Centre for Internet and Society

Cyberspace in its Plurality: Cybercultures Workshop at TISS, Mumbai

nishant — 2008-10-31T10:38:17Z

Cyberspace has become one of the most potent and persuasive metaphors of our times, enveloping and embracing a wide range and scope of areas across disciplines and perspectives. The cybercultures workshop is designed to be an introduction to the multiplicity of cyberspaces and internet technologies and the key questions which have emerged in the almost four decades of cyberculture theory. The workshop is designed across four days; each day dealing with a certain understanding of cyberspace – in its materiality, in its imagination, in its instrumentality – in order to present a comprehensive view of the vast terrain of cyberspace and its intersections with the contemporary worlds we live in.

Workshop @ Centre for Media and Cultural Studies, TISS, Mumbai

The four day workshop at the Centre for Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, sees CIS engaging with one of the most exciting spaces in the Indian academia; we design and administer an introduction course on cyberspace and its plurality to students of media and cultural studies. The workshop is a part of the Centre for Internet and Society's larger concern on providing a multidisciplinary, multi-media approach towards the internet and contextualising it in India.

Structured on a seminar model, the workshop hopes to bring together the questions in academic debate as well as in the realm of cultural production, for students to understand the internet technologies and cyberspaces as not only important cultural outputs but also crucial forms that shape the world we live in.

Objectives: The four day cybercultures workshop hopes to achieve the following objectives:

To introduce the students to the multiplicity and complexity of ‘cyberspace’.
To introduce ‘cyberspace’ as an epistemological category to emphasise the centrality of cyberspaces in understanding the mechanics of urban survival in the contemporary.
To orient the students towards understanding the textuality of cyberspace; rescuing it from the confines of digital networks and locating it in the transactions of globalization and urbanization in Asia.
To introduce the key debates in cybercultures theory: body, gender, sexuality, authorship, ownership, access and information democratization.

Design: The cybercultures workshop is designed to be conducted over four days with two sessions (of three hours each) per day. Each day is thematically divided to look at a particular idea of cyberspace; the sessions are further sub-divided to introduce a particular perspective on the day’s theme. Each session has its set of individual pre-readings which will serve more as indicators of the stake of the debate rather than as texts around which the class will be centred. The readings shall remain as introductory material, and the class room discussions, while referring to them, will not concentrate on explaining the material.

Day 1: Cyberspace – Form, Textuality and Frameworks

Session 1: Exploring Cyberspace:

Definitions, explanations, locations

Cyberspace and Digital Technologies

Form, text, textuality

Pre-reading: Shah, Nishant, 2005. “Playblog: Pornography, Performance, and Cyberspace” available here

Session 2: The Digital DNA – Database, Networks, Archives

The Database Imperative: Sorting, information, databases

The Networking Impulse: Social Networking Systems and the condition of networking

The Archiving Aspirations: Intention, aspiration and archiving the present

Pre-reading: Manovich, Lev, 2001. “The Database as a Symbolic Form” available here

Day 2: Information technology and human engineering

Session 3 : Gender, Technology and Cyberspace

Gendering of Technology; Gendered Technologies

The body and its boundaries

Physical bodies; Digital selves; cyborgs

Pre-reading: Light, Jennifer, 1999. “When Computers Were Women” available here

Dibbell, Julian, 1991. “A Rape in Cyberspace: How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society” available here

Session 4: Techno-social Worlds

Orkut Deaths : The distributed self

Role playing and identity : The real and the authentic

DPS MMS: The trajectories of selves

Day 3- 4 : Cyberspace and the Infobahn

Session 5: Movie Screening: Good Copy, Bad Copy (followed by discussion)

Session 6: Who owns Cyberspace?

Ownership and Possession

Licensing and access

Open source and the gift economy

Pre-reading: UNCTAD essay on copyright and related questions, available here

Session 7: 18 Reasons Why Piracy is Good for You

The need for piracy

Piracy, theft, and property

Session 8: The Cultural Value of Intellectual Property

The Digital Millenium Rights

The Copy Right and the Copy Left

Open Access and the Creative Commons

Outputs

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/publications-automated/curricula/courses-taught-and-designed-by-cis/cyberspace-in-its-plurality-cybercultures-workshop-at-tiss-mumbai

Conferences & Workshops

nishant — 2009-07-10T07:28:21Z

The Centre for Internet and Society firmly endorses the model of collaboration, consultation and feedback, and looks upon conferences within various disciplines, which engage with questions of Internet technologies and their bearing upon the times we live in, as extremely fruitful forums of engagement with the peers. This is where we document the different conferences that we are institutionally or individually participating in and the ideas that emerge out of them.

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

CIS Publications

nishant — 2010-07-28T04:50:15Z

Recent Publications in the field by the staff and members of the Centre for Internet and Society including coverage in the press.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis

Curricula & Teaching

nishant — 2008-10-11T10:28:26Z

Courses designed and taught by members of the Centre for Internet and Society, at different organisations, universities and institutes

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/publications-automated/curricula

People

nishant — 2020-08-04T05:52:57Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) brings together a range of people with backgrounds in various disciplines who have made significant interventions and impacts in the newly emerging area of Internet and Society. Functioning through a model of collaborations, consultations and peer-networking, our works feature some of the most innovative and relevant ideas embodied by the different people we work with. We also undertake research, advocacy, and educational programmes which involve an extensive network of researchers, practitioners, artists, and institutions partnering with us intellectually and programmatically.

Board and Society Members

Distinguished Fellows

Fellows

Staff

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/people/people

Interns

nishant — 2012-10-07T04:00:26Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/people/intern

New Pedagogies

nishant — 2008-09-22T08:03:36Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/substantive-areas/new-pedagogies

Public Accountability

nishant — 2008-09-22T08:02:06Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/substantive-areas/public-accountability

Digital Pluralism

nishant — 2008-09-22T07:58:57Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/substantive-areas/digital-pluralism

Contact Us

nishant — 2011-12-04T15:25:31Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/contact

Contact Us

nishant — 2013-01-30T10:38:18Z

Postal Address:

The Centre for Internet and Society
No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross,
Domlur 2nd Stage
Bangalore 560 071

Phone: +91 80 40926283
Telefax: +91 80 25350955

If you want to get in touch with specific people:

For Advocacy: Sunil Abraham (Executive Director)
Email: sunil@cis-india.org
Phone: +919611100817

For Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance and Freedom of Speech: Pranesh Prakash (Policy Director)
Email: pranesh@cis-india.org
Phone: +919916158217

For Accessibility for Persons with Disabilities, and Telecom: Nirmita Narasimhan (Policy Director)
Email: nirmita@cis-india.org
Phone: +918040926283

For Research: Nishant Shah (Director - Research)
Email: nishant@cis-india.org
Phone: +919740074884

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/contact/contact-us

Collaborative Projects Programme

nishant — 2011-08-23T03:04:56Z

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

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

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

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

List of Projects under the Collaborative Projects Programme:

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

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

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

Pathways to Higher Education

nishant — 2015-03-30T14:52:54Z

The Pathways Project to Higher Education is a collaboration between the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). The project is supported by the Ford Foundation and works with disadvantaged students in nine undergraduate colleges in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala, to explore relationships between Technologies, Higher Education and the new forms of social justice in India.

These colleges are the SIES College of Arts, Science and Commerce, Mumbai, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, Ahmednagar College, Ahmednagar, UC College, Aluva, Newman College, Thodupuzha, Farook College, Kozhikode, Vidhyavardhaka College, Mysore, Dr. AV Baliga College, Kumta and St. Aloysius College, Mangalore from the states of Maharashtra, Kerala and Karnataka.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways/learning-in-higher-education

Researchers At Work

nishant — 2012-01-04T05:27:06Z

CIS-RAW stands for Researchers at Work, a multidisciplinary research initiative by the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. CIS firmly believes that in order to understand the contemporary concerns in the field of Internet and Society, it is necessary to produce local and contextual accounts of the interaction between the internet and socio-cultural and geo-political structures. The CIS-RAW programme hopes to produce one of the first documentations on the transactions and negotiations, relationships and correlations that the emergence of internet technologies has resulted in, specifically in the South. The CIS-RAW programme recognises ‘The Histories of the Internet and India’ as its focus for the first two years. Although many disciplines, organisations and interventions in various areas deal with internet technologies, there has been very little work in documenting the polymorphous growth of internet technologies and their relationship with society in India. The existing narratives of the internet are often riddled with absences or only focus on the mainstream interests of major stakeholders, like the state and the corporate. We find it imperative to excavate the three-decade histories of the internet to understand the contemporary concerns and questions in the field.

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

Histories of the Internet

nishant — 2015-03-30T14:15:10Z

For the first two years, the CIS-RAW Programme shall focus on producing diverse multidisciplinary histories of the internet in India.

Histories of internets in India

The CIS-RAW programme is designed around two-year thematics. Every two years, we shall, looking at our engagement and the questions that are emerging around us, come up with new themes that we would like to commission, enable and encourage research on.

The selection of the theme of the History of Internet and Society is a unanimous decision made by our researchers in-house, the members of the Society, distinguished fellows, supporters, and peers who all gathered for a launch workshop for the CIS. There is a severe dearth of material on the histories of Internet and Society in India and we find it necessary to contextualise and historicise the contemporary in order to fruitfully and critically engage with the questions and concerns we are committed to. In the first two years of its programme, the CIS-RAW hopes to come up with alternative histories of the Internet and Society, which chart a wide terrain of the field that we are engaging with and produce one of the first such resources for researchers working in this field.

Scope of the Theme:

We are looking at a wide range of accounts of the different forms, imaginations, materialities and interactions of the internets in India. As we excavate its three-decade growth in India, it becomes increasingly clear that there is no homogenised Internet that has evolved in the country; Instead, what we have is a technology, which, through its interactions and intersections with various objects, people, contexts and regulation, has emerged in many different ways. The theme of 'Histories of internets in India' hopes to address these pluralities of the internets and how they have been shaped in the unfolding of these technologies.

We have collaborated on the following histories with different researchers in India:

Rewiring Bodies - Asha Achuthan, Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore.
Archive and Access - Rochelle Pinto (Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore; Aparna Balachandran, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore; and Abhijit Bhattacharya, Centre for Sudies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.
Porn: Law, Video & Technology - Namita Malhotra, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore
Transparency and Politics - Zainab Bawa, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society
The Last Cultural Mile - Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore
Using the Net for Social Change - Anja Kovacs, (Research) Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore
Queer Histories of the Internet - Nitya Vasudevan, Centre for Study of Culture and Society and Nithin Manayath, Mount Carmel College
Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities - Pratyush Shankar, Center for Environmental Planning and Technology University, Ahmedabad
Gaming and Gold - Arun Menon, Centre for Internet & Society

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/histories-of-the-internets-main