StumbleUponThe event features dozens of debates, panels and talks. The full line-up is (of course) on the event's site. Highlights for NMK readers include:
Caught in the Web: Who controls the internet?
The internet is increasingly seen as a threat in need of containment: a threat to public morality, to children, to privacy and even to knowledge itself. Lobby groups campaign for the removal of offensive pages, businesses worry about copyright piracy (while others worry about corporations monopolising the web), and, amid fears of terrorism, home secretary Jacqui Smith announced at the beginning of this year that the internet is ‘not a no go area for government’. The internet is fast becoming a place where different groups clamour for digital authority, and control. So how free should the internet be, and who gets to decide?
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A Brave New World: Are the emerging economies the new technological innovators?
QQ, Tudou, Mixi and CyWorld are not familiar names in the West, but these websites based in China, Japan and South Korea are more popular, profitable and technically innovative than their Western counterparts, MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. South Korea and Japan are the most advanced internet markets in the world, with China and India rapidly catching up. Yet we in the West seem oblivious to the development of such technologies in Asia. The dynamic emerging economies of the East are conveniently pigeonholed as the world’s new manufacturing base (China) or a powerhouse for service industries (India), while the high-end ‘knowledge economy’ is still seen as the preserve of the West. Is it time to revise this view and hail the innovative character of the rising East?
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