Amsterdam, De Balie, June 15-17, 2005
www.incommunicado.info/conference
Organized by the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam) together with Waag Society (Amsterdam) and the New Media Centre Sarai (Delhi), with support from HIVOS, IICD, and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Contact: Matthijs Rutten, matthijs@networkcultures.org, +31 (0)20
5951862.
Incommunicado 05 is a two-day working conference that will attempt to offer a critical survey of the current state of ‘info-development’, most recently known by its catchy acronym ‘ICT4D’.
Not too long ago, info-development seemed to be a rather technical matter of knowledge and technology transfer from North to South. But a more complex map of actors, networked in a global info-politics, is emerging. New info-economies like Brazil, China, and India form south-south alliances that challenge our sense of what ‘development’ is all about. New grassroots efforts are calling into question the entire regime of intellectual property rights (IPR) and access restrictions on which commercial info-development is based. Commons- or open-source-oriented organizations across the world are more likely to receive support from southern than from northern states, and these coalitions are already challenging northern states on their self-serving commitment to IPR and their dominance of key info-political organizations.
Long considered a marginal policy field dominated by technology experts, info-development is embroiled in a full-fledged info-politics, negotiated in terms of corporate accountability, state transformation, and the role of an international civil society in the creation of a new world information order. Emerging from the ‘incommunicado’ internet forum, the work conference will start mapping some of the faultlines of such a politics by engaging media activists, policy makers, and researchers in a collaborative exploration.
Incommunicado 05 will kick off with a public event on June 15 at De Balie in Amsterdam. This event, including special guests from partner organizations, introduces a broad non-specialist audience to the field of ict for development and offers a survey of all conference workshops.
The working conference will take place at June 16 and 17 and combine plenary sessions with workshops and open sessions. Individual workshops will address the critique of development, the use of free and open source software in development projects, the state of the internet governance controversy, and updates on the ongoing World Summit on the Information Society. A list of all workshops, additional background information, and participant biographies are available at www.incommunicado.info/conference.
Please use the conference website to register online.
Sabine Niederer
researcher and producer
institute of network cultures
sabine@networkcultures.org
t: +31 (0)20 5951866
f: +31 (0)20 5951840
www.networkcultures.org
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