Oxford Internet Institute: Recent Episodes
Oxford University
Lectures and seminars from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), University of Oxford. The OII is a leading world centre for multidisciplinary research and teaching on the social factors that are shaping the Internet, and their implications for society. Areas covered by our podcasts include: social networking, Internet regulation, safety and security online, e-government and democracy, civil society, open access, identity, e-learning, citizen journalism and new media, and the future of the Internet itself.
Judy Wajcman explains why we immediately interpret our experiences with digital technology as inexorably accelerating everyday life. The technologically tethered, iPhone-addicted figure is an image we can easily conjure. Most of us complain that there aren't enough hours in the day and there are too many e-mails in our thumb-accessible inboxes. This widespread perception that life is faster than it used to be is now ingrained in our culture, and smartphones and the Internet are continually being blamed. But isn't the sole purpose of the smartphone to give us such quick access to people and information that we'll be free to do other things? Isn't technology supposed to make our lives easier? In Pressed for Time, Judy Wajcman explains why we immediately interpret our experiences with digital technology as inexorably accelerating everyday life. She argues that we are not mere hostages to communication devices, and the sense of always being rushed is the result of the priorities and parameters we ourselves set rather than the machines that help us set them. Indeed, being busy and having action-packed lives has become valorized by our productivity-driven culture. Wajcman offers a bracing historical perspective, exploring the commodification of clock time, and how the speed of the industrial age became identified with progress. She also delves into the ways time use differs for diverse groups in modern societies, showing how changes in work patterns, family arrangements, and parenting all affect time stress. Bringing together empirical research on time use and theoretical debates about dramatic digital developments, this accessible and engaging book will leave readers better versed in how to use technology to navigate life's fast lane.
India's right to information movement demonstrated the potential to combat corruption through social audits – an exercise to share and verify public records with people. India's right to information movement demonstrated the potential to combat corruption through social audits – an exercise to share and verify public records with people. But this process requires a lot of time, skill and organizational effort – thanks to which very few audits are organized in India despite its potential. We hope to change this by creating digital tools for activists, which they can use to organize social audits continuously at low cost, and thus challenge corruption in a sustained manner. The technology involves collecting public records online, disseminating it to people via mobile phones and collecting their feedback so that the activists can redress grievances in a timely manner. I will share the progress of the project so far in this talk.
Over the past decade there has been a phenomenal growth in mobile phone and internet usage in Africa which has attracted substantial media and academic interest. Over the past decade there has been a phenomenal growth in mobile phone and internet usage in Africa which has attracted substantial media and academic interest. However questions remain about the economically transformative nature and potential of this diffusion of communication infrastructures and artefacts. Based on over two hundred firm level interviews in Tanzania and South Africa this paper explores the impacts of the 'information revolution' on small and medium enterprise development. Contrary to perceptions it finds evidence of thin integration, devaluation and neo, rather than disintermediation. The implications of this for African development are then explored.
An in-depth study of the most powerful electronics contractor and the lives of its 1.4 million workers. During 2010, 18 workers attempted suicide at Taiwanese-owned Foxconn Technology Group's Chinese facilities, where Apple and other high profile branded products are produced and assembled. They ranged in age from 17 to 25 - the prime of youth. Fourteen died, while four survived with crippling injuries. What had driven the young Chinese workers to commit the desperate act? What light did they cast on China's much touted economic transformation in the era of export-oriented growth? The mystery that our investigation seeks to explore is not only the "inside story" of Foxconn; it is also the nature of global capitalism embodying with specific relationship between Foxconn and its buyers, the largest and richest being Apple, as well as that between Foxconn and the Chinese state. These are the relationships that shape conditions on the factory floor and ultimately workers' lives. An in-depth study of the most powerful electronics contractor and the lives of its 1.4 million workers enable us to draw out the deep contradictions among labor, capital, and the Chinese state in global IT production.
How can NGOs like Oxfam come together with academics and practitioners alike to tackle emerging privacy and security challenges when it comes to effective management of data? Data has invaluable applications to ensure organisations like Oxfam are needs driven and responsive, meanwhile there are also huge risks to communities if the related processes are not designed and managed in a responsible manner. Adopting meaningful approaches to data security and ethical methodology is not a new effort within Oxfam and the development community nor is it for academics. What is new, however, is the way that the changing digital landscape is presenting new challenges and opportunities which we must react to and ensure staff have resources and knowledge about how to collect, store, manage, use and even dispose of data responsibly. How can NGOs like Oxfam come together with academics and practitioners alike to tackle emerging privacy and security challenges when it comes to effective management of data? As Oxfam are in the process of applying a Responsible Data Policy, how can we learn from and support one another, particularly when it comes to guidance and what policy means in practice?
Alloysius Attah will discuss some of Farmerline's success factors, including its locally adapted technological solutions and strong local outreach. Development organizations, governments, and many others have put high hopes in the potential of mobile technology to improve and upgrade agricultural markets and value chains. However, with a few exceptions, traction and scale of mobile applications targeting African farmers have mostly remained elusive. Farmerline is one such exception. In a short time, with support from development partners, we have been able to provide mobile services that improve the livelihoods of over 5,000 rural farmers through communicating timely and relevant agricultural information (weather alerts, best farming practices, financial tips and market prices) through voice and SMS messages directly to their mobile phones. We also support food companies (Hershey, Ecom Trading and Armajaro), governments, mobile network operators and agricultural businesses with services such as farm management, communication, data collection and traceability tools to better manage their partnerships with small-scale farmers and their entire supply chain. This talk will discuss some of Farmerline's success factors, including its locally adapted technological solutions and strong local outreach. Unlike other mobile solutions for agriculture, Farmerline enables two-way communication in every language and works globally.
panel examines online learning through comparing and contrasting the MOOC format with traditional online strategies. In the last few years MOOCs have achieved a great deal of attention in higher education. While addressing the issue of scale, there is much debate over how well they satisfy learning effectiveness, satisfaction, and overall quality. This panel examines online learning through comparing and contrasting the MOOC format with traditional online strategies. The discussion will focus on both quantitative metrics related to learning outcomes and research based, best practices in the literature.
Interview with Tom Steinberg on the topics of his talk "There Ain't No 'e' in PPE - How do we fill the digital skills gap at the top levels of government and politics?"
Interview with Matthew McGregor of Blue State Digital on the topics covered in his seminar "Digital strategy, social media and elections".
Interview with Beth Noveck on receiving an internet and society award at the OII Internet Awards 2014. Beth Noveck discusses the work of NYU's Governance Lab (which she directs), and the role of data in opening up government. She starts by discussing the origins of her interest in open government, democratisation, and political culture. She then discusses how opening up government data can translate into positive outcomes -- in terms of delivery of services, greater transparency, and strategies for collaborative goverment-citizen solutions -- and also how easy/difficult it is in practice to open and promote cultural change in government. She discusses how our notion of citizenship needs to change: we need a more active conception of citizenship, with citizens regarded as cocreators and participants, rather than simply monitors of government. Working in both the academic and policy worlds, Beth closes by emphasising the importance of being academically rigorous and evidence-based, while also engaging with the real world; that is, having an impact on policy and the running of institutions, and doing academic work quickly and well, with "real-world urgency". We should consider not just what we 'can' do with new media to promote a stronger democratic culture, but also what we 'should' be doing.
Interview with Laura Bates on receiving an internet and society award at the OII Internet Awards 2014. Laura Bates discusses the origins of the Everyday Sexism project, its intended audience, and the early difficulties she faced when talking about the problem of the normalisation of sexism and getting people to acknowledge its existence. She discusses the irony that the Internet can be used both as a medium to enable people to join together to promote positive social change, but also to intimidate women (eg through trolling). She discusses what we can do to control trolling and sexual harassment, such as social media companies putting the safety of the user at the centre of their policies; government making sure that people are prosecuted for illegal behaviours such as making death threats (even when it 'only' takes place online); what we can do individually to speak out against unacceptable behaviour; and the important role of education in schools at a young age to combat the normalisation of sexism and violence against women. She finishes by discussing the future of the everyday sexism project; whether the tide is turning (she notes a massive increase in men writing in to say they didn't realise the scale of the problem, and women writing to say they didn't realise they could speak out..), or whether there will be as great a need for the project in ten years' time as now.
Interview with Dame Stephanie Shirley on receiving a lifetime achievement award at the OII Internet Awards 2014. Dame Stephanie Shirley, the OII's founding donor, discusses her early career as founder and Chief Executive of software company, Xansa plc. She discusses organisational and early feminist culture, the role of women in IT / STEM (and how to encourage greater involvement), and entrepreneurship and social consciousness, particularly in relation to her important role as a philanthropist. She closes with thoughts on the future of the Oxford Internet Institute.
Interview with Barry Wellman on receiving a lifetime achievement award at the OII Internet Awards 2014. Barry Wellman discusses his early work on urban sociology and social networks in the city, and describes how this fascination with the evolution of community relationships shaped his scholarship. He offers insights into the concept of 'networked individualism' as it plays out across different spheres of our lives, particularly in networked work, and sets a research agenda for the next stage of his remarkable career.
The value of not knowing something illuminates some basic assumptions about knowledge and allows us to ask a series of interesting questions about how the information society will develop. Our relationship with knowledge is an uneasy one. As we progress the cost of acquiring knowledge seems to be sinking, and the choice of what knowledge to pursue becomes more pronounced. We can imagine a world in which we could find out a whole range of things, at a moderate cost, but will choose not to because we believe that it would be wrong to attempt to know those things. That would be consistent with how knowledge has been viewed over the centuries, and would require us to develop a sense of when it is morally defensible to choose ignorance over knowledge. The value of not knowing something illuminates some basic assumptions about knowledge and allows us to ask a series of interesting questions about how the information society will develop. This talk will examine a number of ways in which this tension can play out.
Tim Wu will discuss the science of attention, the history of the attention industries, and some of the harms caused by overharvesting. He will also propose a model of attention sovereignty of importance for the future. Rich or poor, man, woman or child, each of us has 168 hours per week: it is how we use that time that differentiates us. Yet we seem to live in an era where the daily demands made on our time and attention are greater than ever before. This is due both to advances in information technologies, and also the rise of Internet business models that depend on the sale of human attention. In this talk, Tim Wu will discuss the science of attention, the history of the attention industries, and some of the harms caused by overharvesting. He will also propose a model of attention sovereignty of importance for the future.
This talk aims to provide a philosophical framework through which the current emphasis on data-intensive biology can be studied and understood. Over the last two decades, online databases, digital visualization tools and automated data analysis have become key tools to cope with the increasing scale and diversity of scientifically relevant information that is being accumulated (the so-called ‘big data’). Within the biological and biomedical sciences, digital access to data has revolutionized research methods and ways of doing science, thus also challenging how life is researched and understood. Prominent scientists have characterized this shift as leading to a new, ‘data-intensive’ paradigm for research, encompassing innovative ways to produce, store, disseminate and interpret data. This talk aims to provide a philosophical framework through which the current emphasis on data-intensive biology, and more generally the role played by data in scientific inquiry, can be studied and understood. To achieve this, I focus on what I call data journeys: the ways in which scientific data are disseminated across a multiplicity of contexts in order to function as evidence for knowledge claims. As I will show, the more widely data are disseminated and re-used, the more significant their epistemic role is deemed to be. To be transformed into knowledge, scientific data need to be ordered, labelled and packaged to make them portable – that is, capable of being picked up and transported across different sites. In this talk, I focus on the role of online databases as key sites for data packaging, whose structure and functioning strongly affects how existing data about organisms are transformed into new claims about the biological world. Building on a close study of the material conditions under which data travel, I then put forward three main arguments: (1) portability is a defining characteristic of data as a component of scientific inquiry, which crucially depends on the specific domains through which data are made to move; (2) what counts as data in the first place depends on the procedures and contexts through which researchers attribute evidential value to objects and processes; and (3) the fruitfulness of data-intensive science can thus be understood as resulting from the skilful use of information technologies to articulate and multiply the contexts in which different types of data can be organised and interpreted.
Tim Unwin focuses on current work at the CTO, where his own personal contributions focus especially on the use of ICTs by people with disabilities. Many of those engaged in using information and communication technologies for development in the early 2000s saw them as being an opportunity through which profoundly different social, economic and political structures could be created, that would in some way generate a fairer, more equitable global system. Recent rapid expansion in the use of mobile technologies and social media has convinced a newer generation of researchers and practitioners that this project is still on track. In this seminar, Tim Unwin will draw on his experiences at the boundaries between theory and practice, to explore whether such optimism is indeed justified. Themes that he will (probably) address include notions of empowerment, poverty, political violence, and challenges of implementing effective ‘development’ interventions. The seminar will draw particularly on some of his current work at the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation, where his own personal contributions focus especially on the use of ICTs by people with disabilities as well as on skills development and entrepreneurship, but he will also take a longer term perspective that builds (almost invisibly) on his early work as a medieval historical geographer.
Jon Agar will introduce the concept of working worlds, illustrate how they can be used to think about past and present science, and identify some problems and issues. In a recent historical survey of science in the twentieth century, I devised a concept 'working worlds' which I think helps understand science's relationship with its broader context. Working worlds are arenas of human action that generate problems. The intuition was that science does not operate in a featureless, level environment; rather it responds to an uneven, given landscape of which working worlds are the major features. Our lives, but especially our sciences, have been organised by our orientation towards working worlds. In this seminar I will introduce the concept of working worlds, illustrate how they can be used to think about past and present science, and identify some problems and issues.
Rob Kitchin discusses how cities are being instrumented with digital devices and infrastructure that produce ‘big data’. ‘Smart cities’ is a term that has gained traction in academia, business and government to describe cities that, on the one hand, are increasingly composed of and monitored by pervasive and ubiquitous computing and, on the other, whose economy and governance is being driven by innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship, enacted by smart people. This paper focuses on the former and, drawing on a number of examples, details how cities are being instrumented with digital devices and infrastructure that produce ‘big data’. Such data, smart city advocates argue enables real-time analysis of city life, new modes of urban governance, and provides the raw material for envisioning and enacting more efficient, sustainable, competitive, productive, open and transparent cities. The final section of the paper provides a critical reflection on the implications of big data and smart urbanism, examining five emerging concerns: the politics of big urban data, technocratic governance and city development, corporatisation of city governance and technological lock-ins, buggy, brittle and hackable cities, and the panoptic city.
David Souter uses the history and development of ICT4D as a framework to critique ICT4D approaches and consider the relevance of ICTs and ICT4D to the post-2015 development agenda. The presentation will use the history and development of ICT4D - and its relationships with both development policy and the ICT sector - as a framework to critique ICT4D approaches and consider the relevance of ICTs and ICT4D to the post-2015 development agenda. It will draw, inter alia, on recent work for the World Bank, to assess ICTs in post-conflict reconstruction; for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, to address the relationship between ICTs and sustainability; and for UNCTAD and the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development, to consider the implications of emerging ICT trends for developmental outcomes.
This seminar will investigate how different technologies were used by CDAC Network Members in the immediate response to Typhoon Haiyan, focusing particularly on how needs assessment data was collected, shared and acted upon. This seminar will investigate how different technologies were used by CDAC Network Members in the immediate response to Typhoon Haiyan, focusing particularly on how needs assessment data was collected, shared and acted upon. The session will discuss some of the challenges faced in collecting data following a crisis, and will give examples of how Members are working together to try and overcome these. The CDAC Network is a network of media development organisations, international NGOs, inter-governmental agencies and technology providers, with a vision to improve two-way communication between humanitarian responders and populations affected by disasters. For more information visit www.cdacnetwork.org.
Andrew Przybylski discusses the motivational dynamics of how people approach ICTs, social media and video games.
Rebecca Eynon summarises key areas of her research on learning, education, and the Internet.
Jonathan Bright explores the impact of social media on news consumption. He examines how social media users choose what to share, how this varies by platform, and what the implications may be for the type of news coverage that people receive.
Luciano Floridi presents 'The Onlife Initiative', a project he chaired for the European Commission on how ICTs are modifying our relationships to ourselves, to others, and to the world around us.
Luciano Floridi discusses his new book, 'The Ethics of Information', and outline the nature and scope of Information Ethics. With the help of three metaphors, Professor Floridi outlines the nature and scope of Information Ethics, the new philosophical area of research that investigates the ethical impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on human life and society. In the course of the presentation, he introduces some of the topics he has analysed in his book, 'The Ethics of Information' (OUP 2013), a book in which he has sought to provide the conceptual foundations of Information Ethics.
Dan McQuillan examines the Internet in a post-PRISM world, and asks if its power to tackle global poverty will be lost. This seminar will examine the Internet in a post-PRISM world, and ask if its power to tackle global poverty will be lost. While recognising the danger of nation states breaking up the Internet, I will concentrate on the already existing threat of tracking & big data and the emergence of algorithmic regulation. ICT4D may never have delivered on the promise of development anyway, so I won't mourn its passing but will point instead to the risk of a neocolonial cybernetics running across the Internet and the Internet of Things, and the risk of renewed subjugation through ideas like Smart Slums. Based on my experiences with civic hacking and the crypytoparty movement, I will identify participatory methodologies and critical pedagogy as key to post-digital citizenship and to our ability to disrupt predictive 'states of exception'.
Gregory Asmolov suggests applying the notion of activity systems and zones of proximal development, as conceptualized in Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), to the field of ICT4D. The presentation suggests applying the notion of activity systems and zones of proximal development, as conceptualized in Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), to the field of ICT4D. Relying on the principles and analytical apparatus of CHAT (Vygotsky; Leontiev, 1978; Engeström, 1989) it discusses crowdsourcing platforms and online mapping applications as artifacts that mediate activity systems. Based on case studies from the field of crisis response, the presentation discusses various structures of activity systems that are mediated through information technologies. The talk also seeks to establish association between the structure of activity system and the degree of statehood in particular socio-political environment (Livingston & Walter-Drop, 2013). The presentation relies on a fieldwork conducted in Australia and Russia in 2013.
Richard Heeks explores new post-2015 development agenda and its implications for ICT4D (information and communication technologies for development) research priorities. With the Millennium Development Goals about to reach their sell-by date, the new post-2015 development agenda is currently being formulated. This talk explores that agenda and its implications for ICT4D (information and communication technologies for development) research priorities. The presentation begins with an overview of the post-2015 process and a cross-check that the new agenda is worth attending to. Arguing it will be the single most important shaper of future development priorities, the talk then analyses three aspects of the post-2015 framework compared to that inspired by the MDGs: elements of the agenda that are becoming less important; issues which continue; and new issues and ideas that are on the rise. With two years to go until the post-2015 framework is activated, now is a good time to consider the implications of this comparison for our future research priorities in the sub-discipline of ‘development informatics’, and the extent to which these might – or might not – cohere around a vision of “Development 2.0”.
Discussion of Internet surveillance, parliamentary oversight of security services, the Digital Economy Act, communications data, and government data sharing.
Internet safety has been at or near the top of the political agenda in the UK for half a decade. Do the UK's children have a better internet experience compared with kids elsewhere? Internet safety has been at or near the top of the political agenda in the UK for half a decade. From the Bailey and Byron reports, the formation of UKCCIS, 'active choice', Maria Miller's June call to action to the industry, to the Prime Minister's big summer speech and his November summit – no stone has been left unturned in the drive to protect children from the Internet's dark forces. BT and Facebook have both borne the brunt of politicians' attention and Simon Milner has therefore been in the thick of the political debate throughout this time. Has it all been worth it? Will the UK's children have a better internet experience compared with kids elsewhere?
Every problem we experience will have some intersection with the Internet, and will invite the same solution we’ve gotten in the fights over obscenity and copyright infringement: can’t you just break the Internet a little, so that it fixes my problem? The Internet is the nervous system of the 21st century. Everything we do today involves the Internet and everything we do tomorrow will require it. As a result, every problem we experience will have some intersection with the Internet, and will invite the same solution we’ve gotten in the fights over obscenity and copyright infringement: can’t you just break the Internet a little, so that it fixes my problem? In every case, the cure is worse than the disease, and the bad news is, this is only getting worse. What do we tell the government and the general population when they ask us to solve their (real) problems with our network configuration? As stewards of the Internet, and as citizens of the world, we must demand real solutions, not the security syllogism that goes, "Something must be done! I have done something. Therefore, something has been done."
Visualization is a ubiquitous technology, just like telecommunication. However, unlike a telephone system, humans play an integral part inside the "box" of visualization. This poses a significant challenge in establishing a theory of visualization. Visualization is a ubiquitous technology, just like telecommunication. However, unlike a telephone system, humans play an integral part inside the "box" of visualization. This poses a significant challenge in establishing a theory of visualization. While information theory, which underpins tele- and data communication, has shown to be applicable in many aspects of visualization, it becomes inadequate when we consider various phenomena of perception, cognition, emotion and interaction in visualization. While it is a piece of computer-assisted technology, it cannot distance itself from fundamental questions (e.g., truth, data, information, and knowledge), some of which have been explored by philosophers for thousands of years. We are inspired to address this challenge by building on existing concepts and discoveries in disciplines such as communication, psychology and philosophy.
In recent years, a number of fully global, online labor markets have emerged. In these markets, buyers hire workers from around the world to perform tasks amenable to remote completion, such as computer programming, data entry and graphic design. This tal In recent years, a number of fully global, online labor markets have emerged. In these markets, buyers hire workers from around the world to perform tasks amenable to remote completion, such as computer programming, data entry and graphic design. This talk will describe the important features of one such market, worth over $1 billion to date, explain several large-scale social scientific experiments conducted within that market, and conclude with a discussion on the policy issues raised by online work and online labor markets. One experiment involved introducing e-commerce style recommendations to a labor market, which had surprising effects on non-recommended candidates. Other experiments involved increasing the "cost" of online job applications to increase their signal value, and examining how market participants conceal their preferences for strategic reasons. The policy discussion will address concerns about downward wage pressure, abuse by unscrupulous employers and circumvention of existing labor protections, and consider the potential of online labor markets to contribute to global development via "virtual migration".
Andile Ngcaba discusses the ability to address the challenge of the growth of Internet in Africa from multiple perspectives. Much has been written about the development of communications, and particularly the Internet in Africa. The existing thinking and narrative has attempted to explain the reasons it lags many other regions of the World, and focused on technical and economic inhibitors. Notwithstanding this base of knowledge and literature, Andile Ngcaba would like to tackle this issue from the perspective of a practitioner. In doing so, his focus will be on the ability to address the challenge of the growth of Internet in Africa from multiple perspectives. These perspectives include: Internet Governance; Access to orbital slots and space based electromagnetic frequency spectrum; Investments; Language diversity; and Institutional structures.
Ethan Zuckerman explores contemporary anxieties about "a crisis in civics" and looks at the idea that civics is changing along with digital media to become more participatory and inclusive, but harder to understand and predict. The last decade has seen a shift in media from a world where a small, professional group produces news, opinion and entertainment to one where a much broader set of the population is involved making and sharing media. This shift has had important implications for the news business and for social change, with social media a part of popular protests around the world. The most important shift may be yet to come: a shift in civics, where participation in the public sphere is less about engagement with government institutions and more about individuals and groups using media, markets and code as well as laws to seek change. Ethan Zuckerman's talk will explore contemporary anxieties about "a crisis in civics" and look at the idea that civics is changing along with digital media to become more participatory and inclusive, but harder to understand and predict.
Dr Thompson addresses some of the opportunities and contradictions presented by ICT4D and considers some emerging ways in which ICT4D researchers may contribute to the field. The discipline of ICT4D has never appeared more, or less, relevant. On the one hand, technology has become unprecedentedly pervasive, plastic, mobile, and cheap; increasingly based on open standards, emerging, platform-based architectures beckon towards an empowered era of development hubs, mashups, and commercial and social enterprise that increasingly offer those in emerging economies an independent, 'continuous beta' of thought and activity. On the other, it might be said that such positive developments challenge those working in ICT4D, and even 'development' itself, to engage in a new way with people who are increasingly 'doing it for themselves'. In this talk, Thompson addresses some of the opportunities and contradictions presented by this tension, and considers some emerging ways in which ICT4D researchers may contribute to the field.
In a development context, the ways in which new media objects (eg ICTs) are defined in relation to other objects, people and institutions map out new figurations of power and connection, that revalue and recombine political agency. Drawing on case study material, this paper focuses on ways in which definitions of 'media' and other technical objects act to promote or prevent 'connection'. In a development context, the ways in which new media objects such as ICTs are defined in relation to other objects, people and institutions map out new figurations of power and connection, or new 'technological zones' (Barry), that revalue and recombine political agency. Consideration of the politics of technology needs to be moved away from seeing ICTs as neutral tools to be enabled or as problematic interventions to be contained; rather, we need to be able to make visible and negotiable the possible communicative assemblages that might be produced.
An assessment of the optimism surrounding the opportunities that social media offer for humanitarian action, drawing on analysis of the phenomenally popular and controversial Kony 2012 campaign. In early March 2012 the Kony 2012 viral video took the world by storm. Attracting over 70 million views in less than a week from its release it was equally criticized and admired as an example of the power of social media. In this talk Madianou assesses the optimism surrounding the opportunities that social media offer for humanitarian action. Drawing on the analysis of the phenomenally popular and controversial Kony 2012 campaign she observes that the architectures of social networking sites orientate action at a communitarian level which heightens their post-humanitarian style (Chouliaraki, 2012). However, an emerging new genre of reporting and commenting, which she has termed 'polymedia events' can potentially extend beyond the limitations of SNS communication by opening up the space for reflexivity and dialogical imagination.
A seminar exploring technology and regulation in the Somali territories of the Horn of Africa. This seminar explores technology and regulation in the Somali territories of the Horn of Africa. Despite weak or non-existent government institutions, innovation has flourished with local solutions to local challenges. Money transfer companies have been leading the expansion and investments in ICT development. Mobile banking, inexpensive Internet connection, and dozens of media outlets are an unexpected reality in this war-torn region. The seminar explores how ICTs are regulated and the role of the private sector in ICT development.
Discussion of dominant approaches by intergovernmental agencies to information society policy and the prospects for introducing critical perspectives that acknowledge the power relations which inform information society strategies and actions.
Panellists discuss the opportunities and challenges posed by big data for research and public policy-making at the conference "IPP2012: Big Data: Big Challenges". This is the opening plenary panel of the conference Internet, Politics, Policy 2012: Big Data, Big Challenges? organised by the OII-edited journal Policy and Internet (Oxford, 20-21 September 2012). The panellists discuss the potential and challenges of big data for public policy-making. Big data offers enormous scope for understanding societal behaviour and citizens' willingness - or unwillingness - in terms of civic engagement. It can allow the design of efficient and realistic policy and administrative change. Also, however, it brings ethical challenges, for example when big data is used for probabilistic policy-making, raising issues of justice, equity and privacy. And big data generation and analysis requires expertise and skills which can challenge governmental organizations in particular, given their dubious record on the guardianship of large scale datasets, the management of large technology-based projects, and capacity to innovate.
Nigel Shadbolt discusses the opportunities and challenges posed by big data for research and public policy-making during his opening keynote of the conference "IPP2012: Big Data: Big Challenges".
Duncan Watts discusses the opportunities and challenges posed by big data for research and public policy-making during his opening keynote of the conference "IPP2012: Big Data: Big Challenges".
Patty Kostkova discusses Twitter-based early warning and risk communication of the 2009 swine flu pandemic during a seminar on quantitative methods in social media research held at the OII on 26 September 2012. The need to improve global population monitoring and enhance surveillance of infectious diseases has never been more pressing. Factors such as air travel act as a catalyst in the spread of new and novel viruses. The unprecedented user-generated activity on social networks and online media over the last few years has created real time streams of personal user data which provides an invaluable tool for monitoring and sampling large populations. Epidemic Intelligence relays on the constant monitoring of online media sources for early warning, detection and rapid response; however, the real-time information available in social networks provides a new model of monitoring populations and enhancing the early warning function. The communication of risk in any public health emergencies is a complex task for government and healthcare agencies. This task is made more challenging in the current situation when citizens are confronted with a wide range of online resources, ranging from traditional news outlets to information posted on blogs and social networks. Inevitably, some have greater scientific veracity than others. Twitter is an information source but is also a central hub for the publishing, dissemination, and finding out about online media. In our study, we investigated the role of Twitter during the swine flu pandemics in 2009 from two perspectives. Firstly, we demonstrated the role of the social network to detect an upcoming spike in an epidemic before the official surveillance systems - up to week in the UK and up to 2-3 weeks in the US. Secondly, we illustrated how online resources are propagated through Twitter, and that there is a focus on identifying trusted information sources at the time of the WHO's declaration of the swine flu 'pandemic'. Our findings indicate that Twitter does favour reputable sources but that bogus information can still leak into the network.
Panos Panagiotopoulos discusses use of Twitter in UK local government during a seminar on quantitative methods in social media research held at the OII on 26 September 2012. Panos Panagiotopoulos presents part of a project on UK local government microblogging, a practice which has become a significant element of the public sector social media agenda. Many authorities in the UK have created Twitter accounts in an effort to update the public with frequent, concise and real-time content. The broader study described in the video is based on a study of Twitter accounts maintained by 187 officially listed UK local government authorities. Over 296,000 tweets were collected and analysed in two stages: an examination of the Twitter networks developed by the accounts was followed by a structural analysis of the tweets. The combination of online data collection and social media analytics techniques enabled us to reach important conclusions about the use of Twitter by local authorities. The findings indicate high level of maturity of Twitter in the UK local government and point to several directions for further increasing the impact and visibility of those accounts within a social media strategy. We particularly identified the importance of Twitter as an information sharing and engagement channel during unexpected events such as the 2011 riots and adverse weather conditions.
Luke Sloan discusses space-time as a sampling condition for new social media research during a seminar on quantitative methods in social media research held at the OII on 26 September 2012. This brief talk introduces some of the issues that social scientists will have to contend with when applying traditional terrestrial modes of analysis to social media data. Based on the potential user requirements of the platform being developed at the Cardiff Online Social Media ObServatory (COSMOS), this talk reviews the need to reconceptualise sampling, demographics, geography and the temporal dimension with reference to naturally occurring locomotive data.
Carl Miller discusses development of effective social media research for policy making during a seminar on quantitative methods in social media research held at the OII on 26 September 2012. A team of CASM staff and experts used Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to develop (a) a predictive analytic to predict the outcome of each week's vote on X-Factor based on social media users' conversations online, and (b) a real-time visualization of the audience's reaction to each contestant as they sang. The predictive analytic modelled two underlying variables: voter sentiment and voter sediment. This is based on the psephological insight that people can vote either due to the 'sediment' of a longer-term and established loyalty for a contestant, or on the short-term 'appraisal' of their immediate performance. The sediment score combined a cumulative volume 'positive' comments on Twitter with Facebook likes. The sentiment score combined twitter sentiment (positive over positive + negative) and YouTube likes-per-view. Recursive best-fit analysis was conducted to get the best weightings for these variables. The predictive analytic made 11 predictions. Nine were correct. The engine producing the real-time visualization collected X-factor relevant tweets and sorted them by contestant. They were then classified using a natural language processing engine into positive, negative and neutral categories. Positive was divided by negative and averaged within a two-second time window to produce a candidate score and then mapped onto constantly updating graph. The Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos is a research body dedicated to inform policymaking through social media research. Computer and social scientists at CASM work together to find new methods to do this that are reliable, powerful and ethical.
Denis McQuail's response to Jay G. Blumler's talk on the origins and sources of the appeal of the 'uses and gratifications' paradigm. Is the active audience an article of faith or an empirical question? Empirical and quantifiable measurement of gratifications sought or obtained from consumption of a wide range of media materials proves to have been remarkably easy and productive when undertaken properly. After reviewing the principal conceptual framework of the 'uses and gratifications' paradigm, Jay will provide an overview of the prominent and to some extent recurrent typologies of gratifications sought (or obtained) that have emerged from research in the area. He will also review the social origins of gratifications, and the interplay of gratifications and effects. There has been some lessening of interest in the paradigm from approximately the 1990s, and the talk will end with a discussion of the main criticisms of the approach. Having flourished in a period of classic, limited-channel television, can the uses and gratifications approach be applied in today's very different communications system? If so, how? And what, if any, lessons can we take from its mainstream heyday?
Over 70 percent of companies are using social technologies in some way, however very few come anywhere close to achieving the full potential benefit. In a few short years, social technologies have given social interactions the speed and scale of the Internet. Whether discussing consumer products, or organizing political movements, people around the world are constantly using social media platforms to both seek and share information. Companies are using social technologies to reach consumers in new ways too; by tapping into these conversations, organizations can generate richer insights and create precisely targeted messages and offers. While 72 percent of companies are using social technologies in some way, very few are anywhere near achieving the full potential benefit. In fact, the most powerful applications of social technologies in the global economy are largely untapped. While companies will continue to develop ways to use social technologies to reach consumers and B2B customers to gather insights for product development, marketing and customer service purposes, we find that twice as much value potential lies in using social tools to enhance communications, knowledge sharing, and collaboration within and across enterprises. According to MGI estimates, by fully implementing social technologies, companies have the opportunity to raise productivity of 'interaction workers' (high-skill knowledge workers including managers and professionals) by 20 to 25 percent. By looking into how social technologies are being used today and how they are likely to evolve in the coming years in five sectors of the economy (four commercial sectors and the nonprofit sector) we have identified eight value-creating 'levers' that are used across the value chain, from product development through after-sale customer service. Overall, we estimate that between $900 billion and $1.3 trillion in value can be unlocked through the use of social technologies in the commercial sectors we examined. This level of value creation could have transformative impact across sectors and economies. But capturing this value will be a challenge for enterprises - for organizational and cultural reasons, rather than technical ones. Since 'social' is a feature that can be added to virtually any IT-enabled human interaction, the technical challenge is relatively light. But the organizational challenges are significant. For social technologies to deliver their potential economic benefits, enterprises must be open to information sharing and create cultures of trust and cooperation. They must also deal with significant risks to confidentiality, intellectual property, and reputation. Policy makers are confronted with similar challenges to ensure that personal and property rights are protected in online communities. On balance, we believe that the benefits are so compelling that business leaders, policy makers, and individuals will find ways to meet these challenges.
Victoria Nash, talks to Pete Lomas, Founder and Trustee at Raspberry Pi, recipients of an Internet and Society Award in 2012 from OII, in recognition of their exemplary efforts in using the Internet for the public good in Britain. Raspberry Pi has developed an affordable, approachable pocket-sized computer that is already providing today's children with unparalleled opportunities for learning to program. Digital computing and the Internet, with all the current emphasis on touch-screen visual cues and icons has for many become abstract and remote; with the advent of the Raspberry Pi we now have a credit-card sized computer we can hold in our hands and play with, reminding us of our capacity to tinker with technology, and the inherent mutability of the Internet itself. The concept and prototypes behind the Raspberry Pi were developed between 2006 and 2008 by Eben Upton and colleagues at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, the project triggered by a perceived lack of computing skills amongst university applicants. The resulting device, which costs around £25, went into mass production in 2011 and hundreds of thousands have already been sold. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK registered charity.
The OII's Founding Donor Dame Stephanie Shirley speaks about the sources of her innovation, the software house she founded back in 1962 and why she has already given away £65M to IT and autism projects.
Anatoliy Gruzd, Dalhousie University, gives a talk for the Oxford Internet Institute. As social creatures, our online lives just like our offline lives are intertwined with others within a wide variety of social networks. Each retweet on Twitter, comment on a blog or link to a Youtube video explicitly or implicitly connects one online participant to another and contributes to the formation of various information and social networks. Once discovered, these networks can provide researchers with an effective mechanism for identifying and studying collaborative processes within any online community. However, collecting information about online networks using traditional methods such as surveys can be very time consuming and expensive. The presentation will explore automated ways to discover and analyze various information and social networks from social media data.
Paul Millar, CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive project leader, discusses the role of digital humanities in developing an international resource to preserve the digital record of the earthquakes' impacts and the long-term process of recovery. In the months since a 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit New Zealand's Canterbury province in September 2010, the region has experience over ten thousand aftershocks, 430 above magnitude 4.0. The most devastating aftershock, a 6.2 earthquake under the centre of Christchurch on 22 February 2011, had one of the highest peak ground acceleration rates ever recorded. This event claimed 185 lives, damaged 80% of the central city beyond repair, and forced the abandonment of 6,000 homes. It was the third costliest insurance event in history. In this talk Paul Millar, the CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive project leader, discusses the role of digital humanities in developing an international resource to preserve the digital record of the earthquakes' impacts and the long-term process of recovery. Millar's initial project proposal was predicated on the belief that "when all the empirical data around the earthquakes has been collected and the city's infrastructure restored, the effects will still be felt among families and communities for decades to come, and that these experiences needed to be recorded, preserved and made available for commemoration and scholarship." This view was fully supported by University of Canterbury senior management, who endorsed the CEISMIC project's digital humanities approach by resourcing it at an equivalent level to a number of the university's world-leading geology and engineering earthquake research projects. Since the CEISMIC project began, it has grown and evolved in ways far exceeding the scope of the initial proposal. Millar will suggest that the evolution of the project reflects both the need for humanities scholars to be prepared to play a practical role in recovery following such major events, and the value and validity of digital humanities principles of openness and collaboration.
An increasing amount of social interaction is taking place online: analyzing this data computationally offers enormous potential to address long-standing scientific questions, and to harness and inform the design of future social computing applications. With an increasing amount of social interaction taking place online, we are accumulating large amounts of data about phenomena that were once essentially invisible to us: the collective behaviour and social interactions of hundreds of millions of people. Analyzing this data computationally offers enormous potential to address both long-standing scientific questions, and to harness and inform the design of future social computing applications. In this talk, Jure discusses how the computational perspective can be applied to questions involving the structure of online networks and the dynamics of information that flow through such networks.
Mike Thelwall's Keynote talk from the OII Symposium "Social Science and Digital Research: Interdisciplinary Insights", March 2012. This is a Keynote talk from the Oxford Internet Institute's Symposium "Social Science and Digital Research: Interdisciplinary Insights", held in Oxford on 12 March 2012. The research field of webometrics encompasses various forms of web-based link and text analyses. Webometric studies have included large scale analyses of social network sites and social web sites like Flickr, Twitter and YouTube, as well as areas of the traditional web, such as university websites. Webometrics began in 1997 within the discipline of Library and Information Science (LIS) in response to the recognition that commercial search engines could turn the Web into a large database for certain types of LIS research. In response to technical challenges involving automatically gathering web data, webometrics attracted people with computing backgrounds and became an interdisciplinary field in approximately 2000. Webometrics further evolved in 2003, when it began to incorporate social science research goals outside of LIS. The evolution was cemented in 2008 with the development of information-centred research theory: defining a type of research that had the goal of discovering suitable social science applications for new types of web information (Thelwall, Wouters and Fry, 2008). Since then webometrics has consciously attempted to develop quantitative web research methods and theories to have general application within social science, although continuing to prioritise LIS goals and approaches. This talk evaluates the impact and progress of webometrics: its impact within LIS and the wider social sciences. Although webometrics has been repeatedly singled out for its achievements within LIS, outside of LIS it has been much less successful. The evaluation will centre on evidence for the uptake of the methods generated by practicing webometricians and reasons behind their successes and failures.
Diane H. Sonnenwald's Keynote talk from the OII Symposium "Social Science and Digital Research: Interdisciplinary Insights", March 2012. This is a Keynote talk from the Oxford Internet Institute's Symposium "Social Science and Digital Research: Interdisciplinary Insights", held in Oxford on 12 March 2012. It is increasingly important to understand the potential impact of future technology in complex contexts as early as possible in the research and development (R&D) cycle. Understanding the potential impact, including its interaction with social structures, helps inform funding and research decisions. It identifies technology capabilities that may enhance the technology's adoption and use, and reduce its unintended negative consequences. It also uncovers potential conflicts with current social structures, facilitating the identification of enhancements to social structures and/or practices to derive benefit from the technology. To understand the potential impact of future technology we have been developing a research approach called "visioning studies". The goal of a visioning study is to understand the perspectives of potential users and stakeholders, and from this understanding develop socio-technical design recommendations in collaboration with computer science researchers and relevant stakeholders. We have explored two visioning study approaches: a mixed method approach involving simulation, surveys and interviews; and a semi-structured approach in which a video depicting the technology vision embedded in relevant realistic scenarios is used in conjunction with semi-structured interviews. To date, visioning studies have been conducted regarding 3D telepresence technology in emergency health care and mobile technology in policing.
Christine Borgman's Keynote talk from the OII Symposium "Social Science and Digital Research: Interdisciplinary Insights", March 2012. This is a Keynote talk from the Oxford Internet Institute's Symposium "Social Science and Digital Research: Interdisciplinary Insights", held in Oxford on 12 March 2012. Data sharing has become a core tenet of science policy in the UK, the US, and elsewhere. Among the rationales for sharing data is improving the ability to reproduce or to replicate research. Reproducibility is an oft-stated "gold standard" for science, yet it is a problematic rationale for sharing research data. Sociologists of science have described the difficulties of verifying, let alone reproducing, scientific results, since the 1970s. While most sciences are experiencing a data deluge, the characteristics and practices associated with data vary widely, with different requirements for replication. Reproducibility concerns underlie peer review, identification of fraud, bio-security, and publication practices. The role of data in reproducing science lies at the intersection of e-Science, practice, and policy, and thus is a significant problem to be addressed by digital social research.
Peter van den Besselaar's Keynote talk from the OII Symposium "Social Science and Digital Research: Interdisciplinary Insights", March 2012. This is a Keynote talk from the Oxford Internet Institute's Symposium "Social Science and Digital Research: Interdisciplinary Insights", held in Oxford on 12 March 2012. Peter starts his talk by describing the crisis in the social sciences, for which interdisciplinarity is often seen as the (a) solution. He then moves to the nature of 'interdisciplinarity' as a transitional stage in knowledge development, based on a range of empirical (bibliometric) studies. He shows some of the core characteristics of interdisciplinary research, and investigates how digital social science can be positioned in terms of these characteristics. This leads to a discussion of whether digital social research is an interdisciplinary collaboration niche between social science and computer science, or a solution for the main problems of social research.
Revolutions are currently sweeping the Arab world, from Tunisia to Egypt and Libya to Bahrain. The Internet has been reported as a key factor, but we in fact know little of its role in these revolutions. Revolutions are currently sweeping the Arab world: from Tunisia to Egypt and Libya to Bahrain. After decades of dictatorship, mass mobilisations and strikes are bringing down presidents and redrawing constitutions. These mass revolts are inspirational throughout the world and have swiftly shattered the notion of passivity and complacency that has for long been coined as the 'Arab exception'. But the unfolding events raise many questions, most pressingly: what were the main reasons of this unprecedented turmoil. The role of the Internet has been reported as a key source. The soundbites that resonated during the Iran protests in 2009 - Twitter Revolution - were neatly echoed or replaced with new ones - Facebook Revolution. But despite the stormy debates taking place online and offline, fueled by the massive outpour of journalistic editorials about the impact of the Internet, we in fact know little of the empirical role of the Internet in these revolutions; neither in terms of Internet producers nor Internet consumers. In times of revolution, how can traditional academic frameworks regarding the social and political implications of the Internet help explain the dialectic between technology and social change as well as offering a way forward to the very people on the ground employing these new tools? These and other issues will be discussed by a panel of experts representing an interesting mix of academics and activists.
Professor Steve Woolgar introduces and discusses the main themes of the Visualisation in the Age of Computerisation conference, by reflecting on recent changes in visualisation media and considering some of the implications of these changes for research. This paper introduces and discusses the main themes of the conference "Visualisation in the Age of Computerisation" (Said Business School, 25 March 2011). It reflects on changes in visualisation media in recent years and considers some of the implications of these changes for research. In particular, the paper discusses the 'lure of the visual' - our tendency to experience visual representation as more 'vivid', 'real', 'striking' than other media - and the consequences for our research. In what ways and to what extent can we resist being drawn in by the visual? How can we maintain analytic distance on the visual? What after all is 'cool' about visualisation?
Baroness Greenfield discusses how Information Technology is changing the way humans think and feel. Whilst there are clear benefits, she also highlights the less desirable consequences, and suggests how best to minimise these threats. The human brain is exquisitely sensitive to the environment. The brain is personalised even in clones (identical twins), as different experiences drive the unique configuration of different brain connections. These connections are constantly changed and updated by continuing experiences. Since the 21st Century is offering unprecedented environmental experiences it is possible that the 21st century human mind may be adapting in unprecedented ways. Biotechnology is blurring the distinction between one generation and another, nanotechnology is blurring the distinction of the body with the outside world, whilst Information Technology is perhaps causing the most immediate and diverse changes to how we think and feel. In this talk we shall see how, accordingly the individual of the future may have: higher IQ; shorter attention span; improved short-term memory; a preference for icons rather than ideas; sensory emphasis rather than cognitive; less empathy; be less risk-averse; have less of a sense of identity. Of these, some are desirable (higher IQ), whilst others are obviously not (less empathy). This talk will explore how to harness the benefits and minimise the threats by being alert to the transition from 'meaning' to experiences, being constructive with risk, promoting recognition of individual and above all devising situations to promote creativity.
Monica Whitty discusses her recent work on dating scams, which has focused on attempting to identify a typology of victims, recognizing the techniques used by scammers, and also the psychological impact of the scams themselves. Monica Whitty discusses her recent ESRC funded work on dating scams, aided by SOCA, various online dating agencies, and victim support groups. This work has focused on attempting to identify a typology of victims, as well as to recognize the techniques used by scammers, and the psychological impact of the scams themselves. She tells Bernie Hogan about the extraordinary sums of money fraudulently obtained through these scams, and also highlights the long lasting effects felt by many victims. Because of the intimate nature of these crimes, she discusses strategies for creating more effective forms of awareness, as well as mechanisms for automatically alerting people to the potential for an online interaction being fraudulent.
Joseph Walther describes the hyperpersonal model and its relevance to the study of online dating. 'Idealisation' of perception and presentation online can facilitate the selection process, but may have unforseen consequences when people eventually meet. In conversation with Nicole Ellison, Joseph Walther describes the hyperpersonal model and its relevance to the study of online dating. He explains how the 'idealisation' of both perception and presentation online can facilitate our natural processes of selection, but also suggests that the specific presentational affordances of computer mediated communication may have unforeseen (and likely troublesome) consequences when individuals finally meet.
Erina Lee discusses the importance of similarity between partners in terms of long-term relationship satisfaction. She discusses some compatibility dimensions that have been considered by eHarmony, as well as future directions for research. Erina Lee of eHarmony Labs discusses the importance of similarity between partners in the context of different kinds of online relationship. She explains how similarity is indelibly intertwined with long-term relationship satisfaction, and reveals the surprisingly high levels of cultural variation in the way that similarity can be constructed. She goes on to discuss some of the many dimensions of compatibility that have been considered by eHarmony, before giving her thoughts on future directions for research on matchmaking to the OII's own Bernie Hogan.
Laura Mann summarises her lecture on information technologies and marginalization in African market economies, part of the OII's Society and the Internet Lecture Series. It is often argued that poor and marginalized communities self perpetuate their poverty by inhabiting closed networks. This argument has been most strongly lobbied against those in Africa, where Ethno-linguistic Fragmentation (ELF) has been used to explain "Africa's 'growth tragedy'". However, the rapidly increasing use of the Internet coupled with liberalisation has been seen by many as a way for people to participate in traditionally unreachable social and economic networks. Using the case study of the graduate Sudanese labour market, this talk problematizes the link between technologically mediated weak ties and embeddedness in African economic networks. It contends that tribalism is not an exogenous variable that impinges on the performance of markets but is instead partly an outcome of the failure of liberalisation to produce markets. In the context of the drastic expansion of tertiary education and the politically motivated program of liberalisation carried out by the NCP, the graduate labour market has developed stronger ties in both formal and informal sectors of the economy. 'Wasta' (the Arabic word for intermediation) is strengthening amidst liberalisation, while minorities are being shut out. In such a context, the Internet and other ICTs are not the levellers that many expect them to be. Whilst codified information on the Internet is in theory accessible to all, it remains that a range of barriers including access, technological proficiency and literacy, class, tribe and gender all play a role in restricting access to information for the traditionally marginalized. While the Internet allows for information to be more widely shared, it can also provide mechanisms for information to be kept more secret and for access to be restricted. Internet initiatives focused on development need to deal with this larger range of issues if they are to succeed.
Grant Blank summarises his lecture on how a new pattern of Internet access is developing through the use of a growing variety of devices than enable increasing mobility: these people are "Next Generation Internet Users". Survey research on Internet use in Britain has highlighted two dramatic and interrelated shifts in how users are accessing the Internet. From our early study of Internet use in 2003, the primary pattern of Internet access was based on the use of a personal computer in one's household, and at times complemented by similar access at the workplace, linked to the Internet through a modem or broadband connection. The major change in access since 2003 was around the speed of connections, with the major trend being the uptake of broadband Internet until 2009, by when nearly all Internet users used a broadband connection. This dominant pattern of Internet access characterizes the 'first generation user' in Britain. In contrast to this first generation of Internet users, there is a new pattern of Internet access developing through the use of a growing variety of devices than enable increasing mobility. Laptops, smart phones, tablet computers, and readers are providing a multitude of entry points that most often complement but occasionally replace the centrality of the household personal computer. We call those who link to the Internet in this increasingly mobile style as the 'next generation users' (NGUs). Who are the next generation users, the more tethered users, and non-users? Additionally, socioeconomic divides and the choices of many individuals not to use the Internet are socially distributed in ways that reignite issues over digital divides in society.
Yorick Wilks explores the state of the art in modelling realistic conversation with computers over the last 40 years, and asks what we would want in a conversational agent (or 'Companion') designed for a long-term relationship with a user. This lecture begins by looking at the state of the art in modelling realistic conversation with computers over the last 40 years. Yorick Wilks argues that there has been real progress, even though some systems of the late 1960s were remarkably good, a fact largely forgotten now. Yorick then moves on to ask what we would want in a conversational agent that was designed for a long-term relationship with a user, rather than the carrying out of a single brief task, like buying a railway ticket. Such agents he calls 'companionable' and he distinguishes several functions for such agents, but the feature they share will be that, in some definable sense, an artificial Companion should know a great deal about its owner - derived both from conversation and from the internet itself - and can use that information. For this lecture, it is not important what form, robotic or otherwise, a Companion has and Yorick doesn't focus on developments in speech understanding and generation but just assumes the state of the art. The focus is, first, on the technical issues of what such a Companion should know and how it can gain and use such knowledge though the understanding of conversations and searching the internet; and, secondly, on what the social implications of such Companions will be: will we trust them, will a Government or their manufacturer demand access to what they know about us, will they talk to each other about us, and what will happen to their unique knowledge of us when we die?
This talk discusses research being undertaken at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago and its consequences for future forms of computer-mediated communication and for the Internet. On 29 October 1969, Leonard Kleinrock's research team at UCLA transmitted a message from a computer to another one located at Douglas Engelbart's Stanford University research lab. That transmission was the first to send a message via ARPANET using packets, just like messages are sent via today's Internet. This presentation uses the occasion of the Internet's fortieth birthday to discuss research being undertaken at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago and its consequences for future forms of computer-mediated communication and for the Internet.
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger looks at the important role that forgetting has played throughout human history, the surprising phenomenon of perfect remembering in the digital age, and why we must reintroduce our capacity to forget. Professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger discusses the themes of his new book 'Delete' with Helen Margetts, Professor of Society and the Internet at the Oxford Internet Institute. 'Delete' looks at the surprising phenomenon of perfect remembering in the digital age, and reveals why we must reintroduce our capacity to forget. Digital technology empowers us to find and share information as never before, but we do not always foresee the consequences of these new powers. Potentially humiliating content on Facebook is enshrined in cyberspace for future employers to see. Google remembers everything we've searched for and when. The digital realm remembers what is sometimes better forgotten, and this has profound implications for us all. In conversation, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Helen Margetts will look at the important role that forgetting has played throughout human history, from the ability to make sound decisions unencumbered by the past to the possibility of second chances. The written word made it possible for humans to remember across generations and time, yet now digital technology and global networks are overriding our natural ability to forget - the past is ever present, ready to be called up at the click of a mouse. Can the dangers of everlasting digital memory, whether it's outdated information taken out of context or compromising photos the Web won't let us forget, be avoided? Things touched upon included: the Panopticon, self-censorship, social networking sites and employers, memory and time, 'the curse of perfect episodic memory', decision making in the present, cognitive psychology, forgetting and forgiving, memory and mood, organisational change, compartmentalisation of data storage (and making connections across silos), creating a comprehensive image from disparate data, information context, anonymisation, 'solving the problem', information privacy rights and law, information ecology post-9/11, the age of information retention, digital abstinence, Web 2.0, cognitive adjustment (can we share conditionally?), and ... reviving forgetting.
For charitable organizations and initiatives, the Internet provides the opportunity to reach more people in more direct and personal ways. Are they grasping this opportunity? Following on the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010, generous individuals around the world used their mobile phones to make more than $40 million in gifts to aid organisations. More than $1 billion in gifts came in the next four weeks, a large percentage of which was donated online. But the real stories of how digital technologies are changing philanthropy are not measured in funds given. The real changes have to do with the types of enterprises now producing social goods, the expectations of transparency and accountability, and the growing marketization of philanthropic funding. The most important changes can be seen in the role that data - and the technologies we use to store, sort, sift, and share these data - are playing as the new platforms for change. By their very nature, data require a different economics framework for philanthropy, one that shifts from scarcity to abundance. The growing role of data also means that global networks, volunteer labour, and new constructs of ownership matter more to philanthropy than ever before. The nature of the digital world not only changes the practices of our existing philanthropy organisations it also requires a reconsideration of relevant policy domains. While philanthropy is only just beginning to feel the reverberations of the digital changes so familiar to publishing, music recording, and other industries, we can still expect the impact to be significant.
The Web 2.0 world is commonplace but the promise of massive scale human computing has barely been exploited. This seminar explores the potential, challenges, and promises for next-generation technologies that can empower humanity to address key problems. Although the read / write world of Web 2.0 is now commonplace - even your parents use Facebook - the promise of massive scale human computing has barely begun to be exploited. New technologies, including the Semantic Web, mobile computing, and open data suggest ways that far more powerful systems than those we have today could be created, empowering humanity to help address some of our key problems. The potential for the sharing of data and knowledge, among willing participants, makes it possible to envision declarative models for creating and evolving new Web technologies that would more open and distributed systems. Further, by explicating the social, not just the technical, protocols, new models of information control that encourage, rather than prohibit, sharing can be explored. In this talk we explore the potential for next-generation social machines, explore some of the challenges, and look at promising technologies for the future.
This forum looks at the state of the art of academic research on relationships and the Internet and how this research informs research on the social aspects of the Internet in general, such as issues of trust and identity. Research on the role of the Internet in meeting new people is an increasingly vital area of inquiry, and is illustrated by a burgeoning literature on such topics as online dating. However, the Internet may shape many other aspects of relationships beyond introducing individuals, such as in undermining or maintaining ongoing relationships, from courtship to marriage. This forum will look at the state of the art of academic research on relationships and the Internet and how this research informs research on the social aspects of the Internet in general, such as issues of trust and identity. Cross-national and cross-cultural aspects will be addressed in ways that can illuminate general cross-cultural trends and responses shaping use of the Internet in building and maintaining relationships. The forum will draw out the connections between this research and such emerging issues of policy and practice as involved in efforts to foster a digital economy in Europe. The forum will bring together researchers in the fields of online dating, social networking, and the role of information and communication technologies in interpersonal relationships with practitioners from a growing and international relationship industry and policy-makers concerned with consumer protection and media literacy in a digital age.
A discussion of how largely well-intentioned political and legal reactions to the highest-profile risks of ICT creates a danger of perhaps killing the goose that is giving us golden eggs of innovation, decentralization, and personal empowerment. From its inception, many have recognized the Internet's potential as a liberating, decentralizing, and, yes, destabilizing technology but also its counter-potential as a controlling and centralizing technology. Over the last two decades, predictions about the social effects of the Internet have ranged from cybernetic anarchy (both utopian and distopian) to the instantiation of a fascistic regime of surveillance that would make Orwell look like a piker. Some see a winner-take-all economy of massive new monopolies emerging on the back of network effects, others see the growth of a new economy in which intermediaries are replaced by huge open networks of buyers and sellers trading with e-cash on anonymous electronic exchanges - and evading their taxes. Meanwhile enthusiasts of electronic democracy and popular empowerment offer a vision sharply at odds with that of Cassandras of globalization for whom the Internet provides yet another occasion for decision-making authority to seep away towards relatively undemocratic trans-national bodies. One would think that such contrasting predictions could not possibly all be correct. Yet, for the last decade, to a surprising extent both sets of trends have manifested themselves simultaneously. The question is whether those two trends can continue, or if instead we are witnessing the start of a collision between them. At present, 'the Internet' is neither 'fraud's playground' nor democracy's. (Indeed, there is more than one 'Internet'.) Rather, different groups of people doing different things with different objectives have moved down independent paths. Now, however, these trends find themselves meeting at a crossroads: Largely well-intentioned political and legal reactions to the highest-profile risks of communications technology create a danger of at least wounding and perhaps in some areas even killing the goose that is giving us golden eggs of innovation, decentralization, and personal empowerment. Advances in medical records technology might give patients greater control over their treatment, but could also further disempower them, and (in the US at least) seem even more likely to become another target for data mining and marketing. E-government holds out the promise of more involved and better informed citizens. The same technologies may, however, also empower nosey neighbors, or the nanny state's evil sibling Big Sister, who knows what is best for you and has honed predictive profiling to the point where many find their liberty practically encumbered without being formally curtailed. Most immediately, technologies, practices, and technical standards that may appear benign in a democracy - may in truth be benign in a democracy - may take on a more sinister cast when adopted in more repressive regimes faced with indigenous pressure for reform. For example, the world witnessed via YouTube as Iranian demonstrators marched to protest the theft of an election. The communicative freedom making the sending of those images possible is a fragile thing, and could fall before the creation of standards and practices intended to foil digital piracy half a world away.
Discussion of media buying and the attention-creation industry - showing how the fixation on audiences' click-like behaviour is a disruptive institutional force, and how buyers' new approaches to attention are creating new forms of social discrimination. A huge part of the media business is about getting people's attention and proving it to advertisers. The goal is to present people with interesting stuff-articles, videos, music - so they will see commercial messages that ride along, and sometimes in, the material. At the start of the 21st century's second decade a new attention-creation industry struggles to be born out of the legacies of 20th century ad norms, the initiatives of powerful corporations, and dreams of target-marketing startups. Media buying has become the hub of the huge venture. Virtually ignored by academics, media buying involves purchasing space or time for advertising on outlets as diverse as billboards and radio, websites, mobile phones and newspapers. For decades, the activity was a backwater, a service part of advertising agencies that hired female liberal arts majors just out of college for the lowest-paying jobs on Madison Avenue. That has changed. During the past twenty years, media-buying firms and a wide array of satellite firms that feed them technology and data have become lucrative magnets for software engineers and financial statisticians of both sexes. What they are creating is nothing less than new ways of thinking about, and trading, audiences. The traditional way involved reaching out to the types of people who according to survey research tend to visit particular media locations-specific newspapers, particular magazines, one or another website. The new way draws as detailed a picture as possible of particular individuals based in large part on measurable physical acts they perform such as clicks, swipes, and mouseovers. The aim is to infer profiles from those measureable acts and other data and then engage the attention of the most commercially attractive individuals with persuasive strategies in whatever places and ways can prove the best return on investment. Based on research in progress, this talk will discuss media buying in the context of a longstanding (and recently energized) debate within media studies about the relative importance of human agency and institutional power in confronting 'the text.' It will then sketch key ramifications of the restructured attention-buying industry. It will show how the fixation on audiences' click-like behavior is a disruptive institutional force with cascading influences. A central argument is that media buyers' new approaches to attention are creating new forms of social discrimination in the public sphere.
A discussion of net neutrality regulation in the context of a two-sided market model. Platforms sell Internet access services to consumers and may set fees to content - and application providers on the Internet. When access is monopolized, for reasonable parameter ranges, net neutrality regulation (requiring zero fees to content providers) increases the total industry surplus as compared to the fully private optimum at which the monopoly platform imposes positive fees on content providers. However, there are also parameter ranges for which total industry surplus is reduced. Imposing net neutrality in duopoly with multi-homing content providers and single-homing consumers increases the total surplus as compared to duopoly competition with positive fees to content providers.
Examining technical, legal and cultural strategies by the recording industry to persuade people that file-sharing is impossible, immoral, un-cool or dangerous, and the failure of these strategies. Alternative business models are discussed. The period from the advent of the compact disc in 1982 to the first significant file-sharing system in 1999 saw the greatest period of profitability in the history of recorded music. The decade since 1999 has seen an equally radical collapse. What seems obvious in hindsight was largely ignored at the time. The very efficiency of digital reproduction and distribution promised or threatened to eliminate scarcity, and hence threaten the possibility of market exchange in informational goods. Markets require regulation and a market in informational goods requires the suspension of the free circulation of information. This has been attempted by technical means (surveillance and encryption); legal means (in prosecutions for copyright infringement); and by cultural means (the attempt to persuade people that file-sharing is impossible, immoral, un-cool or dangerous). These interlinked strategies have failed. This talk will examine these technical, legal and cultural strategies and their failure. In the context of such failure it is worthwhile looking at alternative business models. Where free culture is a way of life, it can also be shown to be a more effective condition for making a living, at least for performing artists, if not for today's major record labels. The five traditional 'functions' of the established recording industry (production, manufacture, promotion, distribution and rights management) are no longer best performed through the centralized model of the major label. Whilst once at the cutting edge of what Castells called the capitalist perestroika of an emergent network society; today's informational monopolies (of which record companies are just one example), hierarchical and bureaucratic to their core, appear more like late-Soviet monoliths when set against a digital multitude that innovates and circulates past, through and beyond them.
Robert Hahn discusses his recent paper responding to the US Federal Communications Commission's request for guidance in designing a national US broadband plan. Robert Hahn discusses his recent paper responding to the US Federal Communications Commission's request for guidance in designing a national broadband plan. William Dutton responds from a comparative perspective with a response to the Digital Britain Report. The paper responds to the US Federal Communications Commission's request for guidance in designing a national broadband plan. It argues that the US market for Internet services is working well overall, as evidenced by nearly ubiquitous coverage, rapid adoption, large investments, and increasing speeds. Still, the market is not working well for all people in all places, and the paper offers a framework for considering policies intended to mitigate those issues. The core of the paper consists of nine recommendations. Two of our recommendations are general. First, the government should ensure that its interventions do more good than harm. Second, the government should define clear, measurable, goals that do not benefit particular firms, technologies, or regions. The remaining seven recommendations provide specific guidance for a US broadband plan. They include: liberalizing spectrum, gathering and analyzing data on broadband demand, targeting resources to where they are most needed, defining broadband access to maximize social gain, designing mechanisms that will achieve the government's broadband goals at the lowest social cost, vigorous antitrust enforcement, and designing policies to facilitate rigorous evaluation.
What are the most important milestones in the evolution of social media? What factors have shaped their successes and limitations? Although the dates of the earliest 'weblog' are a matter of some debate, the majority of their growth in popularity has arisen over the past ten years. What are the most important milestones in that process of evolution, and what are the factors that have shaped the successes and limitations of social media? Why (if at all) should we expect them to have an inherently democratising or egalitarian effect? Each speaker concludes by identifying the most significant ways in which they think that blogs and social media have had any social, political or economic impact.
Duncan Watts discusses how the Internet is beginning to lift a long-time constraint of social science research on emergent collective behaviour: the difficulty of measuring interactions between people, at scale, over time, while also observing behaviour. Social science is often concerned with the emergence of collective behavior out of the interactions of large numbers of individuals; but in this regard it has long suffered from a severe measurement problem - namely that interactions between people are hard to measure, especially at scale, over time, and at the same time as observing behavior. In this talk, Duncan will argue that the technological revolution of the Internet is beginning to lift this constraint. To illustrate, he will describe four examples of research that would have been extremely difficult, or even impossible, to perform just a decade ago: using email exchange to track social networks evolving in time; using a web-based experiment to study the collective consequences of social influence on decision making; using a social networking site to study the difference between perceived and actual homogeneity of attitudes among friends; using Amazon's Mechanical Turk to study the incentives underlying 'crowd sourcing'. Although internet-based research still faces serious methodological and procedural obstacles, Duncan proposes that the ability to study truly 'social' dynamics at individual-level resolution will have dramatic consequences for social science.
Manuel Castells draws on arguments from his book Communication Power in discussing the structural causes and implications of the 2008 economic crisis, and in claiming that we are moving, without much understanding, towards a new form of global capitalism. The global crisis of capitalism that exploded in the Fall of 2008 is the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is rooted in the volatility of interdependent global financial markets resulting from deregulation, liberalization, and use of new communication and financial technologies. It has brought to a halt the period of growth largely based on consumer demand facilitated by easy credit. It has exposed the massive endebtedness of the leading capitalist governments, and highlighted the shift of economic power towards the Asian Pacific. The most immediate result of the crisis is the return of state intervention in the management of the economy, as the ideological belief in the capacity of financial markets for self-regulation has been shattered by the financial collapse. A new round of regulation is in the making but faces the difficult task of regulating global markets in the absence of a global regulator. In the Fall of 2009, the slowing of economic deterioration in the West and the continuation of Asian growth appear to alleviate the fears of a global depression. However, much of the current stabilization is due to unprecedented injection of public spending in the financial markets and in the economy at large, both in the West and in the East. The structural causes of the crisis are not being treated. It appears that we are moving, without much understanding, towards a new form of global capitalism in which the Washington consensus is being replaced by the London consensus.
What do companies expect to gain from maintaining an online 'social media' presence? What are the implications of these trends for the development of traditional public relations strategies and business journalism? Blogs, Twitter feeds and even Facebook pages are increasingly featuring in the arsenal of public relations strategies employed by large corporations and public institutions. This is not an idle choice: corporate blogs at both Google and Apple have at times been the locus of intense media attention at times when new products have been announced or controversial decisions defended. Yet the use of such modes of communication raise peculiar challenges for companies willing to embrace new media, relating to the tensions between maintaining central control of information flows and the desire to react quickly when criticism arises in online networks or discussion groups. What do companies expect to gain from maintaining this sort of online presence and what are the implications of these trends for both the development of traditional PR strategy and business journalism?
If social media are the defining advance of Web 2.0, whereby the network-as-platform enabled users not just to download content but to create it, tag it and share it ... what will the next decade hold? Will we continue to Tweet? If social media are the defining advance of Web 2.0, whereby the network-as-platform enabled users not just to download content but to create it, tag it and share it, what will the next decade hold? Many of the social media businesses whose tools we rely on have yet to make a profit, whilst concerns about privacy, security and possibly even dignity suggest that our online habits may have to change. The technology press has for some time been heralding the oncoming arrival of Web 3.0, as an era where the web gets 'smart', and research on the developing semantic web suggests that this is no idle prediction. But what will happen to social media in the interim? Will the next ten years see our fascination with blogging, wikis and social networks replaced by a re-focusing on the enhanced informational capacity of the Web or will we continue to Tweet?
What lies around the corner for the Internet .. and how do we avoid it? How can we study and affect the future of the Internet using the distributed power of the network itself? This is Jonathan Zittrain's inaugural lecture at the University of Oxford. This inaugural lecture by Professor Jonathan Zittrain proposes a theory about what lies around the corner for the Internet, how to avoid it, and how to study and affect the future of the internet using the distributed power of the network itself, using privacy as a signal example. Jonathan Zittrain holds the Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University and is also the Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Visiting Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. His research interests include battles for control of digital property and content, cryptography, electronic privacy, the roles of intermediaries within Internet architecture, and the useful and unobtrusive deployment of technology in education.
Among the traditional media, blogs and other contributions to citizen journalism have for a long time been regarded as posing a significant threat to 'quality' news reporting ... is this a valid view? What (if anything) can social media offer? Among the traditional media, blogs and other contributions to citizen journalism have for a long time been regarded as posing a significant threat to 'quality' news reporting, whilst the global recession has shown that the threatened failure of high quality local and regional media outlets was not a groundless fear. Whilst some of the most successful social media sites are professional media productions such as CNN's Twitter news feed and the Huffington Post, many critics of social media now fear that the collapse of traditional business models will see a real decline in the depth and quality of news reporting, particularly at the local level. On the other hand, blogs and social media are seen as potentially democratising the production of news, enabling fast, first-hand reporting often in areas where traditional media face political restrictions. This panel session considers whether social media necessarily threaten traditional news media, and what, if anything they may have to offer in return. This is part of a series of recordings from the OII's Oxford Social Media Convention, held at the University of Oxford on 18 September 2009.
Are social media tools likely to prove effective in engaging any voters except those who are already interested in politics? Is their apparent 'democratisation' of traditional party structures to be believed? The outcome of political careers and even campaigns is increasingly dependent on the successful mastery of new communication tools including social media. Many MPs and members of Congress are embracing the use of social networking tools to keep in touch with their constituents, whilst Facebook, YouTube and even Twitter have potentially changed the nature of election campaigns in reaching out directly to grass-roots supporters, with the recent US presidential campaign also showing how effective these tools might be in raising funds. At the same time, it is not clear whether these tools are likely to prove effective in engaging any voters except those who are already interested in politics, or whether their apparent 'democratisation' of traditional party structures is to be believed. This is part of a series of recordings from the OII's Oxford Social Media Convention, held at the University of Oxford on 18 September 2009.
Can Web 2.0 tools (eg blogs, social networking and wikis) enhance our democratic freedoms? Or can we dismiss the socially egalitarian and politically democratic potential of these social media? Have any significant social impacts been ignored so far? Theorists such as Yochai Benkler have suggested that the accessibility and inherently social nature of Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, social networking and wikis mean that we might expect them to enhance our democratic freedoms through the opening of new channels for debate and collaboration. Academic research suggests that such new opportunities have not been equally taken up, and that in many areas, new social media are simply being used by old 'elites'. At the same time, blogs and social media are having significant effect in enhancing accountability and transparency, particularly in repressive regimes like Burma and China. This session asks whether we should be so quick to dismiss the socially egalitarian and politically democratic potential of social media or whether there might equally be more mundane but significant social impacts which have so far been ignored. This is part of a series of recordings from the OII's Oxford Social Media Convention, held at the University of Oxford on 18 September 2009.
How have social media changed the nature of the scientific debate among scientists? Are they challenging the supremacy of editors, reviewers and science communicators? How have they impacted on engagement with the public understanding of science? Journals and peer-reviewed publications are still the most widely used channels through which research is disseminated within the scientific community and to a broader audience. However, social media are increasingly challenging the supremacy of editors, reviewers and science communicators. Blogging about science has become a new way of engaging 'the public' directly with researchers whilst researchers are increasingly using blogs within their own academic communities for peer-review purposes. Panellists give their perspective on how social media have changed the nature of the scientific debate among scientists, and how they have impacted on engagement with the public understanding of science. This is part of a series of recordings from the OII's Oxford Social Media Convention, held at the University of Oxford on 18 September 2009.
Marcus Foth overviews various urban informatics projects, exploring the communicative ecology of urban residents, community engagement using public history and digital storytelling, and social navigation for mobile urban information systems. Cities are exciting. Cities are buzzing. They are alive with movement. A rapid flow of exchange is facilitated by a meshwork of infrastructure connections: road systems, building complexes, information and communication technology and people networks. In this environment, the Internet has advanced to become the prime communication medium that connects many threads across the fabric of urban life. The increasing ubiquity of Internet services and applications has led many scholars to question the dichotomy between cyberspace and real space. New media and information and communication technology afford an increasingly seamless transition between mediated and unmediated forms of interaction. Driven by curiosity, initiative and interdisciplinary exchange, 'urban informatics' is an emerging cluster of people interested in research and development at the intersection of people, place and technology with a focus on cities, locative media and mobile technology.
By investigating price and capacity trends over the past century, Eli Noam shows that it is possible to predict the type, style, and genres of media content of a future ultra-broadband infrastructure, which allows a richer, more bit-intensive content. The nature of content is critical for the economic viability of an ultra-broadband infrastructure. This paper asks what types of media content we will have when we achieve widespread fiber optic networks. In the past, an expansion of transmission capacity led to a 'widening' of the TV medium. But the impact of ultrabroadband will be a 'deepening' of the content to a richer, more bit-intensive content. The paper investigates, for 25 media, the price and capacity trends over the past century. It creates a model which shows the relationship of media prices per second over time, and the declining transmission cost per second and per GB. We find that the price people have been willing to pay for media entertainment per time unit has been fairly steady over a century, adjusted for inflation, at about 4.4 cents per minute. The price of distribution of content has been dropping at a compound rate of 8%. This enables us to identify the trend of bits per second delivered - the 'richness' - of the media over time. It grows at about 8% per annum. Projecting this rate permits us to predict the type, style, and genres of media content of the near future. It also enables us to determine the time when media will become visually richer than 3-D real life in terms of sensory experience.
JP Singh discusses the role played by diplomacy and negotiations in economic globalization, exploring possibilities for transformational problem-solving through multilateral diplomacy, allowing an adjustment of positions so that mutual gains will result. JP Singh discusses aspects of his book 'Negotiation and the Global Information Economy'. What role do diplomacy and negotiations play in economic globalization? Many argue that great powers shape diplomacy to their advantage, others that, in a 'flat world', diplomacy helps everyone. Going beyond these polarized views, this book explores the conditions under which negotiations matter and the ways in which diplomacy is evolving in the global commercial arena. JP Singh argues that where there is a diffusion or decentralization of power among global actors, diplomacy can be effective in allowing the adjustment of positions so that mutual gains will result. In contrast, when there is a concentration of power, outcomes tend to benefit the strong. There will be little alteration in perception of interest, and coercion by strong powers is common. Singh's book suggests that there are possibilities for transformational problem-solving through multilateral diplomacy. Empirically, the book examines the most important information-age trade issues.
Roger Brownsword argues that the legal community should be concerned to contribute to debates about the implications and regulation of rapidly developing and converging technologies (eg ICTs, biotech / nanotech). Roger Brownsword argues that the emergence of a raft of rapidly developing technologies (ICTs, biotechnologies, nanotechnologies and neurotechnologies), together with the prospect of significant convergence between some or all of these technologies, should be of major concern to the legal community. One set of questions focuses on the regulatory environment in which these technologies first emerge before developing and moving on. What contribution can lawyers make to ensuring that the regulatory environment is fit for purpose? In particular, how well does law perform in controlling for the risks presented by these technologies; and how well does it perform in supporting the research, development, and distribution of these technologies? A second set of questions relates to the use by regulators of various kinds of technological fix, including fixing opportunities presented by developments in these emerging technologies. In addition to checking that technological fixes are legitimate and effective, what should the legal community make of the possibility that technology might displace law as an instrument of social control? In short, lawyers should be concerned to contribute to debates about getting the regulatory environment right for emerging technologies, but they should also be concerned about the implications of technology and design replacing law as a channelling mechanism. This lecture is part of a series organised in collaboration with the Society for Computers and Law (SCL) to provide a platform for leading international scholars to address emerging legal issues concerning the Internet: its use, governance and regulation.
Michael Cusumano focuses on how both the enterprise and consumer software businesses have been changing over the past decade, building on observations made in his 2004 book, The Business of Software. This talk focuses on how both the enterprise and consumer software businesses have been changing over the past decade and builds on observations made in Professor Cusumano's 2004 book, The Business of Software. As documented in new research, a major change is the shift among software products-companies to a services and maintenance business. Another change is the increasing importance of non-traditional business models, where software products (or functionality once sold as products) is now offered as a service or as free to the end user and paid for indirectly through advertising or other revenue sources. Part of the reason for this shift is the ageing of software companies and the saturation and commoditization of many product markets. Another factor is the platform shift to the internet and web technologies, which has increased demand for services or allowed the appearance of new business models. Professor Cusumano recommends that product or technology companies develop a hybrid business strategy and focus on 'productizing services' as well as 'servitizing products'. He also predicts a serious future battle between IT services businesses and software product companies as they fight for service revenues, and recommends that IT services companies place a new emphasis on services R and D and innovation. The basis for these observations comes from a multi-year study through which we have compiled 10 or more years of annual financial data on publicly listed global software product firms (approximately 400) and IT services and computer hardware and telecommunications firms (approximately 500).
How do we build trustworthy hardware, and how can we use that to increase the trustworthiness of broader distributed computation? Sean presents some things he's learned, some things he wishes he had done differently, and some things he'd still like to do. How do we build trustworthy hardware, and how can we use that to increase the trustworthiness of broader distributed computation? These questions have followed Sean through a variety of venues in his career so far: academia, government, start-up, large industry, and academia again. In this talk, Sean presents some things he's learned, some things he wishes he had done differently, and some things he'd still like to do. Professor Sean Smith has been working in information security - attacks and defenses, for industry and government - since before there was a Web. His current work, as PI of the Dartmouth PKI Lab, investigates how to build trustworthy systems in the real world. This talk is a Keynote from the TRUST 2009 Conference (University of Oxford, April 2009) which focused on trusted and trustworthy computing, both from technical and social perspectives.
Eugene provokes us to question some assumptions related to computer architecture, the definitions of security, and how best to build trusted systems. Are current methods of defining security appropriate? How might we better design a system to be secured? A great deal of the trust we think we can place (or not) in our computing systems is based on experience with the ones we commonly use. However, those computing systems continue to be victimized by a variety of failures and attacks. Perhaps some of the 'common knowledge' on which we base our designs is itself faulty? Perhaps we are employing concepts that should be re-examined? In this talk, Eugene provokes the audience to question some assumptions related to computer architecture, the definitions of security, and how best to build trusted systems. In particular, we should question if the current methods of defining security are appropriate, how we might better design a system to be secured, and whether we understand the appropriate tradeoffs when paying for heightened trust. Professor Eugene H. Spafford is one of the most senior and recognized leaders in the field of computing. He has an on-going record of accomplishment as a senior advisor and consultant on issues of security and intelligence, education, cybercrime and computing policy to a number of major companies, law enforcement organizations, academic and government agencies. This talk is a Keynote from the TRUST 2009 Conference (University of Oxford, April 2009) which focused on trusted and trustworthy computing, both from technical and social perspectives.
Using three years of daily Web traffic data, and new models adapted from financial mathematics, this talk examines large-scale variation in Web traffic. Using new models adapted from financial mathematics, Dr Hindman examines large-scale variation in Web traffic and finds that web audience distribution is actually extremely stable. He discusses the implications for the openness of the online public sphere.
Veronica Sartore interviews Dr Bernie Hogan about his research on the social networking site Facebook, differences between online and offline relationships, how personal boundaries are regulated and the strength of weak ties.
The Internet and web are creating a new space for networking people, information and other resources: this has the potential to become an important 'fifth estate' to support greater accountability in politics, the media and other institutional arenas.