#OWS (occupy Wall Street and the “Occupy” movement) have been widely discussed but not as yet in the context of a broader understanding of an evolving Digital/Information Society.
The suggestion that officials and others in Japan are looking for ideas and strategies had the effect of making me think a lot about the emergency post-earthquake post-tsunami intra-nuclear situation in Japan from the perspective of community based ICTs.
Journal of Community Informatics
http://ci-journal.net
Call for Papers: Special Issue
Community Informatics Rebuilding Egypt, Tunisia…
In an important article in the current issue of the Journal of Community Informatics , Hungarian Sociologists Csótó Mihály and Szilárd Molnár examine the development of the “Information Society” in Hungary from the perspective of those who are being left behind in its development and the impact that this is having on innovation and development in Hungary as whole. Their analysis and observations have relevance far beyond Hungary or even Europe and link quite directly into a similarly important newspaper article on the recurring Digital Divide among Afro-Americans and Hispanics in the US, by Jeffrey Washington of Associated Press and reprinted in USA Today and the Washington Post among other places.
I'm not sure what anyone else thinks, but this proposal which is an attempt to get major funding to do very very large scale social simulations based on real time data of social phenomena is currently up for EU research funding. This seems to me to be extremely questionable from a variety of perspectives.
An even more intriguing possibility would be the fusing of existing rural (political) organizational structures with ICTs and envigorated with new blood from the “ant tribe” and other young people with Internet and ICT skills leading to a rural renewal, extended service delivery and both more efficient and sustainable agricultural and SMME and SME developments. Perhaps once the attention of the Chinese leadership shifts back from the explosive developments in urban areas similar structural developments might begin to be seen in rural areas and among lower income populations as well.
In the context of my visits to various sites in Peninsular Malaysia and Sarawak I’ve now got a bit of perspective on the current situation in Malaysia and I see that in certain respects at least the goals of the 2005 Plan as evidenced by the document Bridging the Digital Divide in Malaysia have been […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about Copenhagen, its process and outcomes and how it can or should link into community informatics. What was notable to me, casually observing the Copenhagen conference from a distance was how focussed the discussions seemed to be on political processes–governance structures, treaties, declarations and so on and how little attention was paid to the underlying social processes which would be required if anything realistic were to be achievable.
Gurstein's Community Informatics 
October 22, 2011
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