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Serendipity and Digital Inclusion; a very long blog.

Whether you believe in serendipity or deny its existence citing its impact can be an attention getter. One of the attractions of Twitter for me is the way in which those serendipitous moments aggregate in one place. It was thus when last week I came across an academic paper by two Microsoft© Researchers, Nimmi Rangaswarmy and Edward Cutrell entitled Anthropology, development and ICTs: Slums, youth and the mobile internet in urban India.

A Tale of Two Cities

Conference organisation apart – and the people in London would do well to learn from the people in Liverpool – the digital inclusion agenda has not gone away it has simply moved into new territory. The messages from the London conference are good ones in many ways but the messages coming from the Liverpool conference are the ones to which people should be listening. If the readers of this blog haven’t yet done so I strongly suggest they visit http://www.so-mo.co/ and connect to this network and don’t just watch but “act” in this space.

The Digital Detriment – A Minority Report for Digital Exclusion?

The scene from Minority Report where Tom Cruise walks through the adverts but with somebody else’s retina scan has become iconic. Advertisers argue that they are only giving us those things in which we are interested hence Facebook knows what you like but Google knows what you want whereas Amazon knows what everybody like you had. We have to take stock of what we are bringing into the living room when smart TV’s arrive complete with apps and channels controlled by app providers not independent broadcasters. Take this a step further and consider the Minority Report for the range of digitally excluded groups, not just those with skills and access issues; when the internet speaks to them personally when they struggle with personalized health care for instance how will their decision making be influenced?

Big Digital Society, I Think Not

There have been a couple of articles this week which do nothing to make me feel any less concerned that we are failing to address the fundemental need for a knowledge society so that the benefits are there for everybody and not just the few.

Rethinking Digital Inclusion

It’s time to look again at the policies we have adopted and to un-tick some of the boxes in order to re-visit what we mean by digital inclusion, to understand the importance of a knowledge society and to think again about how we might realize the benefits.

Unpicking Personalised Learning

I owe everything I am to my parents; they saw to it that I had an education. I went to one of the early comprehensive schools where the ideal of equal opportunity for all set the baseline for what we did. Being the 60’s we were “banded” then “streamed” this was the time of the 1940 Education Act. I left there with 10 average ‘O’ levels and 2 good A levels and my parent saw to it that I went on to higher education. I returned after my first term, an alien. Suddenly nobody spoke the same language, I was adrift. In 1974 I emerged, the product of a Christian socialist education and entered the teaching profession. Hold that thought.

Back to Basics Get The Inclusion Initiative Right

In 2011 Citizens Online and Penval undertook work to identify the potential for digital inclusion projects in parts of Glasgow. To those who have worked in the digital inclusion arena for a while the anonamised extract below would seem to be a statement of the obvious; yet, when the headline is the British obsession with smart phones rather than the exclusion of a whole sector of society then perhaps it is time to revisit the basics.

Therefore it’s unacceptable….

It’s a fair question, isn’t it? Government invests all that money in local government IT; then supports all of that community based activity: digital inclusion advisers, digital mentors, UK Online Centres, Race Online 2012; what does it get for its money?

Dear Don Tapscott

On Twitter @cyberdoyle recently re-tweeted a Chinese proverb; “The person who says it cannot be done, should not interrupt the person doing it.” I’m pleased to say that as well as @cyberdoyle I have followed Don Tapscott on Twitter for some time. I like his speculative thinking and his willingness to consider as possible those things which make others roll their eyes and shake their heads. I don’t have to agree with everything he says, but I’m happy to explore the possibilities.

DAA11EU Impressions and Reflections

Conferences come and go but there’s always something that sticks in your mind. The Digital Agenda Assembly 2011 was structured around the pillars of the Digital Agenda and sought to set the scene for European Activity to achieve the targets for 2020. So what sticks in my mind? The venue; Autoworld was a pretty spectacular [...]