I am happy to pick up again my blog today after a ten-year hiatus, starting to talk about Marco Montemagno’s seminar I attended today at the Camera di Commercio (Chamber of Commerce) in Milano as part of his series of talks on Lavorability – his new book out now online and in print. Marco is a rock star of the Web – his knowledge spans every field and every sector, his ideas are multifaceted, original and there are lots of them. He knows how to captivate an audience and you can see he has years of experience on what he is talking about. He stands up there at an international level with the big minds and there’s always something to learn from him. Being myself on the cusp of a career change, his talk today struck a real chord with me. Aimed at businesses and people who are interested in the big digital changes which are taking place today in the way we work, in the way the workplace is organized, in the way we market our firm and look for new customers, the talk highlighted how it has become virtually impossible to ignore social media and the digital platforms which are increasingly becoming tools which are actively shaping our (working) lives. I spent ten years in academia studying politics, society and the Internet. I then spent the following ten years managing my firm, a printing business, which was strongly based in the analogue world. But the analogue world is not enough anymore. Interestingly, about eighty percent of Marco’s audience today was made up of generation X entrepreneurs. They – We — are the ones who know the language of the current digital world but who feel they need to know more and do more to bring fully their business in the new digital age, which is already here, it is not the future. Marco Montemagno gave today many useful and very interesting insights on how to make the final jump in the new social media world, which is constantly changing and which is looking very different from the early World Wide Web of early adopters of the early 2000s. The constant and fundamental theme though, which remains at the forefront throughout the years, is the following: are you only consuming or are you actually also creating content online? I am conscious I am writing these thoughts on an old fashioned platform – a blog. But I am picking up again from here and starting again. Thank you Marco Montemagno for an inspiring talk today.
Tag: civic engagement
The Internet and democracy: lessons learnt and future directions of research
I have just come back from a three day workshop on: “The Internet and Democracy, Lessons Learnt and Future Directions of Research”, which we at Berkman’s Internet & Democracy project have been organizing in collaboration with the Oxford Internet Institute and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. The workshop gathered around 25 leading academics working in the field in order to investigate: (1) what are the lessons learnt from existing research? (2) how can we best measure the impact of the Internet and new media on democracy and what are the insights provided by different research methodologies? (3) what are the future directions for the field? The sessions covered an array of topics, with a variety of methodological perspectives.
Day 1
Day one was opened by a public lecture by Matthew Hindman held at the Oxford Said Business School which explored how online audiences are distributed and how site traffic changes over time. The webcast of the lecture will be available online here.
Continue reading “The Internet and democracy: lessons learnt and future directions of research”
Internet and Democracy workshop: Oxford, March 4-6 2009
I am currently at Oxford for a three day workshop on: “The Internet and Democracy, Lessons Learnt and Future Directions of Research”, which we at Berkman‘s Internet & Democracy project have been organizing in collaboration with the Oxford Internet Institute and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford.
The aim of the workshop is to bring together leading researchers to assess the current state of research on the impact of the Internet on democracy. In particular, the workshop aims to assess: (1) what are the lessons learnt from existing research? (2) How can we best measure the impact of the Internet and new media on democracy and what are the insights provided by different research methodologies? (3) What are the future directions for the field?
Please check this blog and the Berkman’s Internet and Democracy blog in the next few days for blogposts about the workshop sessions. A webcast of the opening lecture which was held yesterday by Matthew Hindman at the Oxford Said Business School will also be made available soon online both on the OII and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society website.
digital natives: digital renegades or digital captives?
A few days ago in the IHT Evgeny Morozov, a Fellow at the Open Society Institute in New York, has published an interesting op-ed entitled: “Digital renegades, or captives?” where he analyzes the role of the Internet in promoting civic engagement in authoritarian regimes. Evgeny asks: “What if the original premise was wrong and the Internet is not a great force for democratic change but rather the clay that keeps authoritarian regimes together?” Evgeny alerts us to the dangers of seeing the Internet as a magic wand, which will necessarily promote democratic change and warns us about the importance of context (America vs. non-Western European countries) when analyzing the role of the Internet in aiding political change and political participation.
Evgeny goes on to argue (and I quote his words, again): “We have to be aware of the fact that the Internet has given the youth living in controlled societies infinite venues for digital entertainment – without any religious or social censorship – that may not necessarily be enhancing their digital sense of citizenship and civic engagement. Risking the comfort of their bedrooms – with their hard-drives full of digital goodies – for the gloom of a prison cell does not appeal to many of them. The governments are all too happy to promote this new cult of ‘cyber-hedonism’.”
In other words, the Internet is just a tool – we must avoid technologically deterministic arguments which stress the effects of technology by taking it out of context, and by devoiding it of social agency. Evgeny suggests two ideal types (a la Weber): ‘digital renegades’ vs. ‘captives’ which I think are much more than just another trendy name, but they are two categories which may well turn out to be a really useful analytical tool in studying young people’s civic engagement.
[Cross-posted on Internet and Democracy blog and Digital Natives blog]
Seminar at USC Annenberg Center
Tomorrow, October 26, 2006 I am presenting a seminar at the USC Annenberg Center speaker’s series: “Digital natives, digital immigrants: towards a new participatory culture?”. The seminar will be held at 11.00am at the Center. Click here for more information.