Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

Where technology meets society at large.

At this event, we intend to share stories of technology implementations that affected society around us, and social norms that affected the course of technology.

We have stories of e-governance, electronic record keeping, and what it means for those without access; Indian copyright law and innovation in music; and celluloid, movies and the resultant shaping of society and culture. We’d love to hear more, perhaps on the application of technology to understand the human condition, or perhaps on the growing spread of personal communication technologies and the unexpected but undeniable shift in the landscape of mass media and governance.

Surely you’ve got a tale to narrate? A tale that escaped popular attention and deserves to be brought out and shared? A cautionary tale of how things may not always get better? Bring it to Barcamp. Help your fellow campers understand what it really means, beneath the surface of the narrative, and of how it affects our lives and what we should be prepared for.

For the regular Barcampers: this event may be somewhat different from what you may have come to expect. This time we’re not as interested in the tech itself as in what it means to the society that receives it. You’re welcome to continue to use the space for what you’re comfortable with, but requested to participate in expanding the presence and social impact of Barcamp, while retaining its technology flavour.

March 31st and April 1st, at the campus of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. Please tag your posts with “barcampbangalore3”.

Geert Lovink on blogging as the nihilist impulse:

… The eyeballs that once patiently looked at all reports and ads have gone on strike. According to the utopian blog philosophy, mass media are doomed. Their role will be taken over by “participatory media”. The terminal diagnosis has been made and it states: closed top-down organizations no longer work, knowledge cannot be “managed”, today’s work is collaborative and networked. However, despite continuous warning signs, the system successfully continues to (dys)function. Is top-down really on its way out? Where does the Hegelian certainty come from that the old-media paradigm will be overthrown? There is little factual evidence of this. And it is this state of ongoing affairs that causes nihilism, and not revolutions, to occur. …

Blogs bring on decay. Each new blog is supposed to add to the fall of the media system that once dominated the twentieth century. This process is not one of a sudden explosion. The erosion of the mass media cannot easily be traced in figures of stagnant sales and the declining readership of newspapers. In many parts of the world, television is still on the rise. What’s declining is the Belief in the Message. …

We’re faced with an “accomplished nihilism” (Gianni Vattimo) in that bloggers have understood that the fulfillment of nihilism is a fact. Gianni Vattimo argues that nihilism is not the absence of meaning but a recognition of the plurality of meanings; it is not the end of civilization but the beginning of new social paradigms, with blogging being one of them. Commonly associated with the pessimistic belief that all of existence is meaningless, nihilism would be an ethical doctrine that there are no moral absolutes or infallible natural laws and that “truth” is inescapably subjective. In media terms, we see this attitude translated into a growing distrust of the output of large commercial news organizations and the spin that politicians and their advisers produce. Questioning the message is no longer a subversive act of engaged citizens but the a priori attitude, even before the TV or PC has been switched on.

The full text is well worth reading.