Scott,

I found our discussion on social movements online and offline quite thought provoking and I was wondering do you think internet activism can amount to longterm offline impacts or would you say its one instrument of many?

Secondly, brief discussion on net neutrality in the US got me thinking about the extent to which big IT companies are changing (if at all) to move towards digital commons or is this an area which is being led by individuals (or groups) only?

Many thanks for your time, thought-provoking questions and support Scot.

Best,
Akito



Hi Akito,

I enjoy our thought-provoking conversations as well. Good questions.

To your first question, I think the so-called Twitter Revolutions include these good examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Revolution. It seems like one distinguishing characteristic of revolution in this context is when a despotic politician is deposed, compared with just unrest informed by such distributed social media discourses. Do you agree with the interpretations of "Twitter revolution" in this Wikipedia entry? It's one important instrument among many.

To your second question, I think social movements are going to try to help define how big companies will move toward digital commons (and not just how some governments and university professors do so, among many others such as Creative Commons itself).

How will this "ecosystem" look in a few years? (Have companies by way of comparison benefitted from public libraries, CC Wikipedia or CC MIT OCW in the U.S.? I hope some will benefit from CC MIT OCW).

Cheers,
Scott


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"Information Technology, the Network Society and the Global University" Oct. 25, 2014