The priority nodes in this
project are the conceptual base of the Space-Network’s and
the Group’s activities. They have been planned for a three-year
period, son that some of them will be activated every year.
The project Space-Network of Digital Practices and Cultures will define every year an activity programme open
to the entire university community around a series of priority reflection
nodes to be defined by the group’s members.
The selection of these priority
nodes has been made based on their ability to:
- Raise the interest
of the university community in general and students in particular.
- Facilitate the introduction
of digital practices and cultures into the educational setting in an
indirect manner.
The working group has defined
the following priority nodes to be addressed during the first three-year
period:
- Identity:
will address the formation of both the individual web identity and the
collective one. In the individual web identity the following will be
studied: nicks, avatars, IPs, different forms of anonymity and control,
and especially, the dialectics of gender, race and condition identity
signs, which open the individual to the group and to e-inclusion or
e-exclusion dynamics through the new technologies.
- Emerging networks,
communities and forms of social organisation: will study networks
and their rationales, social interaction in digital environments and
in particular, the new types of relations between individuals and groups..
It will observe the functioning of groups, social networks and virtual
communities; the potential emergence of the “wisdom of crowds”,
the “collective intelligence”, the “alchemy of crowds”, the
social web or the web 2.0; exploring their potential and internal dynamics
to find out how they can be incorporated into university community focused
on the construction of knowledge, being this their main shared interest,
thanks to both direct and virtual relations.
- Expanded University:
will focus on the integration of the network operation model into the
university’s practices. This implies working in the development of
innovative knowledge production and dissemination educational practices,
as well as practices adapted to the education of active citizens in
a world in which knowledge changes massively and at an increasing pace.
It also includes managing change processes aimed at innovating in organisation
of production and labour relations of the university’s teaching and
support staff. Its purpose is therefore to work in the expansion of
the borders of the university institutions – at all levels – within
a digital culture.
- Ethics in digital
practices: UNESCO points out in its report Towards Knowledge
Societies, the
need for a “new ethics of knowledge based on sharing and cooperation”
and indicates that “universal access to knowledge must remain the
pillar that supports the transition to knowledge societies”. On this
basis the following issues will be addressed: development ethics and
technological capital as knowledge and economic capital, emergence of
open code software and culture and Procommons as opposed to privative
technologies, new forms of authorship, intellectual property and copyright
required in the present context or the right to information and access
to knowledge of citizens.
- Design thinking:
within the digital culture the design of interfaces is becoming a metadiscipline
that beyond operating as a set of strategies and methodologies applied
to the conception of tangible products or visual forms has become a
fundamental driver for the so-called “innovation” and acts as an
integrated creative process for the resolution of complex problems.
Ultimately, this research line aspires to reflect on the thinking process
of “the form of ideas”, in the words of Joan Costa.
- Creation:
the creative use of the most relevant aspects of the new technologies
in the field of the different contemporary artistic practices, which
resort to digital elements, collective creation, the role of images
and the fusion of languages and media in the digital age, the polyhedronic
nature of such practices and uses which are the bases for the digital
artistic cultures generated in contemporary societies.
- Participatory
media: as opposed to the classic pyramidal structures of communication,
the Web has fostered the development of horizontal structures and micromedia,
which in turn have transformed the role of users. We have gone from
an opposition between broadcasters and receivers to a situation in which
we all can become content receptors, producers and broadcasters. Citizen
and participatory journalism, more democratic practices in terms of
use of information, a reality that has been socially negotiated through
the media as the most important principle of reality in everyday life
are some of the topics addressed in this node.
- Territory, place
and space; urban space/public sphere: cities are changing at all
levels. Use of space is changing since the activities that can take
place in them are being modified based on the introduction of new habits
derived from the use of new technological devices. Simultaneously, new
ways of understanding the concept of “public space” promoted by
the dominant economic models, the management of intangibles and invisibles
such as the radio-electric space or the application of new technological
devices for control and surveillance are leading to new forms of “making
city”.
This identification of nodes
must be understood as a starting point subject to a constant review,
evaluation and evolution by the Group, with an eye on the newest, potential
or future trends, since we can expect that in forthcoming years other
potential issues will be identified and included into future annual
plans.
Around these priority reflection
nodes, every year the Digital Practices and Cultures Space-Network will:
- organise an open
programme of academic activities targeted at the university community.
- generate gradually
a contacts and specialists network in line with UNIA to support, sustain
and position this university as a social reference in digital culture.
- hold a series of
internal professional research meetings to serve as core of its
in-depth reflection.
- produce
audiovisual material, websites, e-publications and other digital
contents, which will contribute to disseminate and establish UNIA’s
activity in the digital practices and cultures scenario at international
level.
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Nodes
