No intention to "shoot the messenger," Clemencia, but anyone thinking
about going to this conference should probably pay attention to the
technophilic not-so-fine print, which is basically that technology is
the unquestionably positive answer to world problems, and any other
interpretation is "bleak." It doesn't seem especially consistent with
OURMEDIA approaches. And, keynote speakers are from Infosys and
Intel? This could be the THEIRMEDIA conference:-)

Anyway, see, for example, these sections of the conference web site:

***Communities
The earlier information and communications technologies of modernity
centralised power, knowledge and culture. They were heavy on plant
and physical infrastructure - the printing presses, the transmission
stations and the transport and distribution systems that only the
corporation or the state could afford. They were centralised, driven
by economies of (large) scale and dominated on a day-to-day basis by
those with economic resources, political power and elite cultural
networks.

The new digital technologies are free or cheap, instantaneous and
global. They are decentralised and distributed. And so, it is argued
that they open out and provide broader access to the means of
production and communication of meaning. They are the bases for an
electronic democracy, participatory design and communities of
practice. They allow a myriad of cultures, interests and knowledge
communities to flourish. Or at, least, this is one interpretation. In
bleaker views, they add a digital divide to older historical
cleavages of inequality; they daze us into passivity; they place our
every movement under surveillance; they enforce a sedentary
compliance.

Learners
There is little doubt that 'e-learning' is destined to become a
larger part of the experience of learning at school, in universities,
on the job, at home - indeed, lifelong and lifewide learning.
Technology is now a central concern of education, not only from the
point of view of preparing students for a world of work where
networked computers are pervasive, but also from the point of view of
community participation and citizenship. Learners who are excluded
from the new information spaces, will clearly be economically,
socially and culturally disadvantaged.

At its best, e-learning is a refreshingly new medium with a
pedagogically new message. However, as the critics of e-learning
rightly point out, much of what passes for e-learning is lock step,
mechanical and individualised (one user/one screen), reflecting and
reproducing pedagogies that are best dubious and at worst regressive.
On the other hand, a more optimistic view notes the capacity of the
new information and communication technologies to transform learning
relationships. Instead of being the recipients of transmitted
knowledge (syllabuses, textbooks, 'information' resources),
institutions of learning might become places where teachers and
learners develop knowledge banks, and where traditional classrooms,
dominated by teacher talk, are replaced by open learning in which
groups of students work autonomously and collaboratively on knowledge
projects within a structured 'content management' environment.***








At 10:52 AM -0500 9/11/05, Rodriguez, Clemencia wrote:
>English below.
>
>Espannol: el siguiente mensaje es sobre la Conferencia en
>Tecnologia, Conocimiento y Sociedad que se va a realizar en
>Hyderabad, India, del 12 al 15 de diciembre, 2005. Es una
>oportunidad interesante porque en justo en seguida de la conferencia
>de OURMedia en Bangalore, India. Sin embargo creemos que la
>conferencia sera exclusivamente en ingles.
>
>***
>English:
>
>THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON TECHNOLOGY, KNOWLEDGE AND SOCIETY
>Hyderabad, India, 12-15 December 2005
><http://www.Technology-Conference.com>http://www.Technology-Conference.com
>
>Following the success of the inaugural International Conference on
>Technology, Knowledge and Society held at the University of
>California Berkeley, USA, we are pleased to announce the second
>conference, to be held in one of the emerging IT centres of the
>world, Hyderabad.
>

--
Lisa McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Mass Communication & Women's Studies
Editor, Feminist Media Studies
Director of Graduate Studies, M.A. Program in Mass Communication
Union for Democratic Communications Representative,
World Summit on the Information Society

Mass Communication
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