OII Webcasts

A public panel discussion focusing on the significance and impact of the Internet on interpersonal relationships.

At an event to mark the launch of the International Journal of Digital Television, the speakers ask: After digital switchover will we still have television as such? Will it still need special regulation? Will we have gained or lost, socially and culturally?

Digital technology empowers us to find and share information as never before, but we do not always foresee the consequences of these new powers. Can the dangers of everlasting digital memory be avoided? Can we reintroduce our capacity to forget?

Michael Froomkin discusses how largely well-intentioned political and legal reactions to the highest-profile risks of ICT creates a danger of perhaps killing the goose that is giving us golden eggs of innovation, decentralization, and personal empowerment.

Manuel Castells draws on arguments from his book Communication Power in discussing the structural causes and implications of the 2008 economic crisis, and in claiming that we are moving, without much understanding, towards a new form of global capitalism.

Duncan Watts discusses how the Internet is beginning to lift a long-time constraint of social science research on emergent collective behaviour: the difficulty of measuring interactions between people, at scale, over time, while also observing behaviour.

Robert Hahn discusses his recent paper responding to the US Federal Communications Commission's request for guidance in designing a national US broadband plan

What are the most important milestones in the evolution of social media? What factors have shaped their successes and limitations?