Il lavoro di ricerca continua e la Digital Age disegna ogni giorno nuovi scenari di cambiamento.
Di fronte alle trasformazioni epocali che stanno stravolgendo il modo con cui oggi si fa informazione e comunicazione, proviamo a ipotizzare punti di arrivo.
Come sarà l'informazione tra dieci anni?
E quale scenario mediatico si va definendo sotto il nostro sguardo?
Are you an entrepreneur, policy maker or developer making public sector
information and the political process more accessible?
Google and Personal Democracy Forum are teaming up to offer registration fellowships that cover the full forum registration costs, plus two days lodging, in order to enable twenty well-qualified, creative public sector entrepreneurs to attend PdF's first conference in Europe, at the Torre Agbar in Barcelona, November 20-21.
Fellows will be chosen based on evidence of how you've turned ideas into action and into new applications of technology in the political or civic arena.
Durante il corso della modernità abbiamo troppo sacrificato il diritto all’ombra
pesante del potere politico, lo abbiamo ridotto a una misura che non gli è
congeniale, si è dimenticato troppo la sua inabdicabile socialità e lo si è
fatto specchio dello Stato, ossia di un apparato di potere. Oggi che lo
statalismo moderno è in crisi profonda; oggi che la dimensione economica sta
prendendo il sopravvento su quella politica e che sempre più siamo chiamati a
considerare un orizzonte globale; oggi che, come giuristi, stiamo contemplando
l’erosione ogni giorno più squassante del massiccio sistema delle fonti
edificato con pietra forte dai nostri padri ma simile ormai a un castello di
sabbia; oggi, noi dobbiamo prendere coscienza che è giunta l’ora di un recupero
che restituisca il diritto alla storia, ossia al movimento e al mutamento,
rendèndolo dimensione di una civiltà in cammino e toglièndogli quella
separatezza e quel distacco conferìtigli dal marchio a fuoco del potere.
—Paolo Grossi, Uno storico del diritto alla ricerca di se stesso
Si sente spesso parlare di influenza H1N1, virus A, vaccini e cose collaterali, da mesi e in toni francamente allarmisti.3 September 2009
Homophobic attacks on the rise in Italy
In the wake of three serious homophobic attacks in Rome over last 10 days, Amnesty International is concerned by mounting evidence pointing to the rise of intolerance towards lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Italy and calls for effective investigations and preventive measures.
On 22 August 2009, a gay couple were reportedly assaulted by a far-right activist nicknamed “little swastika” after leaving a nightclub in Rome, and being observed kissing in public. One of the victims was allegedly stabbed with a knife and required life-saving surgery. The alleged assailant was initially released on bail, before taken back into custody pending trial.
On 29 August 2009, another nightclub in Rome which organises a well-known weekly gay night was subject to an attempted arson attack, when a window was
broken and inflammable liquid ignited. Nobody was hurt, as the building was closed for refurbishment at the time and the flames were rapidly extinguished by
the fire-brigade.
On 2 September 2009, two large fire-crackers were thrown by two skin-heads into a crowd of passers-by on San Giovanni in Laterano Street in Rome. The street is well-known for being popular with Rome’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Fortunately, only one person was slightly injured. The two attackers were able to escape and a police investigation has been opened. Several other homophobic attacks have been reported in the last few weeks in Rome and other towns across Italy.
No official statistics on hate crimes targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are retained. However, Arcigay, Italy’s leading gay rights
organization, which documents homophobic incidents, has recorded as many reported incidents in the first eight months of 2009 as in the whole of 2008.
Against this background, Amnesty International calls on the Italian authorities to ensure that crimes targeting individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity are effectively investigated and that anyone reasonably identified as responsible to be brought to justice. The Italian authorities should also place greater emphasis on combating homophobic attitudes and ensuring greater security for lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender people.
Writing as a first, basic and nonnegotiable step. Writing to think from the perspective of identity and individuality. Writing to be more, to be the voice of many, to bring together intentions, mend identities. Writing to be read, talked about, linked, distributed. Reading to transform the individual to the collective, the personal to the communal, to rebuild a collective story. Reading, because – as Harold Bloom writes – “only attentive and constant reading provides and fully develops an independent personality.”
Democracy needs voters but, more than that, readers. Reading can wage war against the submission to power, to the establishment, to injustice. Reading is at the front line for freedom. Reading the forbidden, the censored, the omitted. We need to build an alliance of readers for social change. Technology 2.0 allows us to bring back the power of words, discourse and debate because they are the raw material of networks and “conversation”. People made real in digital life in the form of twitters, feeds, posts, comments, links, text messages. People who are words. Words that are networks.
I will focus on the human connection to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—a vast accumulation of floating garbage located within the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. This swirling current keeps marine debris, mainly plastic, floating together in what amounts to an enormous maritime landfill. [...] This summer, Captain Charles Moore, who is credited with discovering the Garbage Patch, will take a tenth anniversary voyage to collect fish samples from the patch in order to determine the levels of toxins in their tissues. From this we’ll be able to discover whether the fish we eat is contaminated with toxic plastic pollutants.
I’ve been offered a space aboard the ship as the only journalist to chronicle this voyage. [...]
At the edges of knowledge — in the analysis and contextualization that journalists nowadays tell us is their real value — we want, need, can have, and expect transparency. Transparency puts within the report itself a way for us to see what assumptions and values may have shaped it, and lets us see the arguments that the report resolved one way and not another. Transparency — the embedded ability to see through the published draft — often gives us more reason to believe a report than the claim of objectivity did.
In fact, transparency subsumes objectivity. Anyone who claims objectivity should be willing to back that assertion up by letting us look at sources, disagreements, and the personal assumptions and values supposedly bracketed out of the report.
Grillo ha persino ragione, quando ironizza sulla risposta da legulei che il partito democratico ha dato alla sua richiesta di tesseramento. Per due ragioni, una seria e l'altra meno seria. [...] Quella seria concerne invece l'indirizzo a cui Grillo si rivolge col suo Vaffa. Lo ha spiegato per l'ennesima volta ieri sul suo cliccatissimo blog: «in Italia i partiti sono solo i celebranti della liturgia del potere» e «rappresentano sempre più spesso la schiuma della società». Di contro al vecchiume corrotto e oligarchico rappresentano dai partiti e dai loro leader (tutti – indistintamente – salvo Di Pietro che però le primarie non le ha introdotte ancora e a cui, chissà perché, Grillo non se la sente di contendere la guida del partito), sta la nuova era della democrazia partecipativa, dei referendum, delle leggi scritte sotto dettatura popolare, della «votazione diretta del candidato», della fine della delega in bianco: stanno insomma i miracoli resi possibili dalla Rete, dove Grillo prospera. Ma se questo è il profetico messaggio, quel che il PD deve temere non è certo che Grillo prenda la tessera, e faccia così il contrario di quel che va predicando circa l'inutilità dei partiti, ma che non sia forte abbastanza, nella base democratica stordita da un paio di anni di partito non liquido ma in liquefazione, la convinzione e l'orgoglio con cui va difeso tanto il sistema delle istituzioni rappresentative quanto il concorso dei partiti a determinare con metodo democratico la politica nazionale, come detta la Costituzione.
