Next Generation Internet
PROJECT OVERVIEW: The Next Generation Internet is an initiative launched by the European Commission to re-imagine and re-engineer the internet through synergies between technology innovation and societal values.
MY ROLE: I have contributed to its early stages through the NGI Move project (2017-2019), organising and moderating a series of workshops and panels, including at Transmediale, Future Fest, Kinnernet, 4YFN.
WHY IT MATTERS: The business models behind the digital economy created an imbalanced situation where value is accumulated in the hands of few companies, privacy is in constant threat and citizens have little agency over both their and their digital presence. Advocating for a more distributed and transparent internet means fighting for human rights and equality.
ZOOM ON…”Towards a collective intelligence for Europe”
The publication “A better place: towards a collective intelligence for Europe” was presented at the European Parliament on March 22, 2019, in the framework of the NGI event 30 Years of the Web: where do we go next?
My curatorial effort in putting together the text and the interviews is described in the excerpt below:
It is undeniable that we are navigating troubled waters. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that humanity is simply running towards self-destruction (which might actually be a good thing for our host planet). However, rather than focusing on technocentric predictions and easy demonisation of big corporations, this publication proposes radical systemic thinking along with pragmatic viable alternatives. Too much collective energy is invested in predicting the future and running after the latest technology trend or, the other way round, trying to get back to the world before digital technology. By refusing to depict humanity’s role in this era as a purely negative one and by highlighting instead alternative versions of our society, we refuse to be victims of history and act on a self-fulfilling prophecy of annihilation. “A better place” is a probable future where technology, humanity and ecology are balanced, a working concept for rethinking the historical time we are living in and for assembling visions and solutions that can lead us towards a liveable future.
Zoom on… “A millennials’ narrative”
Together with digital antrophologist Jennifer Veldman, I have organised a series of workshops on Millennials’ relationship with technology, looking into new models for agency and collaboration.
Why Millennials?
When changes are happening faster than our possibility to adapt to it as a society, in order to reflect and build on a better digital future, we need to take a pause in the flux of the events and look at how we arrived here – as individuals, and society. The Millennial generation is the key between these two. Born in an era mostly defined by analogue systems, their formative years are defined and aligned with the digital revolution. Born in, and brought up with the values, of the analogue world, remembering the actual experience comes with great difficulty. Millennials, being the first digital natives, are the embodiment of the merge of values of an analogue and a digital world. This key embodiment is what makes the Millennial narrative of utmost importance in envisioning a framework for a fair, sustainable and human-centric digital future.
