Does the Internet promote freedom of expression and communication, making it a catalyst for democracy and activism? Is the net tilted towards Democracy and participatory society? Meanwhile, do services like Facebook and Twitter encourage virtual and superficial involvement over dedication to the kind of activism that makes a difference? Does it just take people off the streets, blogging safely in their homes where they no longer threaten repressive regimes?
Digital Nation – Life on the Virtual Frontier (2009 – 2010) is a documentary film by Rachel Dretzin and Douglas Rushkoff that thematizes the media issues in the context of our virtual lives, tech development, networking and multitasking.
Chapter 1: Distracted by everything. M.I.T. students are among the world’s smartest and most wired. They constantly multitask with their tech tools.
Chapter 2: What’s it doing to their brains. Tests given Stanford’s multitaskers yield troubling discoveries. Other research into Net use and the brain raises more questions.
Chapter 3: South Korea’s gaming craze. Some cautionary lessons from a country where Internet addiction has become a health crisis.
Chapter 4: Teaching with technology. Teachers are embracing digital media–’it keeps students engaged; new skills are needed for a new age.’ But is there a catch?
Chapter 5: The dumbest generation? The debate has just begun on whether we are losing as much as we’re gaining in 24/7 wired world.
Chapter 6: Relationships. Millions of people are inhabiting the Net as it were a real place, satisfying the urge to connect to others in online games, virtual worlds.
Chapter 7: Virtual worlds. Second life offers a totally new reality for humans, says it’s creator–and IBM has begun shifting it’s meetings into this virtual space.
Chapter 8: Can virtual experience change us? The U.S. military is using virtual spaces for PTSD therapy and for flying drones in Iraq while based in a room in Nevada.
Chapter 9: Where are we headed? A school is organized around learning through video games–may be it’s students are getting something we aren’t yet able to measure or recognize.
[Thanks Body Pixel]
Showing posts with label Society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Society. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Aleks Krotoski - The Virtual Revolution
Join Aleks on the BBC’s The Virtual Revolution
Programme 1, The Great Levelling?, broadcasts Saturday, BBC2, 8:30pm
In episode 1 of The Virtual Revolution, Dr. Aleks Krotoski meets some of the biggest names of the web, including Jimmy Wales, Arianna Huffington, YouTube CEO Chad Hurley, and the inventor of the web himself, Tim Berners Lee. Watch original uncut interviews with them and others.
More about the series
You can watch live here and though region specific with a little tweaking of your PC can be watched from anywhere :-)
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Aleks Krotoski is an academic and journalist who writes about and studies technology and interactivity. Her PhD thesis in Social Psychology (University of Surrey, 2009) examined how information spreads around the social networks of the World Wide Web. Read up on her academic and research interests here. She is currently working on the 4-part, prime time BBC 2 series Virtual Revolution, about the social history of the World Wide Web, broadcasting at 8:30pm from Saturday 30 January 2010 (repeated Monday nights at 11pm). She blogs for the project here.
Aleks writes for The Guardian newspaper, and hosts Tech Weekly, their technology podcast. Her writing also appears in The Observer, on BBC Technology, New Statesman, MIT Technology Review and The Telegraph. Check out her words here.
Finally, she’s the New Media Sector Champion for UKTI, the government department that promotes British businesses around the world. Find out more here.
You can find Aleks all over the Web
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[Academic] Dissertation - "Social Influence in Second Life: Social Network and Social Psychological Processes in the Diffusion of Belief and Behaviour on the Web"
Krotoski, Aleksandra K. (2009). Social influence in Second Life: Social Network and Social Psychological Processes in the Diffusion of Belief and Behaviour on the Web. PhD Dissertation. University of Surrey, Department of Psychology, School of Human Sciences. [pdf]
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[BBC] The rise of the digital elite
The web is an extraordinary innovation, with the greatest potential to usher in social change since the invention of the printing press or the steam engine. Built upon a technology that is apolitical, unregulated and decentralised, it empowers everyone – men, women, children – to be creators of information, rather than passive consumers. It is also an enormous library of global consciousness, a digital collection of human knowledge from the past and the present and presented in an easy-to-access format. As a result, we now have the unprecedented power to create our own truth, and share it with everyone in the world. It has ushered in an equality of access that we have never seen before.
But has its potential as a great leveller for the whole world already passed? [FULL ARTICLE HERE]
Programme 1, The Great Levelling?, broadcasts Saturday, BBC2, 8:30pm
In episode 1 of The Virtual Revolution, Dr. Aleks Krotoski meets some of the biggest names of the web, including Jimmy Wales, Arianna Huffington, YouTube CEO Chad Hurley, and the inventor of the web himself, Tim Berners Lee. Watch original uncut interviews with them and others.
More about the series
You can watch live here and though region specific with a little tweaking of your PC can be watched from anywhere :-)
---
Aleks Krotoski is an academic and journalist who writes about and studies technology and interactivity. Her PhD thesis in Social Psychology (University of Surrey, 2009) examined how information spreads around the social networks of the World Wide Web. Read up on her academic and research interests here. She is currently working on the 4-part, prime time BBC 2 series Virtual Revolution, about the social history of the World Wide Web, broadcasting at 8:30pm from Saturday 30 January 2010 (repeated Monday nights at 11pm). She blogs for the project here.
Aleks writes for The Guardian newspaper, and hosts Tech Weekly, their technology podcast. Her writing also appears in The Observer, on BBC Technology, New Statesman, MIT Technology Review and The Telegraph. Check out her words here.
Finally, she’s the New Media Sector Champion for UKTI, the government department that promotes British businesses around the world. Find out more here.
You can find Aleks all over the Web
---
[Academic] Dissertation - "Social Influence in Second Life: Social Network and Social Psychological Processes in the Diffusion of Belief and Behaviour on the Web"
Krotoski, Aleksandra K. (2009). Social influence in Second Life: Social Network and Social Psychological Processes in the Diffusion of Belief and Behaviour on the Web. PhD Dissertation. University of Surrey, Department of Psychology, School of Human Sciences. [pdf]
---
[BBC] The rise of the digital elite
The web is an extraordinary innovation, with the greatest potential to usher in social change since the invention of the printing press or the steam engine. Built upon a technology that is apolitical, unregulated and decentralised, it empowers everyone – men, women, children – to be creators of information, rather than passive consumers. It is also an enormous library of global consciousness, a digital collection of human knowledge from the past and the present and presented in an easy-to-access format. As a result, we now have the unprecedented power to create our own truth, and share it with everyone in the world. It has ushered in an equality of access that we have never seen before.
But has its potential as a great leveller for the whole world already passed? [FULL ARTICLE HERE]
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