Today I have the great opportunity to attend at a research seminar entitled “The Hacker Ethic: The New Culture after the Current Global Economic Crisis” led by Prof. Pekka Himanen, who is currently a Visiting Professor at Internet Interdisciplinary Institute.

After a very inspiring presentation, Prof. Himanen has encouraged us to keep the discussion online following an open hacker ethic. So here goes my thoughts about his presentation and his challenges:

1. I wonder how and to what extend the results of the analysis carried out in collaboration Rita Espanha and Gustavo Cardoso about the Internet users within the World Internet Project could help to identify those users who can easily face the three challenges mentioned by Prof. Himanen, another 3C formula: (Clean = enviromental crisis) + (Care = welfare state 2.0) + (Culture = multicultural life) and also could clearly identify those who will be excluded or disconected.
2. I wonder how and to what extend the Catalan BioRegion could be considered as part of what Prof. Himanen has called “Innovation center dynamics” due to Prof. Himanen 3C formula:  “culture of creativity” + “community of enrichment” + “creative people”.

I’m excited about the online discussion and Friday meeting.

Yesterday I had the pleasure to attend the defence of Ismael Peña‘ thesis Measuring digital development for policy-making: models, stages, characteristics and causes, “which deals about the digital economy and whether governments should help in its development for it might have a positive impact on the real economy and on the society at large”.

Dissertation supervisor: Tim Kelly

Composition of the committee:

President: Tim Unwin (University of London)
Secretary: Joan Torrent Sellens (UOC)
Members: Robin Mansell (London School of Economics)
Bruno Lanvin (INSEAD)
Laura Sartori (Università di Bologna)

Substitutes:
Gustavo Cardoso (Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa)
Rosa Borge Bravo (UOC)

CONGRATULATIONS Dr. Peña-López. I’m proud to work with you in the same research group I2TIC.

First of all, I would like to thank Max Senges and Josep M. Duart as organizators of the roundtable with Howard Rheingold at Open University of Catalonia. Ismael Peña has alredy posted about Rheingold wonderfull talk, but here comes my notes and my reflection.

Online Social Networks

• enable people to co-operate;
• have always existed, but ICT empower and transform them;
• are places where communities can growth.

Cultivating Online Communities

• promote social capital;
• support Life Long Learning and teaching
• connect people and build relationship
• develop a community memory and knowledge sharing

Participatory Media

• From text based only community to participatory media;
• Transforms social structures, culture, community, power, wealth ans is characterized by: many to many, consumers/producers, active participation and amplification of network capabilities;
• Changes literacy.

Online Social Community requires

• Marketing is the foundation of online community planning.
• Design Social Architecture.
• Technological planning.

Watch an eight minute intro screencast of the SMC, created by Howard Rheingold

Howard Rheingold talk was wonderful, his discourse could be applied to any virtual community. But, in this case, the debate was focused on education and how can we develop online social networks in this field at Open University of Catalonia (UOC), a virtual university with 40,000 students.

On one hand, I think online social networks as a “formal” learning/teaching environment challenge educational, organizational and technological model of my university because it causes a tremendous tension between the need of flexibility   to develop those kind of initiatives and the need of bureaucracy to maintain 40,000 online students within the virtual campus. It just strains all the actors who are involved in the teaching and learning process: teachers, students, managers…

On the other hand, a digital identity is needed to generate online social networks, but how many students or faculty members have develop this digital identity? how many students or faculty members have participatory media literacy?.

Finally, the interaction between this new media landscape based on ICT and the social structure could generate smart mobs, are we ready to take this kind of risk?. I’m ready as well as my institution -I guess- and I’m trying to open the virtual classroom to this new media landscape, it’s fun and most of my students enjoy it too. But as an experiment it has to be evaluated and assessed so… further research is needed each semester. I will present the results here to discuss.

Notes from the conference: Internet Research 9.0: Rethinking Community, Rethinking Space. Copenhagen October 15 – 18, 2008. Mimi Ito: Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out: Youth Participation in Networked Publics.

Mimi Ito is a cultural anthropologist studying new media use, particularly among young people in Japan and the US. Her research right now focuses on digital media use in the US and portable technologies in Japan. Her last works published are: Networked Publics and Beyond Barbie® and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming. I strongly recommend the reading of her blog.

Her presentation was based on Digital Youth Research project:

Since the early 1980s, digital media have held out the promise of more engaged, child-centered learning opportunities. The advent of Internet-enabled personal computers and mobile devices has added a new layer of communication and social networking to the interactive digital mix. While this evolving palette of technologies has demonstrated the ability to capture the attention of young people, the innovative learning outcomes that educators had hoped for are more elusive. Although computers are now fixtures in most schools and many homes, there is a growing recognition that kids’ passion for digital media has been ignited more by peer group sociability and play than academic learning. This gap between in-school and out-of-school experience represents a gap in children’s engagement in learning, a gap in our research and understandings, and a missed opportunity to reenergize public education. This project works to address this gap with a targeted set of ethnographic investigations into three emergent modes of informal learning that young people are practicing using new media technologies: communication, learning, and play +info.

Mimi Ito stars with the team members of the project and with the objectives:

The first objective is to describe kids as active innovators using digital media rather than as passive consumers of popular culture or academic knowledge.

The second objective is to think about the implications of kids’ innovative cultures for schools and higher education and to engage in a dialogue with educational planners.

The third objective is to advise software designers about how to use kids’ innovative approaches to knowledge and learning in building better software.

Then she explains the methodology based on ethnographic research in both local neighborhoods in Northern and Southern California, and in virtual places and networks such as online games, blogs, messaging, and online interest groups. Mimi Ito also remarks the amount of data collected: 594 semi structure interviews; 79 informal interviews; 67 groups; 28 diary studies; 4146 questionnaires and also more than 5000 hours of observation of 10468 profiles; 15 on-line forums; 389 videos; 50 events and classroom observation.

After that she introduces to the audience the term networked publics as “an alternative to terms such as audience or consumer. Rather than assume that everyday media engagement is passive or consumptive, the term publics foregrounds a more engaged stance. Networked publics takes this further; now publics are communicating more and more through complex networks that are bottom-up, top-down, as well as side-to-side. Publics can be reactors, (re)makers and (re)distributors, engaging in shared culture and knowledge through discourse and social exchange as well as through acts of media reception”.

Mimi Ito remarks that Youth Networked Publics like traditional youth publics are based on: local scale of interaction, many to many and peer to peer forms of participating, sharing and learning. But unlike traditional youth publics are also based on: accesibility 24/7, persistence, networked peer space, access to more specialized and niche publics, broader contexts for publication and privacy.

Networked publics are sources of diversity about identity, culture and practice. Further beyond  access issues, Mimi Ito identifies two main drivers:

1. Friendship-driven learning and participation: peer to peer sharing and reputation.

Kids prefer to hang out, participate, socialize off-line but time, space and structural restrictions encourage them to go on-line. Research results reveals that most of the kids prefer to meet people first off-line and after that face to face meeting go on-line. Otherwise, you can be consider as a freak or a geek by your own friends “Meeting people first on-line is not cool”.

Mimi Ito uses the term peer pressure to identify some practice among kids “If I put someone in my top ten friend on Facebook or MySpace, that someone is supposed to do the same with me”. On-line reputation has consequences on off-line reputation. Another way of peer pressure was the consequences of private data available on SNS as amplifiers of “drama” thinking about the changes on engaged or falling in love in the personal profile.

Finally, Mimi Ito states that kids share social practice… they help each other to create, produce and distribute content through social technology.

2. Interest-driven learning and participation. Still a minority of youth is driven by interest. Two case studies based on FANSUBBING and ANIME MUSIC VIDEOS.

After the explanation of these two case studies Mimi Ito finishes her talk with some considerations about the diversity in genres of youth participation on-line;  peer based learning, participation and reputation; the scale of networked communities and the youth access to broader audiences; new forms of litarecy and media social practice used by youth to produce knowledge without the constrictions of the adul world.

I really enjoy Mimi Ito speech and her work but I wonder why her research project does not take into account the traditional categories like education level, parents’ wages, family structure,… Do they matter? Am I old fashion?

Update - Video Mimi Ito Keynote @ IR9.0

Little by little Web 2.0 movement is being approached by theory and empirical data. As an example of empirical data approachs, OECD has launched Participative Web and User-Created Content. Web 2.0, wikis and social networking

The concept of the “participative web” is based on an Internet increasingly influenced by intelligent web services that empower users to contribute to developing, rating, collaborating and distributing Internet content and customising Internet applications. As the Internet is more embedded in people’s lives users draw on new Internet applications to express themselves through “user-created content” (UCC).

This study describes the rapid growth of UCC, its increasing role in worldwide communication and draws out implications for policy. Questions addressed include: What is user-created content? What are its key drivers, its scope and different forms? What are new value chains and business models? What are the extent and form of social, cultural and economic opportunities and impacts? What are associated challenges? Is there a government role and what form could it take?

These kind of initiatives help us to a better understanding of Web 2.0 phenomenon and to analyse in what way and in what measure the ICT’s, especially the Internet, are appropriated by the current social structure, the Network Society.

On 17-18 June 2008 in Seoul holds OECD Ministerial Meeting: The Future of the Internet Economy

The Internet is a key infrastructure for global economic growth and social development. Three major trends – Convergence, Creativity and Confidence – are influencing the policy environment for the Internet Economy. Each of these trends reflects significant shifts in the use and functionality of the Internet. Collectively, they represent a major transition in the evolution of the Internet and the economic system that has developed around it. Therefore, it has become increasingly necessary that policies supporting the Internet Economy be carefully crafted and co-ordinated across policy domains, borders and multiple stakeholder communities.

Ministers and stakeholders meeting on 17-18 June 2008 in Seoul will consider social, economic and technological trends shaping the development of the Internet Economy. They will forge broad principles that can provide an enabling policy environment for the Internet Economy.

As background for the Ministerial meeting analytical reports are being released:

A Policy Brief on the Future of the Internet Economy: Major changes are affecting the scope and scale of the Internet. As a result, the Internet is increasingly high on the policy agenda in many OECD and non-OECD countries. This Policy Brief reviews likely future developments in the Internet economy and how policy-makers can help the Internet to adapt to evolving requirements caused by convergence, continue to drive innovation, and be trustworthy.

Convergence and Next Generation Networks: OECD has just issued a new report on convergence and next generation networks and their potential impact on policies and regulations. The report addresses issues of competition in the new fibre environment, convergence of video, voice and data services, the rapid growth of new technologies, such as HDTV and mobile television, and the related demand for spectrum, as well as new possible “divides” between urban and rural areas created by the uneven development of high-speed fibre networks.

Consumer empowerment in communication services: Improving the ability of consumers to choose between competing suppliers is important for well functioning markets. The report examines how to increase market flexibility for consumers in communication services, and improve access to information.

Development of Policies for Protection of Critical Information Infrastructures: Some information systems are critical because their disruption or destruction would have a serious impact on the economic well-being of citizens or the effective functioning of government or the economy. Based on two studies conducted in 2006 and 2007, this OECD report analyses security policies to protect critical information infrastructures in Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Malicious Software (Malware): A Security Threat to the Internet Economy: Malware has evolved from occasional “exploits” to a multi-million dollar criminal industry. This report informs policy makers about the evolution and impact of malware, as well as the counter-measures being taken. It concludes with suggestions for greater co-operation across the various international communities addressing malware.

Broadband and the Economy: Broadband and networked ICTs are diffusing rapidly, but there are significant differences in use among countries, sectors and firms, and their impacts are only beginning to be felt. Broadband and networked ICTs are important in meeting health, demographic and environmental challenges, and policy plays an important role in expanding their use and enhancing their impact.

Just two trends done by Blogpulse. Does they mean Digital Natives are interested in International Student Assessment?

Since I have begun to use ICTconsequences Bibliography I have collected 161 references and I`m sure that I will increase this number. Anyway if you are interested in search the database I recommend you to search the literature database by:

• Simple Search – search the main fields of the database
• Advanced Search – search all fields of the database

I hope it will help someone. Enjoy it!

It looks like the Web 2.0 has arrived to the field of health education as far as we can find articles talking about it.

I have read Boulos, M., et al. (2006). “Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education.” BMC Medical Education 6(41): 8 [link]

The paper explores, with examples, some of the current uses of Web 2.0 tools in the education of medical/nursing students, the continuing professional development and education of healthcare professionals, and patient education.

And it is concluded:

If effectively deployed, wikis, blogs and podcasts could offer a way to enhance students’, clinicians’ and patients’ learning experiences, and deepen levels of learners’ engagement and collaboration within digital learning environments. Therefore, research should be conducted to determine the best ways to integrate these tools into existing e-Learning programmes for students, health professionals and patients, taking into account the different, but also overlapping, needs of these three audience classes and the opportunities of virtual collaboration between them. Of particular importance is research into novel integrative applications, to serve as the “glue” to bind the different forms of Web-based collaborationware synergistically in order to provide a coherent wholesome learning experience.

Medical education could be just the beginning and we should pay attention and analize the consequences. But, what about the clinical practice and the relationship between physicians-patients, physicians-physicians and patients-patients?. If we have a new field in health communication as Internet we may think about it not just as a new tool of information and communication but as a new form of social structure.