Oxford Internet Institute
by Oxford University
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Description
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.
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Through the Network (of Networks): The Fifth Estate | 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. | 9/12/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Facebook: The Strength of Weak Ties | 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. | 2/6/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: Online Audiences and the Paradox of Web Traffic | 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. | 3/6/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Trusted Computing: Questioning What You Think You Know | 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. | 5/8/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Trusted Computing Rants, Regrets and Research | 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. | 5/8/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Changing Business of Software | 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). | 5/8/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Regulating Technologies | 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. | 5/8/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Negotiation and the Global Information Economy | 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. | 7/3/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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If Fiber is the Medium, What is the Message? Next-Generation Content for Next-Generation Networks | 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. | 7/3/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Second Life of Urban Planning | Marcus Foth demonstrates the value of various tools and services (eg Second Life) for engaging people in novel and participatory planning exercises, and for investigating how the public interpret and understand proposed urban designs and urban planning The majority of the world's citizens now live in cities. Although urban planning can thus be thought of as a field with significant ramifications on the human condition, many practitioners feel that it has reached a crisis in thought leadership. Conventional approaches to engage people in participatory planning exercises are limited in reach and scope. At the same time, sociocultural trends and technology innovation offer opportunities to re-think the status quo in urban planning. The notion of neogeography introduces tools and services that allow non-geographers to use advanced geographical information systems. Similarly, is a neo-planning paradigm without planners possible? This presentation traces a number of evolving links between urban planning, neogeography and information and communication technology. Two significant trends - participation and visualisation - with direct implications for urban planning are discussed. Combining novel participation and visualisation features, the popular virtual reality environment Second Life is then introduced as a test bed for a series of workshops that engaged high school students in generating narratives with a view to make transparent how they understand and interpret proposed urban designs. | 7/3/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Urban Informatics: The Internet, locative media and mobile technology for urbanites | 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. | 7/3/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Making Science Public: Data-sharing, Dissemination and Public Engagement with Science | 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. | 10/7/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Social Media, So What? Assessing the Impact of Blogs and Social Media | 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. | 10/7/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Parties, Campaigns and Representation: The Political Impact of Blogs and Social Media | 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. | 10/7/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Breaking News: The Changing Relationship Between Blogs and Mainstream Media | 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 will consider 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. | 10/7/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Internet Governance and Regulation: The Future of the Internet - and How to Stop It | 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. | 10/9/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Blogging at 20? The Future and Potential of Social Media | 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? | 11/9/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The crisis of global capitalism: towards a new economic culture? | 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. | 11/9/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Using the Web to do Social Science | 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. | 11/9/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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From Weblogs to Twitter: How Did We Get Where We Are Today and What Are the Main Impacts To Date? | 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. | 11/13/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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National Broadband Policies: Perspectives from the US and Britain | 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. | 11/13/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Peer to Peer and the Music Industry: The Criminalization of Sharing | 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. | 3/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Net Neutrality on the Internet: A Two-sided Market Analysis | 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. | 3/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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When the Audience Clicks: Buying Attention in the Digital Age | 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. | 3/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Those Golden Eggs Come From Somewhere: Internet Regulation at a Crossroads | 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. | 3/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Relationships and the Internet | 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. | 3/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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We are the Web: The future of the social machine | 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. | 4/30/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Giving in the Digital World | 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. | 4/30/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Delete! | 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. | 5/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Authentic Assessment in the era of Social Media: ideas and applications from Internet Communications | The emergence of Web 2.0-enabled social media online provides a new opportunity to develop assessments that match with, and draw upon students' engagement with online knowledge networking, creating new possibilities for 'authenticity' in assessment. Authentic assessment refers both to the alignment of assessment with the actual outcomes of students' learning, and to the utilisation in assessment of approximations of real-world situations within which knowledgeable activity might take place. In both cases, student learning is assumed to be intimately connected with the manner in which they are assessed, and that students will be more highly motivated to learn if their assessment is authentic. The emergence recently of Web 2.0-enabled social media online provides a new opportunity to develop assessments that match with, and draw upon students' engagement with online knowledge networking, creating new possibilities for 'authenticity'. Matthew Allen will briefly review why an assessment-driven focus on online learning is important, and how authenticity might be developed in a world of social media, before presenting several examples of current and proposed assessment practice in an undergraduate Internet Communications course. While the examples demonstrate the importance for assessment practice of the particular disciplinary and professional context provided by the subject matter of students' learning, these examples will also show how the use of Web 2.0 in blended and online learning can more generally be based on real-world knowledge production, in knowledge networks, that bridge the growing gap between formal and informal learning via the Internet. | 5/18/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Internet Turns 40: Midlife Crisis or Grand Challenge for Computer-Mediated Communication? | 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. | 5/18/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Don't Hate the Player, Hate the Game: Internet Games, Social Inequality and Racist Talk as Griefing | This talk recaps the history of racist griefing online and link the current crisis in racial discourse in the US with this practice, exploring the implications for digital games as a transnational public sphere. Games are a radically transnational medium: as Martin Lister writes in New Media: An Introduction, 'even before Pokemon, the videogame was perhaps the most thoroughly transnational form of popular culture, both as an industry (with Sony, Sega and Nintendo as the key players) but also at the level of content - the characters and narratives of many videogames are evidence of relays of influence between America and Japan.' Internet gameplay is becoming more socially and culturally diverse and ubiquitous than ever before. Yet at the same time, the culture of griefing or pranking that dominates these games and other forms of networked social life such as Second Life and Chatroulette takes increasingly racist and racialized forms. The Patriotic N****s, a group of griefers who delight in 'breaking' Second Life and Habbo Hotel by filling public space with garbage, are assuredly not African American, but resort to offensive racist languages as the shortest route to their goal: the disruption of online community and social life. This talk will recap the history of racist griefing online and link the current crisis in racial discourse in the US with this practice, exploring the implications for digital games as a transnational public sphere. | 7/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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What Will A Companionable Computational Agent Be Like? (Lovelace Lecture 2010) | 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? | 7/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 33 Episodes |
