Internet Technologies

Gothenburg.
The first speaker in the next session at AoIR 2010 is Andra Siibak, whose interest is in the online practices of Estonian youths. The latest generation of users is often described as having a set of particular characteristics (independence, innovation, creativity, authority, control), but to what extent is this actually true? In Estonia, there certainly is a digital generation – 99.9% of 11-18-year-olds are using the Internet, many of them daily, but what are their characteristics, and how do they see themselves?

This study examined school essays by 16- and 17-year-olds on the topic of the digital generation, as …

Gothenburg.
The final speaker in this session at AoIR 2010 is Zizi Papacharissi, whose interest is in civic habits emerging around online media. She begins by noting the mythology of the new, which suggests that newer media can revive old democracy, the idea that technology can reconfigure public space, and the continuing public/private debate.

Contemporary democracies are characterised by a nostalgia for older forms of civic engagement, by a realisation of the limitations of representative models of democracy, by an overreliance on aggregate forms of public opinion (polls which transform nuanced opinion into yes/no responses), declining public participation and increasing …

Gothenburg.
The next speaker in this session at AoIR 2010 are Yana Breindl and Nils Gustafsson, whose interest is in networked digital activism. Such activism is not necessarily more or less inclusive or democratic than conventional activism. In democratic theory, there are the three strands of competitive, participatory, and deliberative democracy, and activism is often perceived through the lens of the latter two; online activism is seen as encouraging participatory or deliberative features in the democratic system.

Reality is perhaps more on the competitive side, where most people are seen as passive participants in a political system that is otherwise …

Gothenburg.
The next speaker in this AoIR 2010 session is Bianca Reisdorf, whose interest is in the non-adoption of the Internet in the UK and Sweden, building on longitudinal data from the Oxford Internet Surveys and the World Internet Institute. The two countries developed quite differently: Britain is now at around 70% Internet access, while Sweden is ahead at some 84% of citizens with access.

This means there are some 30% of non-users in Britain, and 16% in Sweden. Who are they, why have they remained offline, and what are the (economic, social, political) effects for them? Does it disadvantage …

Gothenburg.
Today’s keynote at AoIR 2010 looks like it’s actually taking place, after the withdrawal of Jon Bing due to illness yesterday. Peter Arnfalk is the speaker, and his topic is ‘green IT’: a significant buzzword at the moment, which is nonetheless poorly defined so far. There is a substantial potential for CO2 emission reductions through IT – for greening through IT: it has been calculated that the EU’s CO2 emissions could be reduced by some 15% through IT by 2020, for example. This could be done through reductions in the transport sector, the electricity grid, and in building emissions …

Gothenburg.
The next AoIR 2010 speaker is Irina Shklovski, whose interest is in transnationalism – defined as either migrant practices that establish or maintain links between the two countries or origin and destination, or as cosmopolitanism or a broadly defined non-culturally specific world identity. But what is the value and meaning of such long-distance ties as they are primarily maintained through online communication?

More specifically, what forms of transnational belonging may exist here: what does investing energy into maintaining such relationships mean for the people engaged in it, can such transnational contact open new horizons beyond the scope of daily …

Gothenburg.
The next AoIR 2010 session I’m in is a panel on sustainable entertainment, which involves Wenche Nag from the Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor, Mia Consalvo, Jean Burgess, Patrick Wikström, and Martin Thörnkvist. Patrick begins by noting the transformations in the music industry, for example, where the largest company now no longer is a record label but a live music company. iTunes and similar models are also making a significant impact, of course. Much of this is now based on artist/audience relationships that are based on passion and substantial emotional investment – which works for some entertainment industries, of course …

Gothenburg.
The final speaker at AoIR 2010 is Sebastian Deterding, who is interested in reframing Web 2.0 as a public service right to communicate. One example of the debates around this is the French HADOPI three-strikes law around filesharing, which would remove Net access from offending users; others have framed Google or Facebook as universal public services, and describe broadband access as just as important as water or electricity.

The Internet is now a core communicative backbone for various communication networks, then – but how might we think about the Net as a public service in a more systematic, technology-neutral …