Technology experts and stakeholders say the internet will drive more change in businesses and government agencies by 2020, making them more responsive and efficient. But there are powerful bureaucratic forces that will push back against such transformation and probably draw out the timeline. Expect continuing tension in disruptive times.

Respondents included Clay Shirky, Esther Dyson, Doc Searls, Nicholas Carr, Susan Crawford, David Clark, Jamais Cascio, Peter Norvig, Craig Newmark, Hal Varian, Howard Rheingold, Andreas Kluth, Jeff Jarvis, Andy Oram, Kevin Werbach, David Sifry, Dan Gillmor, Marc Rotenberg, Stowe Boyd, John Pike, Andrew Nachison, Anthony Townsend, Ethan Zuckerman, Tom Wolzien, Stephen Downes, Rebecca MacKinnon, Jim Warren, Sandra Brahman, Barry Wellman, Seth Finkelstein, Jerry Berman, Tiffany Shlain, and Stewart Baker.

Consult survey

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Speakers today were Jeffrey Schnapp (Stanford Humanities Lab – via video), Ashley Benigno (Global 3G Handset and Application Group at Hutchison Whampoa Limited), Nicolas Nova (LIFT conference), Bruno Giussani (TED – via video), David Orban (OpenSpime), Bruce Sterling (soon also to be known as “Bruno Argento”), Fabrizio Capobianco (Funambol), Adam Greenfield (Nokia), Bruno Mascaro (Sketchin), Elizabeth Churchill (Yahoo!), Stefano Sanna and Roberto Fraboni (beeweeb), Howard Rheingold (UC Berkeley and Stanford University – via video), Roberto Borri and Nico Sica (ITSME).

A full auditorium with among the attendees also Younghee Jung of Nokia, who will speak tomorrow at the World Congress of Architecture, in a session on “ubiquitous computing and the human context”, together with Nicolas Nova, Adam Greenfield and Jeffrey Huang.

Videos of all the presentations are now available online. Enjoy.

The conference was organised by a Leandro Agrò (Idearium.org) and Matteo Penzo.

Abstract

Mobile communication has become mainstream and even omnipresent. It is arguably the most successful and certainly the most rapidly adopted new technology in the world: more than one of every three people worldwide possesses a mobile phone. This volume offers a comprehensive view of the cultural, family, and interpersonal consequences of mobile communication across the globe. Leading scholars analyze the effect of mobile communication on all parts of life, from the relationship between literacy and the textual features of mobile phones to the use of ringtones as a form of social exchange, from the “aspirational consumption” of middle class families in India to the belief in parts of Africa and Asia that mobile phones can communicate with the dead.

The contributors explore the ways mobile communication profoundly affects the tempo, structure, and process of daily life around the world. They discuss the impact of mobile communication on social networks, other communication strategies, traditional forms of social organization, and political activities. They consider how quickly miraculous technologies come to seem ordinary and even necessary–and how ordinary technology comes to seem mysterious and even miraculous. The chapters cut across social issues and geographical regions; they highlight use by the elite and the masses, utilitarian and expressive functions, and political and operational consequences. Taken together, the chapters demonstrate how mobile communication has affected the quality of life in both exotic and humdrum settings, and how it increasingly occupies center stage in people’s lives around the world.

About the author

James E. Katz is Chair of the Department of Communication at Rutgers University and director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies. He is the author of Magic in the Air: Mobile Communication and the Transformation of Social Life and coauthor of Social Consequences of Internet Use (MIT Press, 2002).

The book contains more than 30 contributions, including chapters written by Jan Chipchase (Nokia Research), Jonathan Donner (Microsoft Research India), Howard Rheingold, and Carolyn Wei (Google).

Speakers were Howard Rheingold (UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Annenberg School for Communications and the Institute of Creative Technologies; and author of ‘Smart Mobs‘) and Mark Earls (author of ‘Herd: How to change mass behaviour by harnessing our true nature‘), writers who examine and challenge traditional perceptions of mass behaviour change and cooperation.

This event was intended as the start of a conversation on how to optimise the potential social impact of networked technology, and its impact on how we should think about mass collaboration for innovation in the UK and beyond.

Webcasts of the whole event are now available on the NESTA website.

“Participatory media is changing the way we communicate, engage with media and each other and even our approaches to teaching and learning.”

“The generation of digital natives – those that have grown up immersed in digital media – take all of this for granted. There is nothing strange, new or even transformative about the interactive, participative landscape of blogging, social networking and Web 2.0 Read/Write media for them. This is the very starting point, the background canvas on which they live their lives.”

“The promise of participatory media is a democratic media, and a media that strengthens our democratic rights in concrete terms. Howard Rheingold has written extensively about the very real uses people have put mobile and digital media to in fighting street level battles over concrete issues. In his 2002 bestseller Smart Mobs, he writes about the ways that these technologies have been put to use in online collaboration, direct political action and the lives of young people across the planet.”

“But can the use of these emergent socially networked technologies transcend entertainment and personal expression, and push us forward towards an engaged, empowered democracy?”

In his recent lecture The Pedagogy of Civic Participation, which took place in the 3D virtual world Second Life on the NMC Campus, Howard Rheingold asks this very question.

In this special feature, which was published on the blog of Rome, Italy-based Robin Good, Good has divided Howard Rheingold’s presentation into several audio files, and brought together the key points and questions discussed. You can listen to the original verbal presentation delivered for each key point or browse through the summary notes he has posted next to each.

Rheingold’s lecture was part of the MacArthur Foundation‘s series on Digital Media and Learning, a ”five-year, $50 million digital media and learning initiative to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialise and participate in civic life.”

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“Yet, there is a nagging question — if these grassroots efforts are generating value (and in fact, wealth) and their creative power is being tapped by major corporations, at what point should they start receiving a share of revenue for their work?”

“We have all seen major media companies telling us that file-sharing is bad because it takes other people’s intellectual property without just compensation. So, why are these same companies now taking their audience’s intellectual property for free? Do we understand their profits primarily as a tax to support the infrastructure that enables their distribution?”

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(via Howard Rheingold)

According to Robin Hamman: “We talked about the common themes between his books, the differences between mobile phone and social software usage in the UK compared to the US, and participatory media”.

Click here to listen (The interview, which lasts about 10 minutes, starts at 26:30.)

(via textually.org)

It uses a schools of thought methodology to develop four scenarios: the Adaptive User Environment, Not The Smart Internet, Rich Media and Chaos Rules. The report includes interviews with global ‘thought leaders’ including Howard Rheingold, Cory Doctorow, Douglas Rushkoff, Mark Pesce, Katie Salen, Eric Zimmerman and many others. Specific domains that are discussed include the Open Source movement, Social Networks, Digital Games, Voice Services, E-Health and Mobiles.

Download executive summary (pdf, 681 kb, 34 pages)
Download full report (pdf, 1.28 mb, 170 pages)

(via John Thackara)

He is now helping lead the Cooperation Project (PDF, 236 kb), a network of academics and businesses trying to map the new landscape of cooperation in business, and looking for ways organisations might enhance their creativity and stimulate innovation with cooperation-based strategic models.

A first result of their work can be read in the publication Technologies of Cooperation (PDF, 1.1 MB) and in the beautifully designed cooperation maps, available in a small version (384 kb) and a large version (4.1 MB).