Oxford Internet Institute - Lectures and Seminars

Judy Wajcman explains why we immediately interpret our experiences with digital technology as inexorably accelerating everyday life. The technologically tethered, iPhone-addicted figure is an image we can easily conjure. Most of us complain that there aren't enough hours in the day and there are too many e-mails in our thumb-accessible inboxes. This widespread perception that life is faster than it used to be is now ingrained in our culture, and smartphones and the Internet are continually being blamed. But isn't the sole purpose of the smartphone to give us such quick access to people and information that we'll be free to do other things? Isn't technology supposed to make our lives easier? In Pressed for Time, Judy Wajcman explains why we immediately interpret our experiences with digital technology as inexorably accelerating everyday life. She argues that we are not mere hostages to communication devices, and the sense of always being rushed is the result of the priorities and parameters we ourselves set rather than the machines that help us set them. Indeed, being busy and having action-packed lives has become valorized by our productivity-driven culture. Wajcman offers a bracing historical perspective, exploring the commodification of clock time, and how the speed of the industrial age became identified with progress. She also delves into the ways time use differs for diverse groups in modern societies, showing how changes in work patterns, family arrangements, and parenting all affect time stress. Bringing together empirical research on time use and theoretical debates about dramatic digital developments, this accessible and engaging book will leave readers better versed in how to use technology to navigate life's fast lane.

India's right to information movement demonstrated the potential to combat corruption through social audits – an exercise to share and verify public records with people. India's right to information movement demonstrated the potential to combat corruption through social audits – an exercise to share and verify public records with people. But this process requires a lot of time, skill and organizational effort – thanks to which very few audits are organized in India despite its potential. We hope to change this by creating digital tools for activists, which they can use to organize social audits continuously at low cost, and thus challenge corruption in a sustained manner. The technology involves collecting public records online, disseminating it to people via mobile phones and collecting their feedback so that the activists can redress grievances in a timely manner. I will share the progress of the project so far in this talk.

Over the past decade there has been a phenomenal growth in mobile phone and internet usage in Africa which has attracted substantial media and academic interest. Over the past decade there has been a phenomenal growth in mobile phone and internet usage in Africa which has attracted substantial media and academic interest. However questions remain about the economically transformative nature and potential of this diffusion of communication infrastructures and artefacts. Based on over two hundred firm level interviews in Tanzania and South Africa this paper explores the impacts of the 'information revolution' on small and medium enterprise development. Contrary to perceptions it finds evidence of thin integration, devaluation and neo, rather than disintermediation. The implications of this for African development are then explored.

An in-depth study of the most powerful electronics contractor and the lives of its 1.4 million workers. During 2010, 18 workers attempted suicide at Taiwanese-owned Foxconn Technology Group's Chinese facilities, where Apple and other high profile branded products are produced and assembled. They ranged in age from 17 to 25 - the prime of youth. Fourteen died, while four survived with crippling injuries. What had driven the young Chinese workers to commit the desperate act? What light did they cast on China's much touted economic transformation in the era of export-oriented growth? The mystery that our investigation seeks to explore is not only the "inside story" of Foxconn; it is also the nature of global capitalism embodying with specific relationship between Foxconn and its buyers, the largest and richest being Apple, as well as that between Foxconn and the Chinese state. These are the relationships that shape conditions on the factory floor and ultimately workers' lives. An in-depth study of the most powerful electronics contractor and the lives of its 1.4 million workers enable us to draw out the deep contradictions among labor, capital, and the Chinese state in global IT production.

How can NGOs like Oxfam come together with academics and practitioners alike to tackle emerging privacy and security challenges when it comes to effective management of data? Data has invaluable applications to ensure organisations like Oxfam are needs driven and responsive, meanwhile there are also huge risks to communities if the related processes are not designed and managed in a responsible manner. Adopting meaningful approaches to data security and ethical methodology is not a new effort within Oxfam and the development community nor is it for academics. What is new, however, is the way that the changing digital landscape is presenting new challenges and opportunities which we must react to and ensure staff have resources and knowledge about how to collect, store, manage, use and even dispose of data responsibly. How can NGOs like Oxfam come together with academics and practitioners alike to tackle emerging privacy and security challenges when it comes to effective management of data? As Oxfam are in the process of applying a Responsible Data Policy, how can we learn from and support one another, particularly when it comes to guidance and what policy means in practice?

Alloysius Attah will discuss some of Farmerline's success factors, including its locally adapted technological solutions and strong local outreach. Development organizations, governments, and many others have put high hopes in the potential of mobile technology to improve and upgrade agricultural markets and value chains. However, with a few exceptions, traction and scale of mobile applications targeting African farmers have mostly remained elusive. Farmerline is one such exception. In a short time, with support from development partners, we have been able to provide mobile services that improve the livelihoods of over 5,000 rural farmers through communicating timely and relevant agricultural information (weather alerts, best farming practices, financial tips and market prices) through voice and SMS messages directly to their mobile phones. We also support food companies (Hershey, Ecom Trading and Armajaro), governments, mobile network operators and agricultural businesses with services such as farm management, communication, data collection and traceability tools to better manage their partnerships with small-scale farmers and their entire supply chain. This talk will discuss some of Farmerline's success factors, including its locally adapted technological solutions and strong local outreach. Unlike other mobile solutions for agriculture, Farmerline enables two-way communication in every language and works globally.

This talk explores the emerging trends and forces that are radically reshaping learning and knowledge practices. Learning has left the classroom. It is being re-constituted across distance, discipline, workplace, and media as the social and technical interconnectivity of the Internet challenges existing structures for learning and education. The new ‘e-learning’ is more than a learning management system – it is a transformation in how, where, and with whom we learn that supports formal, informal and non-formal learning, life-long learning, just-in-time learning, and in ‘as much time as I have’ learning. But to do so, e-learning depends on the power of crowds and the support of communities engaged in the participatory practices of the Internet. We are networked in our learning, but also in our joint construction of knowledge and its legitimation, and in the social and technical practices that support knowledge co-construction, learning and education. This talk explores the emerging trends and forces that are radically reshaping learning and knowledge practices. The talk further explores the changing landscape of learning and knowledge practices with attention to motivations for contributing and valuing knowledge in crowds and communities, and the implications for future knowledge practices.

Tales from the Zooniverse or, What to do with a million scientists

panel examines online learning through comparing and contrasting the MOOC format with traditional online strategies. In the last few years MOOCs have achieved a great deal of attention in higher education. While addressing the issue of scale, there is much debate over how well they satisfy learning effectiveness, satisfaction, and overall quality. This panel examines online learning through comparing and contrasting the MOOC format with traditional online strategies. The discussion will focus on both quantitative metrics related to learning outcomes and research based, best practices in the literature.

Facing the Crowd: Past, Present, and Furtures of Digital Labor

Interview with Tom Steinberg on the topics of his talk "There Ain't No 'e' in PPE - How do we fill the digital skills gap at the top levels of government and politics?"

Interview with Matthew McGregor of Blue State Digital on the topics covered in his seminar "Digital strategy, social media and elections".

Interview with Beth Noveck on receiving an internet and society award at the OII Internet Awards 2014. Beth Noveck discusses the work of NYU's Governance Lab (which she directs), and the role of data in opening up government. She starts by discussing the origins of her interest in open government, democratisation, and political culture. She then discusses how opening up government data can translate into positive outcomes -- in terms of delivery of services, greater transparency, and strategies for collaborative goverment-citizen solutions -- and also how easy/difficult it is in practice to open and promote cultural change in government. She discusses how our notion of citizenship needs to change: we need a more active conception of citizenship, with citizens regarded as cocreators and participants, rather than simply monitors of government. Working in both the academic and policy worlds, Beth closes by emphasising the importance of being academically rigorous and evidence-based, while also engaging with the real world; that is, having an impact on policy and the running of institutions, and doing academic work quickly and well, with "real-world urgency". We should consider not just what we 'can' do with new media to promote a stronger democratic culture, but also what we 'should' be doing.

Interview with Laura Bates on receiving an internet and society award at the OII Internet Awards 2014. Laura Bates discusses the origins of the Everyday Sexism project, its intended audience, and the early difficulties she faced when talking about the problem of the normalisation of sexism and getting people to acknowledge its existence. She discusses the irony that the Internet can be used both as a medium to enable people to join together to promote positive social change, but also to intimidate women (eg through trolling). She discusses what we can do to control trolling and sexual harassment, such as social media companies putting the safety of the user at the centre of their policies; government making sure that people are prosecuted for illegal behaviours such as making death threats (even when it 'only' takes place online); what we can do individually to speak out against unacceptable behaviour; and the important role of education in schools at a young age to combat the normalisation of sexism and violence against women. She finishes by discussing the future of the everyday sexism project; whether the tide is turning (she notes a massive increase in men writing in to say they didn't realise the scale of the problem, and women writing to say they didn't realise they could speak out..), or whether there will be as great a need for the project in ten years' time as now.

Interview with Dame Stephanie Shirley on receiving a lifetime achievement award at the OII Internet Awards 2014. Dame Stephanie Shirley, the OII's founding donor, discusses her early career as founder and Chief Executive of software company, Xansa plc. She discusses organisational and early feminist culture, the role of women in IT / STEM (and how to encourage greater involvement), and entrepreneurship and social consciousness, particularly in relation to her important role as a philanthropist. She closes with thoughts on the future of the Oxford Internet Institute.

Interview with Barry Wellman on receiving a lifetime achievement award at the OII Internet Awards 2014. Barry Wellman discusses his early work on urban sociology and social networks in the city, and describes how this fascination with the evolution of community relationships shaped his scholarship. He offers insights into the concept of 'networked individualism' as it plays out across different spheres of our lives, particularly in networked work, and sets a research agenda for the next stage of his remarkable career.

The value of not knowing something illuminates some basic assumptions about knowledge and allows us to ask a series of interesting questions about how the information society will develop.  Our relationship with knowledge is an uneasy one. As we progress the cost of acquiring knowledge seems to be sinking, and the choice of what knowledge to pursue becomes more pronounced. We can imagine a world in which we could find out a whole range of things, at a moderate cost, but will choose not to because we believe that it would be wrong to attempt to know those things. That would be consistent with how knowledge has been viewed over the centuries, and would require us to develop a sense of when it is morally defensible to choose ignorance over knowledge. The value of not knowing something illuminates some basic assumptions about knowledge and allows us to ask a series of interesting questions about how the information society will develop. This talk will examine a number of ways in which this tension can play out.

Tim Wu will discuss the science of attention, the history of the attention industries, and some of the harms caused by overharvesting. He will also propose a model of attention sovereignty of importance for the future. Rich or poor, man, woman or child, each of us has 168 hours per week: it is how we use that time that differentiates us. Yet we seem to live in an era where the daily demands made on our time and attention are greater than ever before. This is due both to advances in information technologies, and also the rise of Internet business models that depend on the sale of human attention. In this talk, Tim Wu will discuss the science of attention, the history of the attention industries, and some of the harms caused by overharvesting. He will also propose a model of attention sovereignty of importance for the future.

This talk aims to provide a philosophical framework through which the current emphasis on data-intensive biology can be studied and understood. Over the last two decades, online databases, digital visualization tools and automated data analysis have become key tools to cope with the increasing scale and diversity of scientifically relevant information that is being accumulated (the so-called ‘big data’). Within the biological and biomedical sciences, digital access to data has revolutionized research methods and ways of doing science, thus also challenging how life is researched and understood. Prominent scientists have characterized this shift as leading to a new, ‘data-intensive’ paradigm for research, encompassing innovative ways to produce, store, disseminate and interpret data. This talk aims to provide a philosophical framework through which the current emphasis on data-intensive biology, and more generally the role played by data in scientific inquiry, can be studied and understood. To achieve this, I focus on what I call data journeys: the ways in which scientific data are disseminated across a multiplicity of contexts in order to function as evidence for knowledge claims. As I will show, the more widely data are disseminated and re-used, the more significant their epistemic role is deemed to be. To be transformed into knowledge, scientific data need to be ordered, labelled and packaged to make them portable – that is, capable of being picked up and transported across different sites. In this talk, I focus on the role of online databases as key sites for data packaging, whose structure and functioning strongly affects how existing data about organisms are transformed into new claims about the biological world. Building on a close study of the material conditions under which data travel, I then put forward three main arguments: (1) portability is a defining characteristic of data as a component of scientific inquiry, which crucially depends on the specific domains through which data are made to move; (2) what counts as data in the first place depends on the procedures and contexts through which researchers attribute evidential value to objects and processes; and (3) the fruitfulness of data-intensive science can thus be understood as resulting from the skilful use of information technologies to articulate and multiply the contexts in which different types of data can be organised and interpreted.

Tim Unwin focuses on current work at the CTO, where his own personal contributions focus especially on the use of ICTs by people with disabilities. Many of those engaged in using information and communication technologies for development in the early 2000s saw them as being an opportunity through which profoundly different social, economic and political structures could be created, that would in some way generate a fairer, more equitable global system. Recent rapid expansion in the use of mobile technologies and social media has convinced a newer generation of researchers and practitioners that this project is still on track. In this seminar, Tim Unwin will draw on his experiences at the boundaries between theory and practice, to explore whether such optimism is indeed justified. Themes that he will (probably) address include notions of empowerment, poverty, political violence, and challenges of implementing effective ‘development’ interventions. The seminar will draw particularly on some of his current work at the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation, where his own personal contributions focus especially on the use of ICTs by people with disabilities as well as on skills development and entrepreneurship, but he will also take a longer term perspective that builds (almost invisibly) on his early work as a medieval historical geographer.