The Borders of the Global Village

 

THE BORDERS OF THE GLOBAL VILLAGE

Guerilla?Internet: Using the Net to fight its own dominance
The?Internet?can be a subversive tool. It remains the only medium which gives scope – relatively inexpensively, and without the support of the gatekeepers ? for a lone voice to be heard. It is this unique characteristic that we have to nurture. The bigger players have the money, the clout, the physical strength and the social control to bludgeon their way through, but they do not have the flexibility, the ability to pop up and disappear at will, the speed of action or the elasticity to slip through the holes, that the well trained individual has. Given the important proviso of access, the Net is fast, cheap, and difficult to stop. It is the Net that we must use, to fight its own dominance.
Shahidul Alam is Jury-member of THE BOBs Deutsche Welle Blog Awards and speaks on the panel presented in cooperation with Deutsche Welle.

Author and DW journalist Cyrus Farivar offers food for thought in his book, ?The Internet of Elsewhere.? He writes, ?When the Internet arrives, it bumps up against various preexisting political, economic, social and cultural histories and contexts ? and often what comes out are rather surprising results.? That?s the backdrop for a discussion by the expert and BOBs juror Shahidul Alam, who explores complex intersections between the Internet and society by looking at the example of Bangladesh.
Keynote address at 6:00 pm at the re-publica, Berlin, at 6:00 pm. 3rd May 2012. STATION-Berlin
Luckenwalder Stra?e 4-6. 10963 Berlin
This panel is presented in cooperation with?Deutsche Welle.
Interview (in Bangla) by Debarati Guha
Questions for Abu Sufian?

 

Author: Shahidul Alam

Time Magazine Person of the Year 2018. A photographer, writer, curator and activist, Shahidul Alam obtained a PhD in chemistry before switching to photography. His seminal work “The Struggle for Democracy” contributed to the removal of General Ershad. Former president of the Bangladesh Photographic Society, Alam set up the Drik agency, Chobi Mela festival and Pathshala, South Asian Media Institute, considered one of the finest schools of photography in the world. Shown in MOMA New York, Centre Georges Pompidou, Royal Albert Hall and Tate Modern, Alam has been guest curator of Whitechapel Gallery, Winterthur Gallery and Musee de Quai Branly. His awards include Mother Jones, Shilpakala Award and Lifetime Achievement Award at the Dali International Festival of Photography. Speaker at Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, Oxford and Cambridge universities, TEDx, POPTech and National Geographic, Alam chaired the international jury of the prestigious World Press Photo contest. Honorary Fellow of Royal Photographic Society, Alam is visiting professor of Sunderland University in UK and advisory board member of National Geographic Society. John Morris, the former picture editor of Life Magazine describes his book “My journey as a witness”, (listed in “Best Photo Books of 2011” by American Photo), as “The most important book ever written by a photographer.”

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