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Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008. (ideas and comments from the audience at random — bundled under subjects and attributed when possible: Q noting an unidentified participant) Participation and Engagement Carol Darr: The importance of enhanced participation by means of web 2.0 applications. Enrique Dans: To reflect on how events can be taken to a new stage by overcoming geographical and chronological barriers, extending the debate beyond the four walls or the conference room, beyond the scheduled dates of the programme. Ethan Zuckerman: Do not focus on technology, but on engagement and participation. Q: The Internet, a discovery/invention or a technological approach to an existing background? Where’s...

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008. How do social change organizations innovate?Ethan Zuckerman, Harvard Berkman Center Social organizations do not innovate, do it badly, or just do it slowly. Quite usually, the assumption is to be unrealistic about the power of technology to enable social change. Facing a blank canvas gives you the idea that everything is possible. But good art is about constraint. And if you don’t know your constraints, figure them out. Innovation comes from constraint If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail saying does not apply to innovation: innovation is about hacking the hammer and making it better. Von Hipple (see “more info” below): Lead user...

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008. Geek Is GoodCarlos Domingo, Telefónica I+D Malcom Gladwell: Connectors Mavens: know everything’s that happening Salesmen The difference between the geek and the connected geek: for the first time in my life, more people greeted me for my birthday on social networking sites than “offline”. Being connected is becoming a must and a differential thing too. Big companies, understanding this, are hiring connected geeks so that they bring in new knowledge and, most important, new knowledge sharing practices. From greed is good to geek is good The (libertarian) philosophy of the Internet, cutting down transaction costs in open networks, is increasingly been...

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008. Communication in the Network SocietyGumersindo Lafuente, Soitu Rigour is at stake, but, luckily, and for the first time, the audience can watch and enforce rigour. Technology, for the first time, shapes and modifies the behaviour of the audience. The new scenario needs to be mastered by the journalist to do their work properly. Revolution: the digital thing is not a new media, but a disruption, a shift of paradigm, a point of inflexion. Leadership: In all this (r)evolution, leaders are required. A bad practice is that mainstream offline media are absorbing online departments, thus killing innovation and leadership. Indeed, it could well be the other way. Nowadays, the Net...

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008. Communication in the Network Society (II)Andrew Rasiej, Personal Democracy Forum In 2001, the response of US senators about the impact of the Internet on politics was: Until we do not get rid off pornography, senators will avoid the Internet I’m getting 10,000 e-mails a day: how can I stop it? What has since changed? Howard Dean was created on and from the Internet… even if he knew nothing about the Internet. He just let people act on their own. Blogs are very important, but they are just a part of the puzzle. The Internet brought Howard Dean community, but it did not fetched him with money. So he lost the election. In 2006, the Internet did neither elect any...

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008. Some reflections about the Information SocietyJosu Jon Imaz, Petronor (and, before, PNV) Growingly, we see that the network is the new paradigm of civilization, abandoning the traditional radial model. And inside networks, we find meshes that weave densest networks: the international trade, the academy, civic communities… The Internet just instrumented former existing networks. After the French-Prussian and the two World Wars, Europe gets reconfigured, borders blur, and the territory reshapes into network-like structures. Just like this, higher level problems can be faced through innovative solutions, e.g. the creation of the European Union. Of course, the concept of...

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008. Citizenry in the Network SocietyTom Steinberg, MySociety.org MySociety is an NGO (mainly run by volunteers) whose aim is to empower the society at large so they can engage, participate and contact the policy-makers. Initiatives: WriteToThem.com: send your thoughts and queries to elected charges TheyWorkForYou.com: know who an elected charge is and how do they act and think (e.g. what did they vote concerning a specific subject) The Public Whip: based on the elected charges’ actions on e.g. the Parliament, engage in a debate and evaluation about these actions. FixMyStreet, to let public managers know about problems in your hometown: holes on the road, graffiti on your...

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008. Citizenry in the Network SocietyCarol Darr, Harvard Kennedy School One American in then tells the other nine how to vote, where to eat, and what to buy. They are The Influentials (Ed Keller & Jon Berry). Obama had little influence, short experience, etc. to have rallied for being the democrat candidate to the presidency of the US: to raise votes and, most important, to raise money. What did happen so that he could be a candidate to the primary elections and, actually, to end being the candidate to the presidential elections? Everybody can buy products, but not everybody does: how do you make people buy your product? There’re some people that influence others to do...

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008. Organizations in the Network Society (II)Santiago Ortiz, Bestiario To think of the enterprise as a network, as we can think of this course as a network: Visualization tool of the course Network Society The reality is composed by networks, networks that can understood through the approach of complexity or complex systems. And the definition of the individual, and even the way it learns (Maturana & Valera), can be explained in relationship with the exterior, with the environment, and its relationships. In this train of though, ICTs can help map and visualize the relationships that are weaved among individuals and organizations, how they get and diffuse knowledge. This can...

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008. Organizations in the Network SocietyEnrique Dans The evolution from the oral tradition, to writing, to the press is that of making it possible, between people and along time, communication: first, is lasts; then, is can be replicated. And it was put at the service of the society at a “reasonable” cost. Same happened with the media (TV, radio, etc.) revolution. But still it had a cost, and thus, timespan was expensive and not accessible by everyone. The Internet opens the box. What’s the impact on organizations? Ronald Coase: firms exist because of transaction costs. But now, we can see that these transaction costs have dropped and many people can engage in...

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008. State of development of the Networked SocietyIrene Mia, World Economic Forum The Global Competitiveness Report and The Global Information Technology Report The Global Competitiveness Report A network of experts that reports the state of the economy in most countries of the World (covering circa 98% of the World’s GDP). The network works also on tourism, technology, private investment, etc. The main goal is seeing why, given different countries with very different frameworks and socioeconomic backgrounds, why some of them behave similarly. It seems that there is a high correlation between competitiveness and e-readiness: ICTs are a general purpose technology that...

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008. About the importance of the Network SocietyJuan Freire Some reflections: Elites are disconnected, as is citizenry at large. Debate is needed as the future is at stake. The process of change is led by institutions and citizens, intensively using technology, hence technology is a driver of change and deserves close attention. Concerning the actual state of the situation worldwide, framed by a deep financial — and systemic — crisis, what causes can be attributed to the changes that the Network Society brought, and what solutions could these change that Network Society brings help to contribute. Is it times for a deep change? Some questions/concepts Alessandro Baricco, in...

Notes from Tim Berners Lee’s investiture ceremony as doctor honoris causa, Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona, October 10th, 2008. Manuel Castells: Laudatio for Sir Timothy Berners-Lee Quoting Tim Berners-Lee (TBL): the World can be seen as just connections, nothing else. Net neutrality has to be maintained as one of its genuine foundations, not to create a new digital divide amongst the ones that can freely surf the Internet and those who cannot. Timothy Berners-Lee The Web is just a platform for people to do new things. Lots of things that happen on the web are there just because someone else let them happen, and let people go on with their ideas… just like the Web, that in a first draft was dubbed as vage… but exciting. Keeping one web is important, securing...

Framework When framing all the impact of ICTs in society — and not only at the economic level — it is unavoidable to speak of Manuel Castells’s work, maybe the most acknowledged scholar in this field. Summing up and focusing on what is of interest here, Castells presents a society structured in three layers — relationships of production, experience and power — that by acting over matter (i.e. nature) — the former — and establishing relationships amongst them three layers, end up shaping a culture in a specific configuration of time and space. As technology plays and important role in both the relationships amongst layers and in the creation of culture, Castells theorizes on how ICTs are actually shaping nowadays culture in a very broad sense. His thesis is that the...

As in a pendulum movement, the reflections about the impact of ICTs in the Economy have swung from enthusiasm to realism and back to optimism, being each of these states really subjective and implying a wide range of shades within. After a first period of cyberoptimism, people that “wanted to see” and people that thought “waiting to see” was a bad strategy because “it will then be too late”, followed a timespan where scientists — mainly economists — stuck to strict evidence from reality, being their main conclusion that the more you spend/invest in ICTs the more they affect both the share and the growth of the GDP — an obvious conclusion to many, I’d dare say, as it’ll happen with sweets if you spent half your national budget in......

Is the digital divide, that alleged gaping chasm that separates the ~Stechnology haves~T from the ~Stechnology have-nots~T a figment of the imagination of over-zealous academics and activists? Statistics that reflect the rapid spread of Internet access and mobile telephony to an ever-increasing number of earthlings certainly seem to indicate as such....

Is the digital divide, that alleged gaping chasm that separates the ~Stechnology haves~T from the ~Stechnology have-nots~T a figment of the imagination of over-zealous academics and activists? Statistics that reflect the rapid spread of Internet access and mobile telephony to an ever-increasing number of earthlings certainly seem to indicate as such....