Is Social The New Personal?

This Mid Year edition of the Links in the Chain newsletter talks about the question if the ‘Social is the new Personal?’ This editions editor Nilofar Ansher talks in her introduction about the fact that the word ‘media’ has the ignominy of never being called by its first name. It’s always prefixed or suffixed into playing second fiddle. Evidence? Traditional media, mass media, new media, digital media, hypermedia, social media – the list could go on with subsets. What remains common and consi...

"Digital Natives with a Cause?" - Newsletter, Vol VII

This issues touches on the topic of Digital Dinosaurs, an exploration of the non-digital by those who are digital. The authors talk about issues of the digital and non digital. So many activities we used to be part of are now either partially or fully mediated by the digital world. Does that fact elevate the computer to a position where it stands in the center of our lives? As a Digital Native, are there areas of your life which the digital hasn’t touched? Do any of you still write by hand pe...

"Digital Natives with a Cause?" - Newsletter, Vol VI

This issue give us an insight into two different dimension of the digital natives programme. After the three workshops and one international conference it was time to get all the knowledge and new insight together in a book. The editors came together for a write shop, and here is a report. Nilofar also gives an interesting insight into digital activism.

"Digital Natives with a Cause?" - Newsletter, Vol IV

For everyone who is interested in learning more about the Digital Natives who form part of the "Digital Natives with a Cause?" community. The Newsletter includes opinion posts by participants from the three workshops as well as the facilitators, interviews with them, comics and cartoons highlighting current issues affecting the community, as well as current news and discussions happening at the project website, www.digitalnatives.in. The 4th volume had a theme of "practices acr...

The right to lurk

The right to lurk. Here we go blogathon: my right of the digital age is the right to lurk. I was reluctant to write this post, because I have been so busy lately that I didn't even imagine having the mental capacity to think of a right. But the right to lurk: that put me right back here. For Fieke writes eloquently about the right to unplug and Nishant about the right to be many, and I couldn't but nod my head silently (and get slowly dragged into thoughts of rights).

Maybe we have lost the right to not-know.

Therefore, we empower our right to information. This is the digital age. The world is one village.

I believe that free music should be a right in the digital age

It’s a dicey subject. Napster dealt with it and we all watched to see what would happen to our freedom to access the music we loved. And when it was over we were left in the rubble of copyright issues, intellectual property debates and a growing mechanism of workarounds. The internet is a sub world, still young, where people practice their most basic animal right of open access…to all…for everything. Even if it cannibalizes on the people who made ‘everything’ exist in the first place.

And who said that Gender does not matter in social Change?

“We are tired of hearing about Gender, What’s wrong with you Women?” These are some of the words that many people echo when you mention GENDER. As if gender means WOMEN!!

The right to be many

One of the fundamental units of any right based discourse, is the individual. The universe of rights revolves around the unquestioned idea of how each one of us is a single person. Sure we are allowed to have different personalities (if you have too many of them, you are also allowed to be commited in an asylum) and we are allowed to have different identities (Sexual, Religious, Political etc.). However, the person, the individual, the citizen, remains a singular, corporeal body that can be i...

The right to be read and heard by anyone

I like to be really optimistic and assume that huge progressive world-wide movements in this decade will successfully fight for net neutrality and the right for every person in the world to have access to the Internet. Having overcome that battle, the next challenge would be to promote the right for everyone to be read and heard over the Internet despite all language barriers and, thus, also enforce the technological mechanisms that allow that to happen.