Enormous congratulations to Prof Mark Graham and Prof Bill Dutton on the publication of Society and the Internet: How Networks of Information and Communication are Changing Our Lives. I was honoured to have been invited to contribute a chapter to this new Internet Studies bible, in which I describe the Internet as the modern catch-all boogeyman. In fact (I argue) these accusations are unjustified.
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[Publications] Inventing the Internet: Scapegoat, Sin Eater, and Trickster
Sunday July 20, 2014 @ 05:55 PM (UTC) -
The Personal (Computer) Is Political: Recommendations for Policy & Regulation
Friday March 28, 2014 @ 09:23 AM (UTC)Software is not the solution to social ills, yet “software solutions” are de facto implemented in policy and regulation without an accurate understanding of what’s actually offered. From Big Data to privacy to censorship, here are recommendations from The Personal (Computer) Is Political for policy makers and regulators, published by The Nominet Trust earlier this week.
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The Personal (Computer) Is Political: Recommendations for Developers
Monday March 24, 2014 @ 01:09 PM (UTC)Software is biased, so how can developers act in the best interest of their audience?
On Monday, The Nominet Trust published The Personal (Computer) Is Political, a provocation paper based my last three years research looking at philosophies and agendas built into in the software and web services we use every day. The report calls for consumers and creators to recognise that software is a cultural artefact – like film, television, architecture, comedy, food, art and design – and therefore it is part of the zeitgeist of its day. This includes the political, economic and social climate of where and when it was built.
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Pre-order! Society and the Internet: How Networks of Information and Communication are Changing Our Lives
Wednesday February 12, 2014 @ 01:38 PM (UTC)I was delighted to contribute a chapter to the forthcoming book, edited by Bill Dutton and Mark Graham from the Oxford Internet Institute, Society and the Internet: How Networks of Information and Communication are Changing Our Lives. It’s now available for pre-order!
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[Woman's Hour] Communication Overload
Friday December 30, 2011 @ 11:25 PM (UTC)On 30 December, I took part in a discussion about information overload on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
Here’s the blurb:
Communication OverloadMidnight on New Year’s Eve is the time when the most text messages are likely to ping around the world to our loved ones. And as we’re in the middle of the festive season we’re all contacting family and friends. With the relentless march of new technology it seems we could be reaching critical mass when it comes to communication overload. What is the brave new world of technology doing to our family and work relationships. And what does it hold for us in the future?
Jenni is joined by Aleks Krotoski; Social psychologist and writer specialising in the Internet and Dr Nicola Millard, Futurologist at BT who predicts trends in society and technology. -
[Oxford Internet Institute] The Information Revolution
Wednesday October 13, 2010 @ 08:19 AM (UTC)I gave a lecture for the Oxford Internet Institute‘s Undergraduate series on Monday and, with a whopping hour and a half to fill, I talked (and waved my arms around) about whether the Information Revolution that we are currently experiencing because of the social changes brought about by the World-Wide Web is hype or reality. As the target audience was undergraduates (but several post-grads and members of the public turned up too), I took a contrary approach by looking for the uniqueness that the Web offers in the context of two information innovations that have come before: the printing press and the telegraph. Here’s the abstract:
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[Media] Cognitive surplus, the soma of television and being on Newsnight with Clay Shirky
Wednesday June 30, 2010 @ 03:24 PM (UTC)For the next week, you can catch my appearance on last night’s BBC’s current affairs programme Newsnight with author Clay Shirky, debating the social implications of new technology. It was a great discussion that was overwhelmingly positive about the Web and what it offers, but there were a few sticking points where Clay and I disagreed. I’ll expand on the key one here.
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[Digifest] Is the Web the ultimate propaganda machine?
Friday March 26, 2010 @ 05:14 PM (UTC)The ‘spinternet’, or the use of social media by governments and special interest groups to recruit and galvanise populations to tow the party line, is a term coined by Georgetown University researcher and journalist Evegny Morozov. It’s a concise shorthand for the topic of last Wednesday night’s discussion at DigiFest, the series of digital technology events I curated this month at London’s Science Museum.
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[Event] SuperPower briefing at the House of Commons
Monday March 15, 2010 @ 12:18 PM (UTC)I’ve been invited to participate in a briefing to the House of Commons tomorrow about the BBC’s SuperPower report, of which the World Service radio adaptation of the 4-film BBC2 documentary series The Virtual Revolution is part. I’ll be joining an esteemed panel, including BBC Technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, who’ll be discussing the ways politicians are expected to embrace the Web during the forthcoming election, Pooneh Ghoddoosi from BBC Persian TV will draw on her personal experience of observing user-generated content in Iran to discuss how the Web can transform lives, and Peter Barron, Director of Communication of North and Central Europe at Google, who’ll take a wider view at how politicians, corporations and the government have dealt with the Web. I’ll try to throw as many spanners in the works as possible, arguing that the Web isn’t as liberating as everyone suggests. After all, as I said in this Observer piece, the Web is only a reflection of us and we like our silos. I’ll be introducing concepts of cyberbalkanisation, propaganda, and a historical view of how governments have coped with previous technologies.
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[Event] Why Study the Web? (Royal Society)
Friday March 05, 2010 @ 08:34 AM (UTC)This Monday evening, I’ll be chairing a panel of esteemed web academics at the Royal Society, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Northwestern’s Prof Noshir Contractor, Southampton’s Prof Nigel Shadboldt and Dame Wendy Hall and – my external examiner - Oxford’s Prof Bill Dutton. We’ll be discussing Web Science, the multi-disciplinary arena of study that looks at the web holistically – from a social, economic, political, psychological point of view – rather than approaching it within a purely technical framework.
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