramayana epic. His most recent work is the novel Half Of What I Say (Bloomsbury, 2015).

More: http://cis-india.org/raw/raw-lectures-02-anil-menon.

Download

Video: MP4, OGG, and Torrent.

The video is shared under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/raw-lectures-02-anil-menon-video

Internet Researchers' Conference 2016 (IRC16)

sumandro — 2016-02-27T06:19:33Z

The first Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC16) will be organised at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi, on February 26-28, 2016. The focus of the Conference is on the experiences, adventures, and methods of 'studying internet in India.' We are deeply grateful to the Centre for Political Studies (CPS), JNU, for hosting the Conference, and to the CSCS Digital Innovation Fund (CDIF) for the generous support. It is a free and open conference. Please use the form to register.

It is our great pleasure to announce the beginning of the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC), an annual conference series initiated by the Researchers at Work (RAW) programme at CIS to gather researchers, academic or otherwise, studying internet in/from India to congregate, share insights and tensions, and chart the ways forward.

This conference series is specifically driven by the following interests: 1) creating discussion spaces for researchers studying internet in India and in other comparable regions, 2) foregrounding the multiplicity, hierarchies, tensions, and urgencies of the digital sites and users in India, 3) accounting for the various layers, conceptual and material, of experiences and usages of internet and networked digital media in India, and 4) exploring and practicing new modes of research and documentation necessitated by new (digital) forms of objects of power/knowledge.

The first edition of the Conference, IRC16, is engaging with the theme of 'studying internet in India.' The word study here is a shorthand for a range of tasks, from documentation and theory-building, to measurement and representation.

Dates and Venue

The IRC16 will take place during February 26-28, 2016, at the Convention Centre of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi. We are grateful to Centre for Political Studies (CPS) at JNU for hosting the Conference, and to the CSCS Digital Innovation Fund (CDIF) for its generous support.

Registration and Programme

Conference programme: Download (PDF).

Programme booklet: Download (PDF).

[Important] Invitation letter to help you enter JNU campus: Download (PDF).

Please register for the Conference here: Form (Google).

We apologise for not being able to provide travel or accommodation support.

Etherpads

#Methods&ToolsForInternetResearch : https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/IRC16-InternetResearch

#DigitalDesires: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/IRC16-DigitalDesires.

#InternetMovements: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/IRC16-InternetMovements.

#WebOfGenealogies: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/IRC16-WebOfGenealogies.

#MinimalComputing: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/IRC16-MinimalComputing.

#STSDebates: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/IRC16-STSDebates.

#ArchiveAnarchy: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/IRC16-ArchiveAnarchy.

#ManyPublicsOfInternet: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/IRC16-ManyPublicsOfInternet.

#DigitalLiteraciesAtTheMargins: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/IRC16-DigitalLiteraciesAtTheMargins.

#FutureBazaars: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/IRC16-FutureBazaars.

#PoliticsOnSocialMedia: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/IRC16-PoliticsOnSocialMedia.

#SpottingData: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/IRC16-SpottingData.

#WikiShadows: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/IRC16-WikiShadows.

#FollowTheMedium: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/IRC16-FollowTheMedium.

#AFCinema2.0: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/IRC16-AFCinema2.0.

#LiterarySpaces: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/IRC16-LiterarySpaces.

Resources

Call for sessions: http://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-call.

Proposed sessions: http://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-proposed-sessions.

Selected sessions: http://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-selected-sessions.

Please join the researchers@cis-india mailing list to take part in pre- and post-conference conversations.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc16

Wikimedia Education SAARC conference

Admin — 2019-06-22T09:30:46Z

Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) happy to announce that, Wikimedia Education SAARC conference 2019 programme submissions (proposals) are open from today, 25 April 2019. Deadline for applying for scholarship is 20 May 2019. The conference organized by Christ University in association with CIS-A2K will be held from 20 - 22 June 2019 at Christ University in Bengaluru. The event is being co-organized by Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia & Education User Group.

Education is a core function of the Wikipedia project. Many Wiki chapters, the Wikimedia movement, user groups and affiliates are developing education programs across the globe. Wiki has been used as a teaching resource by many teachers. Students are doing assignments on Wiki and adopting modern technologies. The Wikimedia and Education movements have the same goal - to ensure that knowledge is made accessible to every person across the world.

The CIS-A2K team, for instance, is working with the language department of Christ University and other educational institutions to enrich the content of Indic Wikimedia projects with the help of students. Globally many students and educators are involved in the Wikimedia movement and the Education movement working towards democratising education and increasing accessibility of education materials. We believe that students should not only consume knowledge available on the internet but also be a part of the larger Open Internet movement, and help in creating open knowledge resources. The Wikimedia Education SAARC conference will be the first of its kind conference involving SAARC countries, engaging students, education program leaders, educators and researchers working with the Open Education and free knowledge movement.

This conference will allow us to understand the different efforts made by the communities involved in the Wikimedia Education movement. This will help us to create models, templates and documents that can be replicated in by other institutions or programs. We at CIS A2K were inspired to host such a conference through the course of our work with Christ University. This will be one of the many projects that will be able to use the conference as a platform to showcase their work among the global Wikimedia movement.

Conference Goals

To generate awareness of Wikipedian Education programs and activities happening in Asia by different community members/languages.
Sharing the knowledge and best practices of how to build "trust relationship" with new partners/teachers and how to improve trust in Wikipedia.
Challenges on student retention and how to engage students in the broader Wikimedia movement.
The best method to evaluate and measure the quality of the work done by students.
To introduce tools like the dashboard, across diverse languages, and other tools which will be useful for tracking, assessment, allocation of the topics and others.
Integration of Wiki activities with academic assignments, regular course syllabus.
To bridge the gap and develop a mutually beneficial liaison between Wiki communities and Wikimedia Education stakeholders.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/wikimedia-education-saarc-conference

Train-the-Trainer 2019 at Vishakhapatnam

pavan — 2019-05-24T02:21:19Z

Train-the-trainer 2019 (TTT 2019), residential training program to groom leadership among the Indian Wikimedia community members, is going to happen in Visakhapatnam during 31 May, 1 and 2 June 2019 at Fairfield by Marriott Hotel at Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

TTT 2019 is the 6th iteration in the earlier iterations happened in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. Based on internal needs-assessment conducted annually by CIS-A2K tweaks and improvises the design and expected outcomes of TTT every year. This year, A2K planned to involve communities or community members in planning, and organizing the event to be more transparent. This year A2K has two major changes in organising the TTT.

Indic communities were asked to take part in the bidding process in order to express interest to host this iteration of TTT. Based on the bidding process, this year A2K is going to collaborate with VVIT Wikiconnect to host TTT 2019 in Visakhapatnam.
Wikimedians from various language and project communities showed interest to attend TTT 2019. The jury considered these applications and selected 24 participants from 13 language and project communities. A2K involved Experienced Indian Wikimedians who are not part of CIS-A2K in the jury. Apart from the details provided by applicants over application form jury members made attempts to know more about participants and reached out some of them over brief telephone calls. Based on set parameters and analysis jury made decisions. Find the selected participants’ list here.

Please find the event page for further details.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/train-the-trainer-2019-at-vishakhapatnam

International Accessibility Summit of Shaastra 2017

praskrishna — 2016-12-18T02:21:22Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is partnering with IIT, Madras for a summit on international accessibility. The summit will be held at IIT in Chennai from December 31, 2016 to January 3, 2017. Nirmita Narasimhan will be the panel moderator this event.

This year’s Summit strives to bring about a change in society by addressing an issue that is taken for granted by most people: Accessibility.

Climbing stairs, listening to a lecture, reading a billboard, expressing dissent are some activities that most of us tend to perform quite effortlessly. Turning a “blind eye” to a “lame joke” is something that comes naturally to a lot of us. We crib to no end when people refuse to talk to us in a language we understand because it makes us feel like an outsider. If there is one thing that human beings hate, it is the feeling of being excluded or pitied upon, as this is a constant reminder of what one cannot do.

Accessibility is an attempt to get rid of this exclusion in various important spheres – physical environments, public spaces, the digital realm, education, employment, technology, transport. It is concerned with the removal of barriers, to set the record straight on what causes a disability: not an individual’s inability to do something but the society’s tendency to throw unnecessary obstacles. Accessibility is a spectrum - it means usability, it means removing limitations and tapping opportunities.

The International Accessibility Summit of Shaastra 2017, IIT Madras, a 4 day-long event to be held between 31st December, 2016 to 3rd January, 2017, is a platform for multiple stakeholders in the field of Accessibility and Assistive Technology to come together and share their knowledge. It is a chance for students from various fields of study to meet and ideate on how to make India truly accessible.

To know more about International Accessibility Summit, please watch the teaser.

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/events/international-accessibility-summit-shaastra-2017

Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17)

sumandro — 2018-07-02T18:29:55Z

With great pleasure we announce the second edition of the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC), an annual conference series initiated by the Researchers at Work (RAW) programme at CIS to gather researchers, academic or otherwise, studying internet in/from India to congregate, share insights and tensions, and chart the ways forward. The Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) will be held at the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B) campus on March 03-05, 2017. It is being organised by the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy (CITAPP) at IIIT-B and the CIS.

Registration is closed now.

Propose open sessions here.

Agenda (final): Download (PDF)

Programme: Download (PDF)

Poster (high resolution): Download (JPG)

IRC17: Key Provocations

Two critical questions that emerged from the conversations at the previous edition of the Conference (IRC16) were about the digital objects of research, and the digital/internet experiences in Indic languages. As we discussed various aspects and challenges of 'studying internet in India', it was noted that we have not sufficiently explored how ongoing research methods, assumptions, and analytical frames are being challenged (if at all) by the becoming-digital of the objects of research across disciplines: from various artifacts and traces of human and machinic interactions, to archival entries and sites of ethnography, to practices and necessities of collaboration.

We found that the analyses of such digital objects of research often tend to assume either an aesthetic and functional uniqueness or sameness vis-à-vis the pre-/proto-digital objects of research, while neither of these positions are discussed in detail. Further, we tend to universalise the English-speaking user's/researcher's experience of working with such digital objects, without sufficiently considering their lives and functions in other (especially, Indic) languages.

These we take as the key provocations of the 2017 edition of IRC:

How does the becoming-digital of the research objects challenge our current research practices, concerns, and assumptions?
How do we appreciate, study, and theorise the functioning of and meaning-making by digital objects in Indic languages?
What research tools and infrastructures are needed to study, document, annotate, analyse, archive, cite, and work with (in general) digital objects, especially those in Indic languages?

This conference series is specifically driven by the following interests: 1) creating discussion spaces for researchers studying internet in India and in other comparable regions, 2) foregrounding the multiplicity, hierarchies, tensions, and urgencies of the digital sites and users in India, 3) accounting for the various layers, conceptual and material, of experiences and usages of internet and networked digital media in India, and 4) exploring and practicing new modes of research and documentation necessitated by new (digital) forms of objects of power/knowledge.

Dates and Venue

The conference is being hosted by the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B) during March 03-05, 2017.

Address: 26/C, Electronics City, Hosur Road, Bangalore, 560100, location on Google Map.

Session Details and Notes

Day 01, Friday, March 03

#DigitalIdentities: Details and Etherpad

#IndicLanguagesAndInternetCohabitation: Details and Etherpad

#SelfiesFromTheField: Details and Etherpad

#HookingUp: Details and Etherpad

Day 02, Saturday, March 04

#DotBharatAdoption: Details and Etherpad

#DigitalPedagogies: Details and Etherpad

#MaterializingWriting: Details and Etherpad

#RenarrationWeb: Details and Etherpad

Day 03, Sunday, March 05

#ArchivesForStorytelling: Details and Etherpad

#ObjectsOfDigitalGovernance: Details and Etherpad

#OpenAccessScholarlyPublishing: Details and Etherpad

Session Selection Process

Call for sessions: http://cis-india.org/raw/irc17-call.

Selected sessions: http://cis-india.org/raw/irc17-selected-sessions.

Please join the researchers@cis-india mailing list to take part in pre- and post-conference conversations.

About the IRC Series

The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) initiated the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) series to address these concerns, and to create an annual temporary space in India, for internet researchers to gather and share experiences.

The IRC series is driven by the following interests:

creating discussion spaces for researchers and practitioners studying internet in India and in other comparable regions,
foregrounding the multiplicity, hierarchies, tensions, and urgencies of the digital sites and users in India, accounting for the various layers, conceptual and material, of experiences and usages of internet and networked digital media in India, and
exploring and practicing new modes of research and documentation necessitated by new (digital) objects of power/knowledge.

The first edition of the Internet Researchers' Conference series was held in February 2016. It was hosted by the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and was supported by the CSCS Digital Innovation Fund. The Conference was constituted by eleven discussion sessions (majority of which were organised around presentation of several papers), four workshop sessions (which involved group discussions, activities, and learnings), a book sprint over three sessions to develop an outline of a (re)sourcebook for internet researchers in India, and a concluding round table. The audio recordings and notes from IRC16 are now being compiled into an online Reader. A detailed reflection note on IRC16 has been published.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc17

Workshop on Digital Security for Journalists

praskrishna — 2015-01-15T14:07:16Z

The Foundation for Media Professionals and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) are jointly hosting a workshop on 'Digital Security for Journalists' in New Delhi on January 16, 2015.

This workshop will be a hands-on training — so all journalists are strongly encouraged to bring their laptops and smartphones — on how to assess security threats, how to protect your sources, how to prevent your ISP from snooping on your communications, and how to harden your computer's security.

This workshop furthers CIS's work as part of the Cyber Stewards Network with aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, and the space for this workshop has been provided by the Times of India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/workshop-on-digital-security-for-journalists

Code As Communication

praskrishna — 2015-01-23T03:12:15Z

Gene Kogan will give a talk at the Centre for Internet & Society's Bangalore office on February 2, 2015. The talk will be from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Gene's talk will draw analogies between software, communication, creativity, and expressivity. Programming has a long history of comparison to other written media, with inevitable consequences on our legal policy over authorship and ownership.

With the emergence of free "creative coding" and "live coding" platforms like Processing, OpenFrameworks, PureData, vvvv, and SuperCollider, the boundaries between code and creative expression have further eroded, initiating inquiry as to its overlap with "traditional" creative writing. We are confronted with old questions within new contexts. As existing institutions incorporate emerging technologies into their creative programs and new ones take root and solidify, how do we make an infrastructure which most effectively and transparently fosters the development of creative technology? How do we ensure that this process is fair and democratic, and at greatest benefit and lowest cost to the public? What rights should users and developers receive? As the distinction between art and technology becomes blurry, what relevance does the FOSS movement have in cultivating cultural production?

Gene Kogan

Gene Kogan is a programmer and artist who writes free software for new and emerging technologies. He creates tools for live music, dance, theatre, and performance art. He contributes to numerous open-source software projects, and frequently gives workshops and demonstrations on topics related to code and art.

Follow Gene Kogan elsewhere:

Website: http://www.genekogan.com

Vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/genekogan

Soundcloud: http://www.soundcloud.com/genekogan

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/genekogan

Github: http://www.github.com/genekogan

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/genekogan

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/code-as-communication