“Are we going to continue on the road and just allow the governments to do more and more and more control - more and more surveillance? Or are we going to set up something like a Magna Carta for the world wide web and say, actually, now it's so important, so much part of our lives, that it becomes on a level with human rights?”
"Unless we have an open, neutral internet we can rely on without worrying about what's happening at the back door, we can't have open government, good democracy, good healthcare, connected communities and diversity of culture. It's not naive to think we can have that, but it is naive to think we can just sit back and get it."
Tim Berners Lee on BBC Radio, Mar 2014
The Enlightenment movement of the 18th Century, marked a shift in individual-state-enterprise relationships, today the Digital Enlightenment movement works to better understand the ways in which individuals, governments and enterprises are redefining their relationship through the use of technology.
The theme of this year’s conference is: the individual (in her many societal roles) in relation to the ever increasing dimensions of the technological (digital) environment. We bring together a range of views: technologists, anthropologists, engineers, social scientists, entrepreneurs, designers, policy makers and leaders of civil society organisations in order to better understand how humans engage with digital life and which options emerge.
Given the rapid pace at which non-anticipated technological innovations develop and swiftly integrate in peoples’ lives, new ways of thinking and talking about the role of ‘the digital’ are required, thus allowing people to have a complete and correct understanding of what their real options are and to help develop meaningful forms of accountability, transparency and regulation of data processing, that can keep pace with the ‘bit per second’ lives of individuals today.
Digital Enlightenment Forum aims, through these new ways of thinking and talking about “The Citizen – Negotiating life in The Digital World” to develop proposals for how best to move forward. The inter-relation between individuals and the technological environment will define the future organization of living, working and citizenship.
To download the programme: click here.
After two successful Forums in Luxembourg (2012) and Brussels (2013), we will address in this Forum these inter-relations and their consequences.
Sponsored by: Science Foundation Ireland and Fáilte Ireland.
Additional Remarks
The conference theme follows on from the papers collected in the Digital Enlightenment Yearbook 2014, in which the issue of how individuals relate to their networks and wider society in a data-driven world, was explored from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including computer science, law, history, information management, information security, sociology and statistics. The papers show that there is scope for both optimism and pessimism.
Event Format
Wednesday afternoon: we start with presentations and discussions on running EC projects that relate to the topics of discussions/debates on Thursday. Of course this may stimulate participants to meet and discuss ideas about future projects.
Thursday: will show a mix of keynote speakers and parallel sessions culminating in conclusions that aim to make a real step forward.