(all three of whom are faculty members in the Language, Literature and Communication Department - Cheryl is the Chair), Li Ding (post doc in computer science), James Michaelis, Alvaro Graves, Debbie Heisler (the three of whom are grad students in computer science).
This is the invitation we sent out:
Heidegger once said “the social character of man is determined through his use of technology".
So, for this discussion:
How has the "character of man" and the use of web technologies been conveyed, and how is it being conveyed, in the media and how might this affect the future innovation and usage of the web?
To help kick off the discussion we looked at Google News in September to get a sense of scale during one calendar month:
In the last 30 days online internet sex abuse comes up 900 times, online sex abuse is 700.
In the last 30 days cyberbullying/internet bullying comes up about 400 times.
In the UK for instance we have been faced with (in the past 30 days):
60 articles on online child abuse in September. That’s a lot of articles.
And that’s just on area. Globally, online fraud comes up 3,600 times, online sex comes up 5,000, online crime comes up 6,300 (in the US 3,200 times). In UK: online crime 529 times.
Example questions might be:
Why is it that the web is so "demonised" in the press? Why are policy makers/social commentators so uninformed about the impact of the web despite the research and thinking being done in academia? What are the risks that this disconnect may pose in terms of regulation/education/adoption/perception? How can we initiate discussions on controversial topics such as racism, child abuse, bullying, etc in an accessible way to build consensus and understanding? How can we surface the examples of where the web is having a positive, transformative impact? How can we overcome "speciality preciousness" among difference audiences (academics, technologists, social commentators, government/policy makers, end-users) and raise our game to a simpler, clearer exchange of principles?
For the final 20 minutes of the session we will attempt to agree on which principles underpinned our discussion (positive and negative), what threads we would like to open up to a broader community for debate and what the “rules” governing this discussion might look like.
We have been hideously busy since we came back, not least getting the site launched. But I will post up some conclusions from that event, and hopefully we can get some of the excellent people who attended to share further thoughts with us.