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Update 4September - December 2011

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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 estab-lished, 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.

The keynote speaker was Dr. Franz Josef Rader-macher, 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 Fo-rum Europe (Vienna) and a member of the Club of Rome. He spoke on visions of how technology will influence and shape the future.

Photo: Alexey Sidorenko

Update 4 • September - December 2011

BarCampTwitter 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 representa-tional party democracy and participa-tive democracy meet each other in the internet?” is there a spot? #netreality11

@fraukeatschool “Wikipedia funk-tioniert doch super, warum gibt es das nicht auch für den pol. Prozeß?” #net-reality11

@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

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 every-thing 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

Photo: Bertelsmann Foundation

Update 4 • September - December 2011

Global Governance

Demographic Change and Migration

Economic Globalization

Security

Natural Resources and Biodiversity

Climate Change and Biodiversity

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

Photo: Bertelsmann Foundation

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.”

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.”

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!”

Visit us online at: www.futurechallenges.org www.bfna.org

For futher information on Future Challenges and the Megatrends Project, contactJonathan 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

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”