Q4 Final - Bertelsmann Foundation

Linking Citizens. Spreading Knowledge.
with support from
Update 4
September - December 2011
BarCamp: How the Internet Changes Our Reality
by Ole Wintermann
From #solidarity to #occupy, we’re seeing the
power of Internet-enabled political action all around
us. Individuals can organize quickly, they can unify
around ideas, and they can find and spread
information (and misinformation) with lightning
speed. It’s obvious that virtual platforms can have
real-world impact: from the Maghreb to Main Street,
Benghazi to Boston, to Syria to Wall Street—pick
whatever you like best. The use of Internet-based
tools as catalysts for political activism is well established, and its momentum is growing.
On November 28 we hosted an all-day BarCamp
in Berlin to debate the questions: How can we use
these new forces in our global society to address
humanity’s chronic problems? What are the
limitations of these tools and movements? How can
decision-makers and others use these new tools to
cope with our future challenges? Where do the
Internet and “real world” communities intersect and
share concerns about the same issues? How are
non-EU countries addressing this issue?
Barcamp participants led seven sessions that
featured debates on crowdsourcing, democracy and
governance, the Internet and the global economy,
and managing online data.
Photo: Alexey Sidorenko
The keynote speaker was Dr. Franz Josef Radermacher, head of the Research Institute for
Application Oriented Knowledge Processing in Ulm,
Germany. He is also president of the Economic
Senate e.V. (Bonn), vice president of Eco-Social Forum Europe (Vienna) and a member of the Club of
Rome. He spoke on visions of how technology will
influence and shape the future.
Update 4 • September - December 2011
BarCamp
Twitter
Stream
@olewin Follow our sessions on
futurechallenges.org/barcamp-berlin/
#netreality11 #fc_org
@sidorenko_intl #netreality11
@jancborchardt: visualisation is very
important in coping with the data
overload.
@globalicer “where do representational party democracy and participative democracy meet each other in the
internet?” is there a spot? #netreality11
@fraukeatschool “Wikipedia funktioniert doch super, warum gibt es das
nicht auch für den pol. Prozeß?” #netreality11
@globalicer Does social media help or
hurt political activism? A hype with no
effect behind it? #netreality11
@olewin Will #google and #facebook
survive the next 5 years? Discussion on
#netreality11 barcamp
@DCAnneliese Theme that keeps
popping up at #netreality11: the issue
of anonymity on the internet
@ JES412 And away we go with a
discussion on how ODC represents a
missed opportunity to engage social
media effectively
@DCAnneliese #netreality11 I think
a measure of the success of the #ows
movement will be the extent to which
politicians engage with OWS in 2012
elections
Photo: Bertelsmann Foundation
Review of “How Internet Changes Our Reality” BarCamp
by Alexy Sidorenko
The Internet has changed the way people organize their memories (and in
particular outsource it to Google spiders), organize themselves en masse
(thanks to Ushahidi developers for crowdmapping and to Egyptian activists
for Tahrir-like city planning), and do many other things. But can we say what
exactly has changed? Obviously we can feel a paradigm shift taking place,
but the question how to measure this shift remains unanswered.
Internet-driven phenomena such as new mechanisms of collaboration and
networked leaderless movements are complex and involve many drivers. As
a result, by the end of the BarCamp, the participants had discussed everything from “Occupy Wall Street” and the Tea Party movement to structuring
data chaos and crowdsourcing. But they were still unable to determine how
the success of digital movements in driving change could be measured.
A main reason for this lies in the difficulty of understanding what digital
movements actually are.
BarCamp Sessions
Internet and Democracy: Does Democracy Still Have a Future?
Structuring Data Chaos
Crowdsourcing
Can BarCamps Change the World?
Decentralizated Payments: How to Reform our Economic System
How the Internet Changes Realities
Digital Representatives: Online Democracy in Parliament
Update 4 • September - December 2011
Ten years on: Future Challenges bloggers on a post-9/11 world
Commentary from around the globe on a post-9/11 world compiled by Tom Fries
Ten years after the events of September 11, 2001, the Future Challenges authors reflect on
the ways in which their own experiences have been altered. For some, the fallout has been
strife and conflict. For others, the event always felt unnervingly irrelevant. And for some, it
changed their lives in subtle but pervasive ways.
Corina Murafa in Romania: “Public opinion, from journalists and politicians to citizens at
large, has simply shunned any alternative other than being America’s most faithful Eastern
ally, waging wars in Afghanistan and Iraq side by side with it, praising neo-conservatism and
denouncing any liberal, often anti-American speech as socialism with a guise.”
Peter Hagen in Jordan: “The wars in Afghanistan and, most sharply, Iraq have colored the
reception of those whose governments took part in them. Whatever my complex and
contradictory views on those wars, they have done more to diminish the way Americans and
their close allies are seen by the rest of the world than 9/11 itself.”
Patrick Corcoran in the USA: “The post-9-11 turn toward fear-mongering was not merely
the inevitable consequence of the emergence of a new threat. It was the conscious decision
of the political operators around George W. Bush, a decision made with enormous cynicism
and subsequently emulated by many in his party.”
Dominika Ricardi in Australia: “It is time our leaders started demonstrating the values that
we are proud to call Australian, such as ‘mateship’ and giving everyone, including Muslims,
‘a fair go.’”
Maria Farooq in Pakistan: “If religion and nationalism are so detrimental to humanity that
they can sway the hearts and minds of millions of people and provoke them to enmity and
bloodshed, then perhaps we are better off without any such philosophies or religions that
societies continuously push us to live by.”
Oscar Guarin in Brazil: “The political opportunity created by the international crusade
against terrorism was used by the Uribe government to amplify the danger represented by
the FARC.”
Demographic
Change and
Migration
Economic
Globalization
Global
Governance
Climate Change
and Biodiversity
Security
Bhumika Ghimire in Nepal: ”Love, understanding and mutual respect is the best way to
honor the victims on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.”
Artur Kacprzak in Poland: ”I am afraid America is losing this ‘War on Terror’. And it is not a
military but a cultural defeat.”
Kennedy Kachwanya in Kenya: ”This month, as the US and the world mark the 10th
anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States, I look at the impact of an event
which took place three years before that fateful day, in Nairobi, Kenya.”
Natural Resources
and Biodiversity
Delalorm Semabia in Ghana: ”The fear of the unknown by way of security and a little
resentment over the seemingly unjustified wars has tempered the love of ordinary
Ghanaians for the US. Nevertheless, a brother remains a brother!”
Update 4 • September - December 2011
Articles by Rockefeller Searchlight Partners
now on FutureChallenges.org
As a continuation of Future Challenges’ cooperation with the
Rockefeller Foundation, FutureChallenges.org has
begun to feature blog posts written by the Rockefeller
Foundation Searchlight Grantees. This network of worldwide
organizations produces frequent trend-scouting reports on
developing ideas and current issues in locations as diverse as
Nigeria and Singapore.
We look forward to continuing our partnership with these
international partners and reading their insights into global
trends. Below is a list of some of the Searchlight blog posts.
Visit FutureChallenges.org to read and comment on these and
many more Searchlight blog posts.
Posts include:
• Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy: “Sustainably Connecting Off-Grid Consumers”
• South Africa Node of the Millennium Project : “The Business Case for Mining whilst Managing the
Environment”
• African Center for Economic Transformation: “Two Innovative Ways of Improving Education: A
Nigerian Case Study”
• Noviscape: “Informal Mobility is Here to Stay”
• Strategic Foresight Group: “Housing for the Poor”
• Society for International Development : “Informal Trade in East Africa Will Face an ‘Efficiency Shock’”
• Intellecap: “Being Elderly in South Asia”
• Centre for Democracy and Development: “Non-State Actors and Transport Facilitation”
• Society for International Development: “Foresight: Three Scenarios Regarding Monetary Union”
• FORO Nacional/Internacional: “Law of Prior Consultation to Indigenous Peoples”
For futher information on Future Challenges and the Megatrends Project, contact
Jonathan Stevens • Director, Global Futures Project • +1 202 384 1994 • jonathan.stevens@bfna.org
Anneliese Guess • Project Manager, International Relations • +1 202 384 1995 • anneliese.guess@bfna.org
Visit us online at:
www.futurechallenges.org
www.bfna.org