[Reader-list] Essay Review: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause

[Nilofar Ansher]

*Event: Essay Review: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause

Date: 17 - 26 February 2012

Who: The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore and HIVOS Knowledge
Programme, The Netherlands

About Digital AlterNatives with a Cause:
*Hivos and the Centre for Internet and Society have consolidated their
three year knowledge inquiry into the field of youth, technology and change
in a four book collective “Digital AlterNatives with a cause?”.

This collaboratively produced collective, edited by Nishant Shah and Fieke
Jansen, asks critical and pertinent questions about theory and practice
around 'digital revolutions' in a post MENA (Middle East - North Africa)
world. It works with multiple vocabularies and frameworks and produces
dialogues and conversations between digital natives, academic and research
scholars, practitioners, development agencies and corporate structures to
examine the nature and practice of digital natives in emerging contexts
from the Global South.

The monthly event invites readers from around the world to pick any one
essay for review and submit it in the week beginning 17th to 26th of a
month. For the February event, submissions can be made during the same
dates. *
*
The books can be download online:

*Book 1: To Be: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download
here<http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook1/at_download/file>
*
* *

The first part, *To Be*, looks at the questions of digital native
identities. Are digital natives the same everywhere? What does it mean to
call a certain population ‘Digital Natives”? Can we also look at people who
are on the fringes – Digital Outcasts, for example? Is it possible to
imagine technology-change relationships not only through questions of
access and usage but also through personal investments and transformations?
The contributions help chart the history, explain the contemporary and give
ideas about what the future of technology mediated identities is going to
be.
*Book 2: To Think: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download
here<http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook2/at_download/file>
** *

In the second section, *To Think,* the contributors engage with new
frameworks of understanding the processes, logistics, politics and
mechanics of digital natives and causes. Giving fresh perspectives which
draw from digital aesthetics, digital natives’ everyday practices, and
their own research into the design and mechanics of technology mediated
change, the contributors help us re-think the concepts, processes and
structures that we have taken for granted. They also nuance the ways in
which new frameworks to think about youth, technology and change can be
evolved and how they provide new ways of sustaining digital natives and
their causes.

*Book 3: To Act: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download
here<http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook3/at_download/file>
*

*To Act* is the third part that concentrates on stories from the ground.
While it is important to conceptually engage with digital natives, it is
also, necessary to connect it with the real life practices that are
reshaping the world. Case-studies, reflections and experiences of people
engaged in processes of change, provide a rich empirical data set which is
further analysed to look at what it means to be a digital native in
emerging information and technology contexts.
* *

*Book 4: To Connect : Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download
here<http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook4/at_download/file>
*

The last section, *To Connect*, recognises the fact that digital natives do
not operate in vacuum. It might be valuable to maintain the distinction
between digital natives and immigrants, but this distinction does not mean
that there are no relationships between them as actors of change. The
section focuses on the digital native ecosystem to look at the complex
assemblage of relationships that support and are amplified by these new
processes of technologised change.

We see this book as entering into a dialogue with the growing discourse and
practice in the field of youth, technology and change. The ambition is to
look at the digital (alter)natives as located in the Global South and the
potentials for social change and political participation that is embedded
in their interactions through and with digital and internet technologies.
We hope that the book furthers the idea of a context-based digital native
identity and practice, which challenges the otherwise universalist
understanding that seems to be the popular operative right now. We see this
as the beginning of a knowledge inquiry, rather than an end, and hope that
the contributions in the book will incite new discussions, invoke
cross-sectorial and disciplinary debates, and consolidate knowledges about
digital (alter)natives and how they work in the present to change our
futures*.*

**
Reviews are published on the website of The Centre for Internet & Society.
Previously reviewed essays can be found here: http://cis-india.org/
digital-natives/media-coverage

For submission guidelines, please get in touch with: Nilofar Ansher,
Community Manager: nilofar.ansh at gmail.com <goog_1049090953>
nilofar.ansh at gmail.com
 <http://www.facebook.com/events/328938503815637/>--
*(Ms) Nilofar Shamim Ansher
*Community Manager,
Digital Natives with a Cause Project
The Centre for Internet & Society
Bangalore, India
http://www.cis-india.org <http://www.g3ict.org/> |
https://twitter.com/#!/cis_india <http://www.e-accessibilitytoolkit.org/>
Email: digitalnatives at cis-india.org