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Asia in the Edges: A Narrative Account of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School in Bangalore
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/routledge-inter-asia-cultural-studies-volume-15-issue-2-nishant-shah-asia-in-the-edges
<b>The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School is a Biennial event that invites Masters and PhD students from around Asia to participate in conversations around developing and building an Inter-Asia Cultural Studies thought process. Hosted by the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society along with the Consortium of universities and research centres that constitute it, the Summer School is committed to bringing together a wide discourse that spans geography, disciplines, political affiliations and cultural practices for and from researchers who are interested in developing Inter-Asia as a mode of developing local, contextual and relevant knowledge practices. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This is the narrative account of the experiments and ideas that shaped the second Summer School, “The Asian Edge” which was hosted in Bangalore, India, in 2012. The peer reviewed article was <a class="external-link" href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649373.2014.911462">published in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies</a> Journal, Volume 15, Issue 2, on July 3, 2014. <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/asia-in-the-edges.pdf" class="external-link">Click to download the file</a>. (PDF, 95 Kb)</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify;">At the heart of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (IACS) project has been a pedagogic impulse that seeks to train young students and scholars in critical ways of thinking about questions of the contemporary. The ambition of developing an “Asian way of thinking” is not merely a response to the hegemony of North-Western theory in thought and research, especially in Social Sciences and Humanities. It is also a way by which new knowledge is developed and shared between different locations in Asia, to get a more embedded sense of the social, the political and the cultural in the region. Apart from building a widespread network of researchers, activists, academics and artists who have generated the most comprehensive and critical insights into developing ontological and teleological relationships with Asia, there have always been attempts made to integrate students into the network’s activities. From student pre-conferences that invited students to build intellectual dialogues, to subsidies and fellowships offered to allow students to travel from their different institutions across Asia, various initiatives have inspired and facilitated the first encounter with Asia for a number of young researchers who might have lived in Asian countries but not been trained to understand the context of what it means to be in Asia. Over time, through different structures, such as the institutionalisation of the <em>Inter-Asia Cultural Studies</em> Journal and the growth of the eponymous conference, the IACS has already expanded the scope of its activities, involving new interlocutors and locations in which to grow the environment of critical academic and research discourse.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Building upon the expertise and networks of scholarship developed for over a decade, the IACS Society initiated the biennial Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School, in order to engage younger scholars and students with some of the key questions that have been discussed and contested in the cultural studies discourse in Asia. The IACS Summer School that began in 2010 in Seoul, is a travelling school that moves to different countries, drawing upon local energies, resources and debates to acquaint students with the critical discourse as well as the experience of difference that marks Asia as a continent. The summer school in 2012 was hosted jointly by the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society and the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, in collaboration with the Centre for Contemporary Studies at the Indian Institute of Sciences.<a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[1] </a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">For a snapshot of the Summer School, see Table 1 below:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Table 1. The 2012 Inter-Asia cultural studies summer school: a snapshot</strong></p>
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<p style="text-align: justify;">The Asian Edge</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify;">Core course: Methodologies for Cultural Studies in Asia (2–11 August, 2012)<br />Optional courses<br />The Digital Subject / Technology, Culture and the Body (13–16 August, 2012)<br />Language of Instruction: EnglishHomepage: <a class="external-link" href="http://culturalstudies.asia/?page_id=86">http://culturalstudies.asia/?page_id=86</a><br />Organisers: Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore; The Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore<br />Host: Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore<br />Co-organisers: Consortium of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Consortium Institutions; Institute of East Asian Studies, Sungkonghoe University, Korea<br />Course Coordinators: Nitya Vasudevan & Nishant Shah<br />Number of Students: 35 students from 12 Asian countries<br />Number of Faculty: 17 from 5 Asian countries<a name="fr2" href="#fn2">[2] </a></p>
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<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Plotting Edges: The Rationale</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The second summer school, hosted in August 2012, with the support of the Inter Asia Cultural Studies Consortium and the Institute of East Asian Studies, was entitled “The Asian Edge.” We decided to stay with the metaphor of the Edge because it allowed us to experiment, both conceptually and in process, with new modes of engagement, interaction, knowledge production and pedagogy. The idea of an Asian Edge was interesting because it signalled a de-bordering of Asia. The Edge is also an inroad into that which might have remained invisible or inscrutable to those outside of it. The imagination of an Asian Edge brings in both the imaginations of geography as well as the notion of extensions, where Asia, especially in this hyper-real and geo-territorial age does not remain contained within the national boundaries. Within the Inter-Asia discourse, there has been a rich theorisation around what constitutes Asia and what are the ways in which we can reconstruct our Asianness that do not fall in the easy “Asian Studies” mode of being defined by the West as the ontological reference point. Chen Kuan-Hsing’s (2010) argument in <em>Asia as Method</em>, where he argues that Asia is a construct that emerged out of the Cold War and needs to be deconstructed and unpacked in order to understand the different instances and manifestations of India, have captured these dialogues quite comprehensively. Similarly, Ashish Rajadhyaksha’s (2009) landmark work <em>Indian Cinema in the time of Celluloid </em>marks how questions of nationalism, modernity, governance and technology have been peculiarly and particularly tied to cultural objects and industries such as cinema, not only in negotiations with the post-colonial encounters of India with its erstwhile colonial masters but also with the different locations and imaginations of India. Chua Beng-Huat (2000) in Consumption in Asia similarly points at the ways in which Asia works at different levels of materiality and symbolism, creating communities, connections and commerce in unprecedented ways, not only within Orientalist imagination but in Asia’s own imagination of itself. The Asian Edge was also a way of introducing new thematic interventions in the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies discourse. While the IACS project has invited and initiated some of the most diverse and rich conversations around cultural production—ranging from creative industries to cultural politics; from cultural objects to flows of consumption and distribution—we haven’t yet managed to shift the debates into the realm of the digital. The emergence of digital technologies has transformed a lot of our vocabulary and conceptual framework, but we haven’t been able to translate all our concerns into the fast-paced changes that the digital ICTs are ushering into Asia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">With this summer school, we wanted to introduce the digital and the technological as a central trope of understanding our existing and emerging research within inter-Asia cultural studies. And the edge, borrowing from the Network theories that have their grounds in Computing, Actor-Network modelling and ICT4D discourse, gives us another way of thinking about Asia. As the computing theorist Duncan Watts (1999) points out in his model of our universe as a “small world”, the edge, within networks is not merely the containing limit. It is not the boundary or the end but actually the space of interaction, communication and exchange. An edge is the route that traffic takes as it moves from one node to another. Edges are hence tenuous, they emerge and, with repetition, become stronger, but they also die and extend, morph and mutate, thus constantly changing the contours of the network. The ambition was to refuse the separation of technology from the Cultural Studies discourse, introducing what Tejaswini Niranjana in her work on Indian Language education and pedagogy calls “Integration” (Niranjana et al. 2010) rather than “interdisciplinarity”. It was also to provide a different historical trajectory to technology studies, what science and technology historians Kavita Philip, Lily Irani, and P. Dourish (2010) call “Postcolonial Computing.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Asian Edge then became a space where we could consolidate the knowledge and key insights from the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies discourse, but could also open it up to new research, new modes of engagement, and new questions that need the historicity and also the points of departure. These ambitions had a direct impact on both the structure of the Summer School as well as the processes that were subsequently designed<br />to implement it.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">The core course: methodologies for cultural studies in Asia</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Inter-Asia Summer School in Bangalore thus had some distinct ambitions, which were reflected in its structure. While it wanted to reflect the rich heritage of scholarship that has been produced through the decade-long interventions, and give the participating students a chance to engage with these intellectual stalwarts of Asia, it also wanted to reflect some of the more cuttingedge and future-looking work that is also a part of the movement’s younger scholars. Hence, instead of going with the traditional model where the pedagogues teach their own text, explaining the nuances and intricacies of their work, we decided to stage a dialogue between the existing scholarship and emerging work. The curriculum for the summer school was designed by Dr Tejaswini Niranjana, Dr Wang Xiaoming and Nitya Vasudevan, to form the first Inter- Asia Cultural studies reader, reflecting the various trends and debates around different themes that have occurred in the movement. The reader, which served as a basic textbook for the summer school, and has plans to be bilingual (English and Mandarin Chinese), introduced historical thought, critical interventions and conceptual frameworks drawn from different locations within Asia. The reader not only incorporated the scholars whose work has shaped the Inter-Asia cultural studies movement but also the formative modern thought that has been central to the social, cultural and political theorisation in Asia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">However, instead of inviting the scholars whose work has been central to the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies thought, the instructors for the courses were younger critical scholars who are building upon, responding to and entering into a dialogue with the work prescribed in the curriculum. The pedagogy, hence, instead of becoming a “lecture” that synthesises earlier work, became a threeway dialogue, where the students and the instructors were responding to common texts, not only in trying to understand them but also in the context of their own work and interests. Moreover, each session was co-taught, by instructors from different disciplines, locations and geographies, to show how the same body of work can be approached through different entry points and pushed into different directions. The classroom hours, thus became a “workshop” space where the students and the faculty were engaging in a dialogue that sought to make the historical debates relevant to the discussions in the contemporary world. They also showed how the older questions persist across time and space, and that they need to be engaged with in order to make sense of the world around us.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Additionally, the Summer School classroom was designed as a space for collaborative pedagogy. The morning discussions around texts from the readers were followed by students presenting their work as a response to the texts prescribed for the day. Taking up a pecha-kucha format, it invited students to introduce themselves, their work, their context and their interventions and to open everything up for response and dialogue. The ambition was to build a community of intellectual support and interest, so that the students not only forge an affective bond but also a sense of collaboration and commonality in the work that they are already pushing in their existing research initiatives. The faculty for the day, along with some of the senior scholars also attended these presentations and helped tie in some of the earlier questions that might have emerged in the class, to the new material that was being introduced in the space.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While this dialogue around new research was fruitful, we also were aware that there is a huge value in getting the students to interact with some of the more formative scholars whose work was prescribed in the curriculum. Hence, alongside the classrooms, we also hosted three salons that brought some of the significant scholars from the Inter-Asia movement into a dialogue with each other, as well as into a conversation with local intellectuals and activists. The first salon, organised at the artist collaborator 1 Shanthi Road, saw Chen Kuan-Hsing and Tejaswini Niranjana, discussing the impulse of the Inter-Asia movement. Charting the history, the different trajectories and the ways in which it has grown, both through friendships and networks, and intellectual interventions and collaborations, the conversation gave an entrypoint to younger scholars in understanding the politics and the motivation of this thought journey. The second salon, organised at the Alternative Law Forum, had Ding Naifei (Taiwan) and Firdaus Azim (Bangladesh) in conversation with legal sexuality and human rights activists Siddharth Narrain and Arvind Narrain (India) to unpack the politics of rights, sexuality, modernity and identity in different parts of Asia. The third salon, hosted at the Centre for Internet & Society, saw Ashish Rajadhyaksha (India) in conversation with Stephen Chan (Hong Kong) looking at questions of infrastructure, sustainability and the new role that research has to play in non-university and non-academic spaces and networks. The salons were designed to be informal settings for conversations and socialising, giving the summer school students access to the senior faculty outside of the classroom setting.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The summer school also wanted to ensure that the students were introduced to the materiality and the texture of the local, to understand the different layers of modernity and habitation that the IT City of Bangalore has to offer. Hence a local tour, charting the growth of Bangalore from a sleepy education centre to the burgeoning IT City that it has become, guided by curator and artist Suresh Jairam, was included as a part of the teaching. The four-hour walking tour laid bare the different contestations and layers of an IT city in India, showing the liminal markets, local cultures of production, and the ways in which they need to be factored into our images and imaginations of modernity and the IT City. Along with these, there were student parties arranged in different local clubs and institutions of Bangalore, to offer informal spaces of socialising for the students but also to give them a glimpse of what public spaces and cultures of being social might look like in a city such as Bangalore.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The summer school found a new richness because two of the days were twinned with a workshop on Culture Industries, supported by the Japan Foundation, which became a pedagogic space for the summer school participants. The students had a new focus introduced to their work and a chance to meet other scholars and activists in the field from Asia, who presented their work as part of the Summer School. The creative industries workshop also afforded a chance for students to form new connections and collaborations with projects and research initiatives that were being discussed in that forum.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">These different components were thus designed and put together as a part of the core course for the Inter-Asia Summer School in Bangalore. Each component had a specific vision and was designed to offer different spaces of learning, pedagogy and interaction for everybody included. The core course was an overview of the diversity and exchange that are parts of the Inter-Asia movement. The course ended with a “booksprint” model where the students, inspired by the conversations at the summer school, were given a day to submit written work that would capture their own learning and growth in the process. The submissions could take the form of an academic essay, a sketch towards a research essay, a blog entry summarising key events from a particular conversation, or a narrative summary of the key points in their own research and how it relates to the conversations at the Summer School. While the core course was compulsory for all the participants, the Summer School also offered two optional elective courses, which the students could opt for after the core course was concluded. The optional courses were designed to introduce students to work and debates that had not yet emerged centrally in the Inter-Asia debates, but were part of their current conversations.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">New nodes: Optional courses: the digital subject/technology, culture and the body</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The optional courses, which lasted for four days, were a way of introducing the students to some new core debates that are emerging in the Cultural Studies discourse. The courses were designed to specifically concentrate on how the older questions and frameworks are being reworked with the emergence of digital technologies, thus helping students to consolidate their own work and also engage with research initiatives across different parts of Asia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The first optional course, entitled “The Digital Subject,” was coordinated by Nishant Shah and had lectures by Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Lawrence Liang. It proposed to account for the drastic changes in the relationships between the State, the Citizen and the Markets with the rise of digital technologies in the twenty-first century. The course proposed that as globalisation consolidates itself in Asia, we see changes in the patterns of governance, of state operation, of citizen engagement and civic action. We are in the midst of major revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, powered by digital social change, some headed by cyber-utopians specialising in Web 2.0 and Social media. Phrases such as “Twitter Revolutions” and “Facebook Protests” have become very common.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Instead of concentrating only on the newness of technology-mediated change, there is a need to engage with the changing landscape of political subjectivity and engagement through a reintegration of science and technology studies with cultural studies and social sciences. The course thus posited certain questions that need to be addressed, within the domain of cultural studies, around the digital: what does a digital subject look like? What are the futures of existing socio-cultural rights based movements? How do digital technologies produce new interfaces for interaction and mobilisation? How do we develop integrated science-technologysociety approaches to understand our technology-mediated contemporary and futures?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Through a series of seminars, workshops, film screening, lectures, and fieldtrips, the course challenged the students not only to look at new objects of the digital but also to ask new questions of the old, inspired by the new methods and frameworks that the digital technologies are opening up for us.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The second optional course entitled “Technology, Culture and the Body” was coordinated by Nita Vasudevan and had Audrey Yue, Ding Naifei, Tejaswini Niranjana, Wing-Kwong Wong, and Hsing-Wen Chang as instructors. The course began with a hypothesis that, at this moment in history, we seem to be embedded in what Heidegger calls “the frenziedness of technology.” Hence, now more than ever, it is important that we try to understand how the gendered body relates to technology, and what this means for the domain of the cultural. For instance, what are the freedoms that technology is said to offer this body? What are these freedoms posed in opposition to? How do we understand technological practice contextually, both historically and in the contemporary? Is it possible to have a notion of the body that is outside technology, and a notion of technology that is outside cultural practice?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The course called for a move away from the idea of technology as a tool used by the human body, or the idea of technology as mere prosthesis or extension, to map the different ways of understanding the relationship<br />between culture, technology and the body, specifically in the Asian context. It will involve examining practices, cultural formations and understandings that have emerged within various locations in Asia. The course engaged the students in closereadings of key events and texts, hosted workshops to present and critique their own work, and think of collaborative pathways towards future distributed research and pedagogic initiatives that can emerge within the Inter-Asia space.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Both courses had additional assignments that included close-reading of texts, practical field work, critical reflection and collaborative projects completed during the span of the course.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Tying things up: key learnings</h3>
<p>The Second Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School was an ambitious structure, and while there were logistical hiccups in the implementation, there were some key learning aspects that need to be highlighted.</p>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><em>Working with tensions</em>. Asia is not a homogeneous unified entity. There are several geo-political tensions that mark the relationships between different countries in Asia. While the academic protocol and individual interest in learning more can help negotiate these tensions, these tensions do play out in different linguistic, cultural and emotional unintelligibility, which becomes part of the pedagogic moment in the Inter-Asia classroom. Orienting the instructors to these tensions, and trying to build a collaborative environment where the students appreciate these tensions and learn to communicate with each other and engage with the different contexts is extremely valuable. In the summer school, we had students helping each other with translation, providing new contexts and critiques for each other’s work, and learning how to engage with the palpable difference of somebody from a different country. These tensions can sometimes slow the content and discussions in the classrooms, but taking it up as a collective challenge (rather than just thinking of it as a logistical problem where students not fluent in English need to be given tools of translation) made for a productive and rich learning environment.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><em>Ownership of community structures</em>. When young scholars from different parts of the world are thrown together for such an intense period of time, it is inevitable that there will be bonds of friendship and belonging that grow. We had debated about whether we should invest in doing online community building by creating platforms, discussion boards and other structures that accompany digital outreach and coordination. However, apart from the initial centralization for applications and programming, we eventually decided to make the participants owners of these activities.’ to give a better sense of the ‘digital structures of community building’. And it was fascinating to see how they formed social networks, blogs, Tumblrs and other spaces of conversation among themselves, making these spaces more vibrant and diverse, thus leading to conversations beyond the summer school.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><em>Infrastructure of participation</em>. The Summer School was an extremely subsidised event thanks to the generous support of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Consortium, the Institute of East Asian Studies and the Indian Institute of Sciences, who helped in significantly reducing the costs of registration. The availability of travel fellowships, subsidies, scholarships, and an infrastructure of access cannot be emphasised enough in our experience. Owing to the subsidised costs, the living conditions and the logistics were not optimal. And while the students were extremely cooperative and accommodating with the glitches, we realised that better living conditions and amenities, especially for young students who are travelling to a different country for the first time, are as important as the classroom and the intellectual thought and design. Finding more resources to ease the conditions of travel and living will help build richer conversations inside and outside the classrooms. Sustained efforts to find more funding for a space for the IACS summer school need to be continued.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><em>Selection processes</em>. It was wanted to promote the Inter-Asia movement and hence a first preference was given to students who applied for the summer school through an open call for application. The students were asked to have references from people who have been a part of the movement, and also to send in a brief essay describing their expectations from the summer school. We were scouting for students—given that the numbers we could accept were limited—who were involved in not only learning but also in contributing to the social and political thought of the Inter-Asia movement. We also encouraged students who might not have been a part of a formal education system but are considering further education. Instead of building a homogeneous student base, there was an attempt made to find different kinds of students, from different locations, at different places in their own research work, and with different disciplines and modes of engagement. Scholarships and travel aid were offered to students who we thought deserved to be a part of the summer school but did not have access to university resources for participation. The diversity helped bring a more comprehensive compendium of skills and methods to the table.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Integration and relevance. Younger students often find it difficult to deal with historically formative texts from other contexts because they do not see how this responds to their context or is relevant to their work in contemporary times. Efforts at integrating the different cultures, showing the different trajectories of thought and research within Asia, and at locating the older texts in the context of modern-day research were hugely rewarding and more attempts need to be made to continue this process of making the historical archive of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Movement relevant and critical in new research.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Planning the futures. The participants had all indicated that post the Summer School, they would be excited to see what future avenues for participation there could be. With this summer school, we hadn’t looked at modes of sustained engagement with the participants. While they did take the initiative to communicate with each other, the momentum that was generated because of these discussions could not be captured in its entirety because we did not have any formal structures and processes to continue the engagement. Especially if the IACS summer schools are some sort of an orientation into the IACS movement, then there should be more systemic thought given to how those interested in engaging with the questions can do so, through their own academic and institutional locations, but also through different kinds of support structures that continue the conversations and exchange that begin at the Summer School.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><em>Synergy with the local</em>. For us, as well as for the students, the synergy with the local movements, activists, artists and research was fruitful and productive. One of the values of a travelling summer school is that every summer school can take up a particular theme that is locally relevant and weave it into the summer school. For Bangalore, it made logical sense for us to bring questions of Digital Technologies and Identity/Bodies into the course. Even within the core course, there was an effort to integrate these as key questions that open up new terrains of thought and research within Inter-Asia cultural studies. The optional courses, which were introduced for the first time, were exciting and generated a lot of interest and engagement from the participants. Attempts at creating these kinds of synergies need to be supported along with new and experimental modes of pedagogy and learning.</li></ol>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Second Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School was a great opportunity to harness the potentials of the incredibly rich and diverse network that the IACS movement has built up over more than a decade. For us, it also became a playground where, inspired by the hacker culture and DIY movements that dot the landscape of Bangalore, we experimented with different forms of learning and knowledge production. Involving the students as stakeholders in the process, engaging with them as peers, making them responsible for collaborative learning, and creating spaces of participation and socialisation helped us circumvent many of the problems of language and cultural diversity that might have otherwise crippled the entire process. Pushing these modes of interaction and integration, while also creating an environment of trust, reciprocity and goodwill, is probably even more important than the curriculum and teaching, because these interactions create new nodes and connections, with each student and his/her interaction creating new edges that will hopefully shape and contribute to the contours of critical thought and intervention in Asia.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">References</h3>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Chen, Kuan-Hsing. 2010. <em>Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization</em>. Durham and London: Duke University Press.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Chua, Beng-Huat, ed. 2000. <em>Consumption in Asia: Lifestyle and Identities</em>. London: Routledge.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Philip, Kavita, Lily Irani, and P. Dourish. 2010. “Postcolonial Computing: A Tactical Survey.” <em>Science Technology Human Values</em> 37 (1): 3–29.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Rajadhyaksha, Ashish. 2009. <em>Indian Cinema in the time of Celluloid: From Bollywood to the Emergency</em>. New Delhi: Combined Academic Publications.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Niranjana, Tejaswini, et al. 2010. <em>Strengthening Community Engagement of Higher Education Institutions</em>. Bangalore: Centre for the Study of Culture and Society.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Watts, Duncan. 1999. “Networks, Dynamics, and the Small-World Phenomenon.” <em>AJS</em> 105 (2): 493–527.</li></ol>
<h3>Author's Biography</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Nishant Shah is the Director of Research at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet & Society, an International Tandem Partner at the Hybrid Publishing Lab, Leuphana University, and a Knowledge Partner with Hivos, in The Hague. He is the editor of the four-volume anthology Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? and writes regularly for the Indian newspaper The Indian Express and for the Digital Media and Learning Hub at dmlcentral.net. His current areas of interest are Digital Humanities, Digital Activism and Digital Subjectivity.</p>
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<p align="JUSTIFY">[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">1</a>]. <span class="discreet">A mammoth project such as the Inter-Asia Summer School requires resources, support and generosity from family, friends, and colleagues that can never be measured or cited in a note. However, there are a few people who need to be mentioned for their incredible spirits and the resources that they extended to us. Dr Raghavendra Gaddakar at the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Sciences and his entire staff were patient and hospitable hosts, housing the entire summer school for over a fortnight. The faculty, students and staff at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) Bangalore helped in designing courses, finding venues and organising events that added to the richness of the summer school. Raghu Tankayala and Radhika P, both at CSCS were our rocks through this process, taking up a lion’s share of logistical arrangements. The help of the entire staff at the Centre for Internet and Society, who were there every step, helping with every last detail, and the Executive Director Sunil Abraham who lent us infrastructure and financial support to organise various events and salons, is unparalleled and I know I would have found it impossible to work without the knowledge that they would always be there to watch my back. All the instructors who agreed to join the teaching crew made this summer school what it became (a full list can be found at <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/iacs-summer-school-2012" class="external-link">http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/iacs-summer-school-2012</a>). Both Nitya Vausdevan and I owe a huge amount of gratitude to the IACS society and the Consortium, as well as the stalwarts of the IACS movement who put faith in our vision, and pushed us, supported us, inspired us and helped us to carry out the different things we had planned. The local partners who make our life worth living—friends and colleagues at 1 Shanthi Road and The Alternative Law Forum—have been our rocks and we cannot thank them enough for their support and encouragement. A special thanks to Daniel Goh, who apart from being a faculty member, also helped us put together the website to manage the workflow for the entire project.</span></p>
<p>[<a name="fn2" href="#fr2">2</a>]. <span class="discreet">A full list of instructors and the prescribed curriculum can be found at <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-overnance/iacs-summer-school-2012" class="external-link">http://cis-india.org/internet-overnance/iacs-summer-school-2012</a>.</span></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/routledge-inter-asia-cultural-studies-volume-15-issue-2-nishant-shah-asia-in-the-edges'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/routledge-inter-asia-cultural-studies-volume-15-issue-2-nishant-shah-asia-in-the-edges</a>
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No publishernishantDigital KnowledgeInter-Asia Cultural StudiesPeer Reviewed ArticlePublicationsResearchers at Work2015-04-14T12:47:38ZBlog EntryPervasive Technologies: Patent Pools
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/patent-pools
<b>In this research paper, Nehaa Chaudhari gives an analysis of patent pools. She discusses the working of a patent pool, study patent pool in other areas of technology, and patenting in telecom and related technology.</b>
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<p><b><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/pervasive-technologies-patent-pools.pdf" class="internal-link">Click to download the full research paper here</a></b> (PDF, 475 Kb)</p>
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<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The network landscape over the past few years has been characterized by several battles of supremacy between two or more rival technologies. <a href="#fn1" name="fr1">[1]</a> These battles have included, <i>inter alia, </i>the constant efforts at besting rivals in the arena of patenting innovations in technology, often as a result characterised by the imposition of high royalties on rivals, for the use of one’s patents. However, having realised that such efforts at besting the other could prove detrimental for all parties concerned in the long run, and stall technological advancements which would in turn translate into lower business revenue, mechanisms were devised to ensure a relatively equitable utilization of patents in the market place. One such mechanism that has been developed is that of patent pools.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Patent pools have been developed around most areas of high end technology and research and development. Over the course of this paper, the author has confined herself to a study on patent pools in the area of telecommunications, and the issues to be addressed therein. Specifically, the author will be dealing with patent pools around 3G, 4G, LTE, TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE technologies. Within this framework, the author seeks to examine what are patent pools, whether and what kind of patent pools exist, their associated costs, their licensing arrangements and the structure of the payment of royalty, and the feasibility of these patent pools.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Understanding Patent Pools</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Patent pools are agreements among patent owners through which patent owners combine their patents, waiving their exclusive rights to the patent to enable others, or themselves, to obtain rights to license the pooled patents.<a href="#fn2" name="fr2">[2]</a> Therefore, such pools may be focussed either on cross licensing, that is companies mutually making their patents available to each other, or on out licensing, that is, a group of companies making a collection of patents available to companies that do not or might not have patents of their own to contribute to the pool.<a href="#fn3" name="fr3">[3]</a> Typically, modern patent pools combine patents of various companies and are around inventions that are required to implement an established industry standard, are licensed as a whole (on an <i>all or nothing basis) </i>and not as individual licenses for patents owned by various companies within that pool, and are available to any non member for licensing.<a href="#fn4" name="fr4">[4] </a>Such licensing is done under a standard agreement and royalty rates, on a non discriminatory basis. The exception to this rule is that if certain members have contributed patents to the pool, they may receive more favourable terms, in recognition of their cross licensing relationship to the pool.<a href="#fn5" name="fr5">[5] </a>When viewed from a law and economics perspective, patent pools are seen to be an efficient institutional solution to various problems that arise when companies have complementary intellectual property rights, and these rights are essential to new technologies being used and employed. <a href="#fn6" name="fr6">[6] </a>However, this perspective also warns about the antitrust risks that may arise when competitors or potential competitors are involved in the coordination of their intellectual property. For instance, such pools may be used to allocate markets or otherwise chill competition. <a href="#fn7" name="fr7">[7]</a></p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">The Working of a Patent Pool</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Generally, a patent pool may be administered in one of two ways- it may either have an administrative entity, or may also just be a system of cross licensing between two firms.<a href="#fn8" name="fr8">[8]</a> In case of the former, the licensing agency may be one of the patent holders, <a href="#fn9" name="fr9">[9]</a> or may be an independent licensing company (e.g. MPEG).<a href="#fn10" name="fr10">[10]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The ownership of patents within the pool is retained by the owners, who then license them to the operator/administrator on a non exclusive basis, with sub licensing rights. This means that the owners are free to continue to license their patents on an individual basis, and the administrator also has the right to further license the patents to any party who is interested in licensing from the patent pool.<a href="#fn11" name="fr11">[11]</a> The responsibility of managing licensing and licenses is vested in the operator/administrator of the patent pool. Licensees are required to report sales and pay royalties to the pool administrator, who in turn would enforce the conditions of the license.<a href="#fn12" name="fr12">[12] </a>The distribution of royalties between the members of the pool is on the basis of a formula which may, or may not be transparent to non member licensees, with the pool operator retaining a management fee.<a href="#fn13" name="fr13">[13] </a>Typically, pool licenses are also structured in a manner so as to render difficult early termination by the licensee. The nature of the contract, once signed by a licensee, is typically binding in nature. Therefore, this would mean that the administrator of the patent pool could sue the licensee for non performance of the contract.<a href="#fn14" name="fr14">[14]</a> However, unless a pool operator is a member of the pool itself, it cannot sue for the infringement of patents. <a href="#fn15" name="fr15">[15]</a> Therefore, in the event that a patented technology were to be utilised without having taken a license, one or more of the individual patent owners would be required to take legal action. The involvement of the pool operator would be limited to being a part of any settlement discussions, if they were to occur, since one of the options for the alleged infringer could be to obtain a license for the patent pool.<a href="#fn16" name="fr16">[16]</a></p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Drawing Parallels with Other Patent Pools</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In this section of the paper, the author seeks to study patent pools in other areas of technology in order to better understand the structure and pricing of patent pools.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>The ‘3C DVD’ Patent Pool </b><br />Established in 1998, the <i>3C DVD Patent Pool</i> was the brainchild of <i>Philips</i>, <i>Sony</i> and <i>Pioneer</i>, and <i>L.G.</i> was subsequently inducted as a member. <i>Philips</i> acts as a licensing administrator for patents held by all the companies, which are over two hundred in number. These patents include those for the manufacture of the DVD players, and for the manufacture of the DVD disks themselves. <a href="#fn17" name="fr17">[17]</a> The player license per unit royalty was set as 3.5% of the net selling price of each player sold. This was subject to a minimum fee of $7 per unit, which after January 1, 2000 became $5 per unit. The disc license royalty was set as $0.05 per disc sold.<a href="#fn18" name="fr18">[18]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>The ‘DVD- 6C’ Patent Pool</b><br />Established in June 1999, the members of this pool at the time of its inception were <i>Hitachi</i>, <i>Matsushita</i>, <i>Mitsubishi</i>, <i>Time</i> <i>Warner</i>, <i>Toshiba</i>, and <i>JVC</i>. This pool was also for the DVD-ROM and the DVD- Video formats, with <i>Toshiba </i>acting as the administrator. <a href="#fn19" name="fr19">[19] </a>The royalties were set at $.075 per DVD Disc and 4% of the net sales price of DVD players and DVD decoders, with a minimum royalty of $4.00 per player or decoder, which saw a substantial reduction in 2003.<a href="#fn20" name="fr20">[20]</a> Subsequently, there were various changes that were made to this group, including the inclusion of newer standards, the joining and subsequent departure of IBM and other organizations as a member etc. <i>Hitachi</i> and <i>Panasonic</i> also act as regional agents in certain regions of the world.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>The MPEG LA pool<br /></b>The MPEG-2 is a standard for describing the coding of data <i>inter alia, </i>on DVD discs. For MPEG-2, a patent pool has been established, where the administrator is an independent, external organization known as the MPEG Licensing Authority, that set itself the aim to develop a patent pool for this standard.<b> </b> <a href="#fn21" name="fr21">[21]</a> The MPEG LA invited parties that thought they owned patents essential to this standard to join the program, which took off in 1997. At present, the pool has over a hundred patents and thousands of licensees.<a href="#fn22" name="fr22">[22]</a></p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Patenting in Telecom and Related Technology</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In this section of the paper, the author examines the working of patenting and patent pools in the telecommunications sector and in areas of related technology.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Early Developments and the Emergence of GSM<br /></b>Patent pools are slowly developing into a key component of the telecommunications and the technological industry. The technology industry has been said to be an <i>ecosystem</i>, wherein there is a complex correlation between those who develop the technology and those who implement it in the creation and development of products.<a href="#fn23" name="fr23">[23]</a> In the telecommunications industry for instance, each handset manufacturer has declared only a small percentage of the various types of intellectual property assets that are necessary to implement a 3G compatible cellular phone. Therefore, the working in such a context is that various companies develop different technologies, and the same is shared by various manufacturers that seek to make use of this technology.<a href="#fn24" name="fr24">[24]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The revival of patenting in the sector of telecommunications, post a period of decline in the decades of the 19540s to the 1980s, is attributed to the advent of the GSM standard for mobile communications in Europe.<a href="#fn25" name="fr25">[25] </a>In 1988, the main European operators invited equipment suppliers and developed a procedure wherein manufacturers would have to give up their intellectual property rights and to provide free world wide licenses for essential patents.<a href="#fn26" name="fr26">[26]</a> After opposition from the manufacturers, the approach was modified to one wherein the operators required the suppliers to sign a declaration agreeing to serve all of the GSM community on fair, reasonable and non discriminatory conditions.<a href="#fn27" name="fr27">[27]</a> In the early 1990s, Motorola by refusing to grant non discriminatory licenses for its substantial portfolio of essential patents and only agreeing to enter into cross license agreements further intensified the debate over IPRs in telecommunications. The company only lifted these restrictions after various countries across the world expressed a preference for this standard. The experience in this standard has demonstrated that it would not be accurate to expect that all parties holding essential patents would be willing to license them to all interested parties.<a href="#fn28" name="fr28">[28]</a> Companies were only willing to relax their licensing conditions once revenue generating opportunities increased.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>The 3G3P and the UMTS<br /></b>In July 2000 the 3G Patent Platform Partnership (3G3P) and its 18 partners notified various agreements to the end of establishing a worldwide patent platform. The purpose behind this was disclosed to be that of providing a voluntary and cost effective mechanism to evaluate, verify and license patents that were essential for third generation (3G) mobile communication systems.<a href="#fn29" name="fr29">[29] </a>It was also claimed that the said agreements would have pro competitive effects and that the purpose behind this Platform was the facilitation of access to technology and consequent entry into the markets.<a href="#fn30" name="fr30">[30]</a> On the intellectual property front, the purpose was to reduce cost uncertainties and the delays that were accompaniments of licensing numerous essential patents for complex technologies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While it has often been considered to be a patent pool, this arrangement has been said to be only similar to a patent pool.<a href="#fn31" name="fr31">[31]</a> The 3G3P itself has argued that since it was a mere facilitator of transactions between patent holders and licensees, and that membership was open to both licensors and licensees as opposed to only licensors as in the case of patent pools, it would be fallacious to classify the Platform as a patent pool. Further, it has also been argued that licensing by members is not restricted to the Platform and that there was no bundling or real pooling of the patents <i>per</i> <i>se</i> and those licensees have the opportunity to pick and choose between patents with the licensing being carried out on a bilateral basis. Additionally, unlike in a patent pool, there is no single license between the patent holders as a collective and the licensee, and the parties have a choice between the Standard License of the Platform, and a negotiable individual license.<a href="#fn32" name="fr32">[32]</a> A Standard License provides for Standard Royalty Rate, a Maximum Cumulative Royalty Rate and a Cumulative Royalty Rate.<a href="#fn33" name="fr33">[33] </a>Bilateral transactions on the other hand, are negotiated between the parties where the consideration is to be determined on <i>fair and equitable</i> terms.<a href="#fn34" name="fr34">[34]</a> This Platform also provides for a price cap, which, instead of being absolute and set at a pre-determined royalty rate, is a <i>default five percent maximum (not minimum) cumulative royalty rate for potential licensees per product category.</i><a href="#fn35" name="fr35">[35]</a> The royalty rate for each individual patent will differ for each of the licensees and this depends on the patent portfolio under each product category that the licensee has chosen.<a href="#fn36" name="fr36">[36]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The concerns and challenges of the GSM experience were well perceived during the determination of the course of action for UMTS. European actors were especially wary of <i>Qualcomm</i> and expected the firm to demand high license fees, with some even fearing them to be in excess of 10%.<a href="#fn37" name="fr37">[37]</a> Subsequently, various attempts at developing licensing schemes failed, until 2004 and the establishment of the W-CDMA Patent Licensing Programme for UMTS FDD patents.<a href="#fn38" name="fr38">[38] </a>At the outset, seven licensors offered their patents as a bundle to prospective licensors, a number which decreased over time.<a href="#fn39" name="fr39">[39]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>The Development of LTE Patent Pools<br /></b>The next stage in the process of innovation in the realm of telecommunications was the development of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) Standard, which while being essential to 4G technology has also seen application in the realm of 3G. Consequently, patent pools or similar structures have been developed in these areas. LTE patents are being viewed as among the most valuable intellectual property resource in the mobile telecommunications industry, with most operators around the world building LTE networks.<a href="#fn40" name="fr40">[40]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As per in a study conducted in 2011, 23% of the patents about this technology were owned by <i>L.G. Electronics</i>, with <i>Qualcomm</i> coming in second with 21%. <i>Motorola Mobility, InterDigital, Nokia</i> and <i>Samsung</i> each owned 9%, China’s <i>ZTE</i> owned about 6%<a href="#fn41" name="fr41">[41]</a> and <i>Nortel</i> owned 4%, which were later sold to a consortium of <i>Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research in Motion (RIM)</i> and <i>Sony</i>, after <i>Nortel</i> filed for bankruptcy in 2009.<a href="#fn42" name="fr42">[42]</a> <i>Ericsson</i> also independently owns 2% of the patent pool and <i>RIM</i> owns 1%.<a href="#fn43" name="fr43">[43]</a> However, another analysis<a href="#fn44" name="fr44">[44]</a> of IP databases conducted by <i>ZTE</i> in 2011 revealed differing results. As per this analysis, <i>InterDigital </i>was the leader, with its Patent Holdings arm controlling 13% and the Technology arm controlling 11% of LTE essential patents. <i>Qualcomm</i> controlled 13%, <i>Nokia</i> and <i>Samsung</i> 9% each, <i>Ericsson</i> controlled 8%, as did <i>Huawei</i>, <i>ZTE</i> controlled 7%, <i>L.G</i>. controlled 6% and <i>NTT</i> <i>DoCoMo</i> brought up the rear with 5%. The remaining 11% was held by various other firms.<a href="#fn45" name="fr45">[45]</a> It is to be realized that these studies have often come under criticism from different companies, with each of them eager to portray themselves as the market leader.<a href="#fn46" name="fr46">[46]</a> Setting aside criticism driven by corporate egos, the principle of it, that is, the difficulty in assessing and valuing patents cannot be disputed. Valuing patents is far from merely counting the number of patents owned by a company. The complications are especially evident when it comes to determining which of these patents are essential and which of them aren’t. Additionally, the worth of these patents varies depending on the existence or the absence of certain conditions, including transfer restrictions, cross licensing arrangements, ownership and market conditions.<a href="#fn47" name="fr47">[47]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The aforesaid discussion reveals the complexity and the fragmentation of the LTE environment, which further underscored the need to have patent pools in this field. Although the need for a patent pool was realized in 2009-2010, given that the WCDMA patent pool had been met with very limited success,<a href="#fn48" name="fr48">[48]</a> industry watchers were reluctant to be optimistic. This was in part fuelled by the understanding of the attitude of dominant players, wherein they continued to believe that they could derive more monetary, cross licensing and litigation defence value if they did not pool their patents.<a href="#fn49" name="fr49">[49]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The development of LTE patent pools can be traced back to 2009, and the response of <i>Via Licensing</i>¸<i> Sisvel</i> and <i>MPEG LA</i> to a Request for Information on forming such a patent pool by the <i>Next Generation Mobile Network Alliance (NGMN).</i><a href="#fn50" name="fr50">[50]</a> <i>Sisvel’s</i> proposal, which it subsequently made at a public conference in 2010 sought to demonstrate that patent pools could prevent excessive costs from royalty stacking.<a href="#fn51" name="fr51">[51] </a>Among various other examples, <i>Roberto Dini</i>, the founder of <i>Sisvel</i> suggested that if patents were to be licensed individually, for instance, 85 patents for MPEG video at 50 cents apiece would cost $42.50. As opposed to this, the patent pool charged $2.50.<a href="#fn52" name="fr52">[52]</a> In 2011, the <i>NGMN</i> reiterated its recommendation to all stakeholders in the mobile industry that were interested in developing patent pools to hasten their development process to avoid further delays in LTE licensing.<a href="#fn53" name="fr53">[53]</a> The <i>NGMN</i> also went on to state that it would be ideal if all the parties were to agree on a single patent pool that promoted reasonable royalties, offered certainty on the availability of the licenses for patents and created a framework for evaluation of their essentiality, where the value of the patents essential to the pool would be established by the industry.<a href="#fn54" name="fr54">[54]</a> These recommendations were not without their fair share of criticism, both, from industry watchers<a href="#fn55" name="fr55">[55]</a> and from vendors.<a href="#fn56" name="fr56">[56]</a> Notwithstanding these reservations, both, <i>Sisvel</i><a href="#fn57" name="fr57">[57]</a> and <i>Via</i> <i>Licensing</i> have gone on to issue calls for patents for the purposes of creating patent pools in the LTE marketplace.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The <i>Sisvel </i>LTE Patent Pool materialized in late 2012, wherein licenses were offered under a portfolio of patents essential to LTE.<a href="#fn58" name="fr58">[58]</a> The pool includes patents owned by <i>Cassidian</i>, the <i>China Academy of Telecommunication Technology, the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, France Telecom, TDF</i>, and <i>KPN</i>, in addition to some patents that had been originally filed by <i>Nokia </i>but were acquired by <i>Sisvel </i>in 2011.<a href="#fn59" name="fr59">[59]</a> The pool is also open to other organizations that have patents essential to LTE. At present, the current portfolio of these patents is available under standard terms and conditions. The running royalty rate is 0.99 Euros per device.<a href="#fn60" name="fr60">[60]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Having promised a launch within a few months in June, 2012<a href="#fn61" name="fr61">[61]</a> <i>Via Licensing </i>has also developed its own LTE Patent Pool, with the initial companies in this pool being <i>AT&T, </i><i>Clearwire Corporation, DTVG Licensing, HP, KDDI Corporation, MTT DoCoMo, SK Telecom, Telecom Italia, Telefónica</i> and <i>ZTE.</i><a href="#fn62" name="fr62">[62]</a> Like <i>Sisvel’s</i> Patent Pool, this pool is also open to other organizations that believe they possess essential LTE patents, and they are encouraged to submit the same for evaluation.<a href="#fn63" name="fr63">[63]</a> The patent pool floated by <i>Via</i> leans heavily towards service providers, but some of the big players in the industry including <i>Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei Technologies</i> and <i>Samsung</i> <i>Electronics</i> are conspicuous by their absence.<a href="#fn64" name="fr64">[64]</a> This absence is felt even in <i>Sisvel’s</i> patent pool, with the reasoning being proposed<a href="#fn65" name="fr65">[65]</a> that these key patent holders may prefer private licensing and subsequent litigation over pooled resources in patent pools.<a href="#fn66" name="fr66">[66]</a> Understandably, the launch of the LTE Patent Pools has been met with approval by the <i>NGMN</i><a href="#fn67" name="fr67">[67]</a> but given the nascent stages in which both of these pools find themselves, it would be premature to comment (without first observing for a few months) the likelihood of their success or failure and how they would play out against each other.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>The TD-SCDMA and the TD-LTE<br /></b>Reportedly, China has spent several billion dollars on the import of analog and GSM technology,<a href="#fn68" name="fr68">[68]</a> and the country’s mobile communications industry continues to be dominated by foreign players.<a href="#fn69" name="fr69">[69]</a> Therefore, in continuation of a purportedly <i>growing trend</i><a href="#fn70" name="fr70">[70]</a> in the area of telecommunications as well, domestically developed systems are being preferred and developed over standardized technologies that enjoy strong patent protection outside China.<a href="#fn71" name="fr71">[71]</a> Besides the avoidance of paying royalties to foreigners, the idea is also to use China’s strong market presence and have more participants in China’s home grown technology.<a href="#fn72" name="fr72">[72]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Time Divisional- Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA), developed by the <i>China Academy of Telecommunications Technology (CATT)</i>, in collaboration with <i>Datang </i>and<i> Siemens</i><a href="#fn73" name="fr73">[73]</a> is a Chinese indigenously developed 3G technology standard developed by China to reduce its dependence on western standards.<a href="#fn74" name="fr74">[74]</a> Interestingly however, it has been reported that the Chinese hold core patent technology only about 7% whereas most of the rest of it is taken by other foreign organizations.<a href="#fn75" name="fr75">[75]</a> In 2000, an industry consortium, the TD-SCDMA forum was established. The participants were <i>China</i> <i>Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Huawei, Motorola, Nortel, </i>and<i> Siemens</i>, with the objective of developing and supporting this technology. Government support was received in 2002, following which the <i>TD-SCDMA Industry Alliance </i>was founded by well known market players including <i>Datang</i>, <i>SOUTEC</i>, <i>Holley</i>, <i>Huawei</i>, <i>LENOVO, ZTE, CEC</i> and <i>China</i> <i>Putian</i>. There has also been the creation of various joint ventures with international giants such as <i>Alcatel</i>, <i>Ericsson</i>, <i>Nokia</i>, (erstwhile) <i>Nortel</i>, <i>Philips</i>, <i>Samsung</i> and <i>Siemens</i> have also been created.<a href="#fn76" name="fr76">[76]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Information about the existence of patent pools in this technology has been hard to come by. One of the few to write about patent pools in his 2008 paper,<a href="#fn77" name="fr77">[77]</a> <i>Dazheng Wang</i> proposes patent pools as a solution to the problem of commercialization of TD-SCDMA. He suggests that the framework of this patent pool should be on the industry principles of fair, reasonable and non discriminatory licensing terms for essential patents, with the end result being one of increased innovation and competition and an overall increase in market presence. Interestingly, a few articles<a href="#fn78" name="fr78">[78]</a> on blog posts on the internet speak about the existence of patent pools and their apparent misuse<a href="#fn79" name="fr79">[79]</a> as well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is submitted that these inconsistencies regarding the division of patents between various patent holders, where the percentage of patents held by each company have been pegged differently,<a href="#fn80" name="fr80">[80]</a> and about the existence of a patent pool or not raise pressing concerns about the payment of royalties and how licensing works in such a situation. On a very basic level, in order to be able to pay royalties and enter into licensing agreements, the existence of an identified, non disputed patent holder would be the <i>sine qua non, </i>which seems to be missing in the case of patents for TD-SCDMA. This problem is only further compounded by the lack of clarity on the very existence of patent pools. Had there been specified patent pools, the issues of determination of essential patents and the setting of royalties and licensing fees would have been standardized, a situation that cannot be invoked, without dispute, in the present Chinese context.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is further submitted that despite China being the world’s largest market for mobile communications, and its progress from a mere importer to a developer of some parts of technology,<a href="#fn81" name="fr81">[81]</a> the Chinese experiment with TD-SCDMA seems to have met with limited success, in comparison to what was envisaged. For instance, while an agency had forecast that the number of TD-SCDMA subscribers in 2010 would be 34 million, by April, 2010 there were only 8 million or (even lower) subscribers.<a href="#fn82" name="fr82">[82]</a> One of the reasons for preferring other standards, for instance, the W-CDMA is the number of handsets compatible with the same and the consequent variety that is available to the consumer. To illustrate, one could look at the figures from June, 2010. At this point of time <i>China Unicom</i> had 94 models for W-CDMA from twenty four manufacturers including nine foreign ones, whereas <i>China Mobile</i> had only twenty eight models that were compatible with TD-SCDMA.<a href="#fn83" name="fr83">[83]</a> Interestingly, if one were to measure popularity in terms of sheer numbers, TD-SCDMA would emerge the winner over W-CDMA by a couple of million subscribers, but if the growth rate were to be considered, W-CDMA would come out on top. While TD-SCDMA grew only by 24%, W-CDMA has grown at 32% monthly since the start of its service is October, 2009.<a href="#fn84" name="fr84">[84]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">China’s experiments with creating its home grown telecommunication standards have not stopped with the development of the TD-SCDMA, with the country being on track in the development of the TD-LTE. Reports suggest that although the systems are in ‘trial’ mode officially, the 4G spectrum situation remains uncertain.<a href="#fn85" name="fr85">[85]</a> It is submitted that although this is in the nascent stages as compared to the TD-SCDMA, the concerns expressed earlier about TD-SCDMA and the suggestions made therein for the technology to realise its full potential would be equally applicable in this scenario as well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Therefore, in light of this discussion it would not be fallacious to conclude that while the TD-SCDMA, and now more recently the TD-LTE standard might still be in its nascent stages, on a fundamental level it seems to have not fulfilled the objectives with which it was developed, especially given that a sizeable portion of its patents continue to be owned by foreign corporations. In addition to the challenges of attracting subscribers, it would also need to streamline its system of patents, royalties and licensing, if it wants to have a truly global or even national presence. To this end perhaps patent pools structured along the lines of those being developed or in place for other mobile communication technologies might provide a viable solution meriting consideration.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Concluding Observations</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One of the fundamental concerns that plague most downstream organizations in the mobile communications sector is the prevalence of high licensing fees that need to be paid on essential patents, the cost of which often trickles down to the customers. A study on the licensing arrangements prevalent at the moment<a href="#fn86" name="fr86">[86]</a> reveals that as of the moment, the result of royalty rate caps is that they save money for downstream manufacturers, but this is at the expense of upstream licensors. The most significant savers are the ones downstream with no IP to trade, and vertically integrated companies while losing some revenue, are able to save significantly more in reduced expenses.<a href="#fn87" name="fr87">[87]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Therefore, it comes as no surprise that efforts at limiting aggregate licensing fees have been at the forefront over the past couple of years. It is in this scenario that patent pools have developed, with operators such as <i>Via Licensing</i> and <i>Sisvel</i> even promoting themselves as being able to put together patent pools that would greatly limit licensing fees.<a href="#fn88" name="fr88">[88] </a>However, some owners of intellectual property continue to find bilateral licensing and cross licensing to be more profitable as opposed to patent pools.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One of the key concerns when it comes to fore when dealing with how patent pools are structured is about the distribution of income received from royalties within the members of the pool, which ties in with the bigger question of classifying patents as essential and non essential. More often than not, patent pools also have to grapple with the problem of members having conflicting interests. For instance, manufacturers have the incentive to cap aggregate royalties of certain essential patents that they would use in manufacturing, in order to reduce their licensing costs. However, these manufacturers could have also brought their own essential patents to the pool, perhaps of a new way of doing things, and would certainly be averse of having caps imposed on these royalties.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One of the key other considerations that patent pools need to take into account include the royalty rates affixed. In an interview some time ago, the founder of <i>Sisvel</i>, went on to state that while affixing these royalty rates, there could be no discrimination against licensees, since that would be a sure fire way of ensuring the collapse of the patent pool.<a href="#fn89" name="fr89">[89]</a> Additionally, patent pools also need to account for the difference in regulatory mechanism and their execution that exists across jurisdictions. For instance, customs officials in France pay a lot more attention to counterfeit goods than they would to patent infringing products, whereas those in Germany would have a keen eye on the latter.<a href="#fn90" name="fr90">[90]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Various other concerns have also been identified with regard to patent pools over time. One of these is that they could potentially eliminate competition that comes from outside of patent pools.<a href="#fn91" name="fr91">[91]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Additionally, patent pools are not all inclusive, since participation is entirely voluntary. Therefore, patent pools would not even be reasonably expected to cover all essential patents required to make a standardised product. This problem is rendered even more complex as a result of the presence of multiple patent pools around the same technology, as in the case of DVDs and more recently, LTE technology.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In sum, while portfolio cross licenses and patent pools can be helpful in resolving issues created by patent thickets by reducing transaction costs for licensees, while preserving to a definitive extent financial incentives for inventors to commercialize their existing inventions and undertake new research, the significant shortcomings of these pools also need to be taken into account before they can be heralded as the solution to problems presented by complex patent landscapes. While voluntary patent pools might have proved to be beneficial in some respects, the imposition of patent pools would be a fallacious approach to undertake.</p>
<hr />
<p>[<a href="#fr1" name="fn1">1</a>]. Hui Yan, <i>The 3G Standard Setting Strategy and Indigenous Innovation Policy in China: Is TD-SCDMA a Flagship?, </i>DRUID Working Paper No 07-01, available at http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewpaper.php?id=1454&cf=9 (last accessed 07 12 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr2" name="fn2">2</a>]. Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole, <i>Efficient Patent Pools,</i> 4 Am. Econ. Rev. 691, 691 (2004)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr3" name="fn3">3</a>]. <i>Patent Pools- Some Not So Frequently Answered Questions, </i>available at <a href="http://blog.patentology.com.au/2012/11/patent-pools-some-not-so-frequently.html">http://blog.patentology.com.au/2012/11/patent-pools-some-not-so-frequently.html</a> (last accessed 10 December, 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr4" name="fn4">4</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr5" name="fn5">5</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr6" name="fn6">6</a>]. Philip B. Nelson, <i>Patent Pools: An Economic Assessment of Current Law and Policy, </i>Rutgers Law Journal, Volume 38:539, 559 (2007)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr7" name="fn7">7</a>].</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr8" name="fn8">8</a>]. Roger B. Andewelt, Analysis of Patent Pools Under the Antitrust Laws, 53 ANTITRUST L.J. 611, 611 (1984).</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr9" name="fn9">9</a>]. Philips has been known to have been the licensing agency for patent pools where it was a member</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr10" name="fn10">10</a>]. <i>Supra </i>note 3</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr11" name="fn11">11</a>]. <i>Supra </i>note 3</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr12" name="fn12">12</a>]. <i>Supra </i>note 3</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr13" name="fn13">13</a>]. <i>Supra </i>note 3</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr14" name="fn14">14</a>]. <i>Supra </i>note 3</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr15" name="fn15">15</a>]. <i>Supra </i>note 3</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr16" name="fn16">16</a>]. <i>Supra </i>note 3</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr17" name="fn17">17</a>]. Rudi Bekkers et. al., <i>Patent Pools and Non Assertion Agreements: Coordination Mechanisms for Multi Party IPR Holders in Standardization</i>, available at <a href="http://www-i4.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Interest/EASST_Bekkers_Iversen_Blind.pdf">http://www-i4.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Interest/EASST_Bekkers_Iversen_Blind.pdf</a> 22 (last accessed 09 December, 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr18" name="fn18">18</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr19" name="fn19">19</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr20" name="fn20">20</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr21" name="fn21">21</a>]. <i>Supra</i> note 17 at 23.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr22" name="fn22">22</a>]. <i>Supra</i> note 17 at 23.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr23" name="fn23">23</a>]. Keith Mallinson, <i>Fixing IP Prices with Royalty Rate Caps and Patent Pools, </i>available at <a href="http://ipfinance.blogspot.in/2011/07/fixing-ip-prices-with-royalty-rate-caps.html">http://ipfinance.blogspot.in/2011/07/fixing-ip-prices-with-royalty-rate-caps.html</a> (last accessed 10 December, 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr24" name="fn24">24</a>]. <i>Id.</i> See Appendix 1 for a graphical representation of declared intellectual property assets in 2009.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr25" name="fn25">25</a>]. <i>Supra</i> note 17 at 25</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr26" name="fn26">26</a>]. <i>Supra</i> note 17 at 27</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr27" name="fn27">27</a>]. <i>Supra</i> note 17 at 27</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr28" name="fn28">28</a>]. <i>Supra</i> note 17 at 28</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr29" name="fn29">29</a>]. Dessy Choumelova, <i>Competition Law Analysis of Patent Licensing Agreements- the Particular Case of 3G3P, </i>available at <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/competition/publications/cpn/2003_1_41.pdf-">http://ec.europa.eu/competition/publications/cpn/2003_1_41.pdf-</a> 41 (last accessed 10 December, 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr30" name="fn30">30</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr31" name="fn31">31</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr32" name="fn32">32</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr33" name="fn33">33</a>]. <i>Id </i>at 42.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr34" name="fn34">34</a>]. <i>Id </i>at 42.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr35" name="fn35">35</a>]. <i>Id </i>at 42-43.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr36" name="fn36">36</a>]. <i>Id</i> at 43.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr37" name="fn37">37</a>]. <i>Supra</i> note 17 at 29.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr38" name="fn38">38</a>]. <i>Supra</i> note 17 at 39.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr39" name="fn39">39</a>]. <i>Supra</i> note 17 at 39.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr40" name="fn40">40</a>]. Elizabeth Woyke,<i> Identifying the Tech Leaders in LTE Wireless Patents, </i>available at <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethwoyke/2011/09/21/identifying-the-tech-leaders-in-lte-wireless-patents/">http://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethwoyke/2011/09/21/identifying-the-tech-leaders-in-lte-wireless-patents/</a> (last accessed 08 December, 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr41" name="fn41">41</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr42" name="fn42">42</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr43" name="fn43">43</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr44" name="fn44">44</a>]. Caroline Gabriel, <i>ZTE Claims 7% of LTE Essential Patents, </i>available at <a href="http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2011/01/11/zte-claims-7-lte-essential-patents.htm">http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2011/01/11/zte-claims-7-lte-essential-patents.htm</a> (last accessed 09 December, 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr45" name="fn45">45</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr46" name="fn46">46</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr47" name="fn47">47</a>]. <i>Supra</i> note 40.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr48" name="fn48">48</a>]. Keith Mallinson, <i>Mallinson: Uncertain Futures in LTE Patent Pool Licensing, </i>available at <a href="http://www.fiercewireless.com/europe/story/mallinson-uncertain-outlook-patent-pool-licensing/2010-08-25">http://www.fiercewireless.com/europe/story/mallinson-uncertain-outlook-patent-pool-licensing/2010-08-25</a> (last accessed 10 December, 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr49" name="fn49">49</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr50" name="fn50">50</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr51" name="fn51">51</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr52" name="fn52">52</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p style="text-align: left; ">[<a href="#fr53" name="fn53">53</a>]. <i>NGMN Board Recommendation on LTE Patent Pool, </i>available at <a href="http://4g-portal.com/ngmn-board-recommendation-on-lte-patent-pool">http://4g-portal.com/ngmn-board-recommendation-on-lte-patent-pool</a> (last accessed 10 December, 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr54" name="fn54">54</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr55" name="fn55">55</a>]. Caroline Gabriel, <i>NGMN’s Calls for an LTE Patent Pool Will be Futile in the Current IPR Climate</i>, available at <a href="http://www.4gtrends.com/articles/53511/ngmns-calls-for-an-lte-patent-pool-will-be-futile-/">http://www.4gtrends.com/articles/53511/ngmns-calls-for-an-lte-patent-pool-will-be-futile-/</a> (last accessed 11 December, 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr56" name="fn56">56</a>]. Michelle Donegan, <i>Vendors Balk at LTE Patent Pool Proposal, </i>available at <a href="http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=212362">http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=212362</a> (last accessed 11 December, 2012).</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr57" name="fn57">57</a>]. <i>SISVEL: Patent Pool for 3G Long Term Evolution (LTE), </i>available at <a href="http://www.thefreelibrary.com/SISVEL%3A+Patent+Pool+for+3G+Long+Term+Evolution+(LTE).-a0199544458">http://www.thefreelibrary.com/SISVEL%3A+Patent+Pool+for+3G+Long+Term+Evolution+(LTE).-a0199544458</a> (last accessed 08 December, 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr58" name="fn58">58</a>]. <i>LTE Patent Pool from Sisvel</i>, available at <a href="http://4g-portal.com/lte-patent-pool-from-sisvel">http://4g-portal.com/lte-patent-pool-from-sisvel</a> (last accessed 09 December, 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr59" name="fn59">59</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr60" name="fn60">60</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr61" name="fn61">61</a>]. Mike Dano, <i>Via Promises LTE Patent Pool Launch Within Months, </i>available at <a href="http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/licensing-promises-lte-patent-pool-launch-within-months/2012-06-15">http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/licensing-promises-lte-patent-pool-launch-within-months/2012-06-15</a> (last accessed 07 December, 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr62" name="fn62">62</a>]. <i>LTE Patent Pool Available Through Via’s Licensing Program, </i>available at <a href="http://4g-portal.com/lte-patent-pool-available-through-vias-licensing-program">http://4g-portal.com/lte-patent-pool-available-through-vias-licensing-program</a> (last accessed 10 December, 2012).</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr63" name="fn63">63</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr64" name="fn64">64</a>]. Stephen Lawson, <i>Lte Patent Pool Brings Together Technologies From At&T, Zte, Hp And Others, </i>available at <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9232043/LTE_patent_pool_brings_together_technologies_from_AT_amp_T_ZTE_HP_and_others">http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9232043/LTE_patent_pool_brings_together_technologies_from_AT_amp_T_ZTE_HP_and_others</a> (last accessed 09 December, 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr65" name="fn65">65</a>]. Peter White, <i>Sisvel LTE Patent Pool Emerges After All- Majors Still Hold Back from Committing, </i>available at <a href="http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2012/11/05/sisvel-lte-patent-pool-emerges-all-majors-hold-committing.htm">http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2012/11/05/sisvel-lte-patent-pool-emerges-all-majors-hold-committing.htm</a> (last accessed 09 December, 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr66" name="fn66">66</a>]. Shankar Pandiath, <i>Sisvel Launches Patent Pool for 3G Long Term Evolution (LTE), </i>available at <a href="http://next-generation-communications.tmcnet.com/topics/nextgen-voice/articles/314957-sisvel-launches-patent-pool-3g-long-term-evolution.htm">http://next-generation-communications.tmcnet.com/topics/nextgen-voice/articles/314957-sisvel-launches-patent-pool-3g-long-term-evolution.htm</a> (last accessed 09 December, 2012).</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr67" name="fn67">67</a>].<i>NGMN Board Welcomes Launch of LTE Patent Pool, </i>available at <a href="http://4g-portal.com/ngmn-board-welcomes-launch-of-lte-patent-pool">http://4g-portal.com/ngmn-board-welcomes-launch-of-lte-patent-pool</a> (last accessed 09 December, 2012).</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr68" name="fn68">68</a>]. ELSPETH THOMSON AND JON SIGURDSON (EDS.), CHINA’S SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY SECTOR AND THE FORCES OF GLOBALIZATION 17 (2008, World Scientific Publishing Company, Singapore).</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr69" name="fn69">69</a>]. Cong Cao, <i>Challenges for Technological Development in China’s Industry, </i>available at <a href="http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/924">http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/924</a> (last accessed 11 December, 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr70" name="fn70">70</a>]. Peter Zura, <i>China Launches TD-SCDMA Telecom Standard</i>¸ available at <a href="http://271patent.blogspot.in/2006/01/china-launches-td-scdma-telecom.html">http://271patent.blogspot.in/2006/01/china-launches-td-scdma-telecom.html</a> (last accessed 10 December, 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr71" name="fn71">71</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr72" name="fn72">72</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr73" name="fn73">73</a>]. <i>TD-SCDMA (time division synchronous code division multiple access)</i>, available at <a href="http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/TD-SCDMA">http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/TD-SCDMA</a> (last accessed 07 December, 2012).</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr74" name="fn74">74</a>]. SHAHD AKHTAR AND PATRICIA ARINTO (EDS.), DIGITAL REVIEW OF ASIA PACIFIC : 2009-2010 8 (2010, Sage Publications, New Delhi).</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr75" name="fn75">75</a>]. <i>Supra </i>note 1 at 2. See Appendix 2 for the breakup of patent holding. However, see details on <i>Infra</i> note 78 for a contradictory view, wherein China claims to own 30% of all TD-SCDMA patents.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr76" name="fn76">76</a>]. Pierre Vialle, <i>On the relevance of Indigenous Standard Setting Policy: the Case of TD-SCDMA in China, </i>2<sup>nd</sup> International Conference on Economics, Trade and Development, (2012) 36 IPEDR 184-185 (IACSIT Press, Singapore).</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr77" name="fn77">77</a>]. Dazheng Wang, Patent Pool: <i>A Solution to the Problem of TD-SCDMA’s Commercialization</i>, <a href="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5076744&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F5076660%2F5076661%2F05076744.pdf%3Farnumber%3D5076744">http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5076744&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F5076660%2F5076661%2F05076744.pdf%3Farnumber%3D5076744</a> (last accessed 11 December, 2012).</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr78" name="fn78">78</a>]. <i>China Owns 30% of TD-SCDMA Related Patents, </i>available at <a href="http://www.cn-c114.net/582/a310685.html">http://www.cn-c114.net/582/a310685.html</a> (last accessed 11 December, 2012).</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr79" name="fn79">79</a>]. <i>The Legal Regulation on Patent Pool Misuse, </i>available at <a href="http://www.socpaper.com/the-legal-regulation-on-patent-pool-misuse.html">http://www.socpaper.com/the-legal-regulation-on-patent-pool-misuse.html</a> (last accessed 11 December, 2012).</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr80" name="fn80">80</a>]. <i>Supra </i>notes 75 and 78.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr81" name="fn81">81</a>]. Tomoo Marukawa, <i>Chinese Innovations in Mobile Telecommunications: Third Generation vs. “Guerrilla Handsets”, </i>Paper presented at the IGCC Conference: Chinese Approaches to National Innovation, La Jolla, California, June 28-29, 2010 at 1.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr82" name="fn82">82</a>]. <i>Id </i>at 8.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr83" name="fn83">83</a>]. <i>Id </i>at 9.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr84" name="fn84">84</a>]. <i>Id</i> at 9.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr85" name="fn85">85</a>]. <i>China to Speed Up TD-LTE Process, </i>available at <a href="http://www.tdscdma-forum.org/en/news/see.asp?id=11998&uptime=2012-11-29">http://www.tdscdma-forum.org/en/news/see.asp?id=11998&uptime=2012-11-29</a> (last accessed 08 December, 2012)</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr86" name="fn86">86</a>]. <i>Supra</i> note 23.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr87" name="fn87">87</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr88" name="fn88">88</a>]. <i>Supra</i> note 23.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr89" name="fn89">89</a>]. <i>Sisvel’s Patent Strategy, </i>available at <a href="http://www.managingip.com/Article/2400452/Sisvels-patent-strategy.html">http://www.managingip.com/Article/2400452/Sisvels-patent-strategy.html</a> (last accessed 12 December, 2012).</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr90" name="fn90">90</a>]. <i>Id.</i></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr91" name="fn91">91</a>]. <i>Supra</i> note 23.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/patent-pools'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/patent-pools</a>
</p>
No publishernehaaIntellectual Property RightsPublicationsAccess to KnowledgePervasive Technologies2013-07-03T06:57:59ZBlog EntryWhose Change is it Anyway?
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/hivos-knowledge-programme-june-14-2013-nishant-shah-whose-change-is-it-anyway
<b>This thought piece is an attempt to reflect critically on existing practices of “making change” and its implications for the future of citizen action in information and network societies. It observes that change is constantly and explicitly invoked at different stages in research, practice, and policy in relation to digital technologies, citizen action, and network societies. </b>
<p>The White Paper by Nishant Shah was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.hivos.net/Hivos-Knowledge-Programme/Themes/Civic-Explorations/Publications/Whose-Change-is-it-anyway">published by Hivos recently</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">However, we do not have adequate frameworks to address the idea of change. What constitutes change? What are the intentions that make change possible? Who are the actors involved? Whose change is it, anyway?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Drawing on the Hivos Knowledge Programme and on knowledge frameworks around youth, technology, and change from the last four years, this thought piece introduces new ways of defining, locating, and figuring change. In the process, it also helps understand the role that digital technologies play in shaping and amplifying our processes and practices of change, and to understand actors of change who are not necessarily confined to the category of “citizen”, which seems to be understood as the de facto agent of change in contemporary social upheavals, political uprisings, and cultural innovations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Methodologically, this thought piece attempts to make three discursive interventions: It locates digital activism in historical trajectories, positing that digital activism has deep ties to traditional activism, when it comes to the core political cause. Simultaneously, it recognises that new modes of political engagement are demanding and producing novel practices and introducing new actors and stakeholders. It looks at contemporary digital and network theories, but also draws on older philosophical lineages to discuss the crises that we seek to address. It tries to interject these abstractions and theoretical frameworks back into the field by producing two case studies that show how engagement with these questions might help us reflect critically on our past practices and knowledge as well as on visions for and speculations about the future, and how these shape contemporary network societies. It builds a theoretical framework based on knowledge gleaned from conversations, interviews, and on-the-ground action with different groups and communities in emerging information societies, and integrates with new critical theory to build an interdisciplinary and accessible framework that seeks to inform research, development-based interventions, and policy structures at the intersection of digital technologies, citizen action, and change by introducing questions around change into existing discourse.</p>
<hr />
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/whose-change-is-it-anyway.pdf" class="internal-link">Click to download the full White Paper here</a> (PDF, 321 Kb)</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/hivos-knowledge-programme-june-14-2013-nishant-shah-whose-change-is-it-anyway'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/hivos-knowledge-programme-june-14-2013-nishant-shah-whose-change-is-it-anyway</a>
</p>
No publishernishantDigital ActivismRAW PublicationsDigital NativesYouthFeaturedPublicationsHomepage2015-04-17T10:56:47ZBlog EntryAccessibility of Government Websites in India: A Report
http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/accessibility-of-government-websites-in-india
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society is pleased to announce the publication of a report on the accessibility of government websites in India. The report is published in cooperation with the Hans Foundation. Nirmita Narasimhan, Mukesh Sharma and Dinesh Kaushal are the authors. </b>
<h2>Executive Summary</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Website inaccessibility is the largest and most common barrier to implementing effective e-governance. In a country like India, where a very large percentage of the population is disabled, elderly, illiterate, rural, having limited bandwidth, speaks only a vernacular language or uses alternative platforms like mobile phones, having accessible websites becomes all the more important to ensure that government information and services which are available online are accessible and usable by these groups.<br /><br />This report summarises the key findings of a test conducted to measure the accessibility of 7800 websites of the Government of India and its affiliated agencies against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, which is the universally accepted standard for web accessibility. It uses a combination of automated and manual testing to derive key findings. While the automated tool identified errors such as images without textual descriptions and HTML and CSS errors, manual testing was used wherever human decision was required, for instance, to judge whether a description of a link or image was indeed accurate, or to check for accessibility of forms.</p>
<hr />
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Table of Contents</h3>
<p><b>Executive Summary</b></p>
<ul>
<li>Highlights</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Introduction<br /></b></p>
<ul>
<li>What is Accessibility?</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Methodology</b></p>
<p><b>Findings and Interpretation</b></p>
<ul>
<li>Known, Likely and Potential Problems</li>
<li>HTML and CSS Validation</li>
<li>Alternate Text for Non-text Objects</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Recommendations</b></p>
<ul>
<li>Appendix 1: Examples of Errors</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> Appendix 2: About the National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> Appendix 3: List of Testers and Authors</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<p>Given below is the link to download the full report: <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/accessibility-of-govt-websites.pdf" class="internal-link"></a></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/accessibility-of-govt-websites.pdf" class="internal-link">Accessibility of Government Websites in India: A Report</a> (PDF)</li>
</ul>
<ol> </ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/accessibility-of-government-websites-in-india'>http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/accessibility-of-government-websites-in-india</a>
</p>
No publisherNirmita Narasimhan, Mukesh Sharma and Dinesh KaushalAccessibilityPublications2012-09-26T08:16:55ZBlog EntryUnlicensed Spectrum Policy Brief for Government of India
http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/unlicensed-spectrum-policy-brief-for-govt-of-india
<b>Centre for Internet & Society and the Ford Foundation are delighted to bring you the Unlicensed Spectrum Policy brief for Government of India. The policy brief authored by Satya N Gupta, Sunil Abraham and Yelena Gyulkhandanyan contains an Executive Summary and eight chapters. The research aims to recommend unlicensed spectrum policy to the Government of India based on recent developments in wireless technology, community needs and international best practices.</b>
<h2>Executive Summary</h2>
<p>The aim of this policy brief is to recommend unlicensed spectrum policy to the Indian Government based on recent developments in wireless technology, community needs and international best practices. We seek to demonstrate the need for and importance of unlicensed spectrum as a medium for inexpensive connectivity in rural/remote areas and source of innovation by serving as a barrier-free and cost-effective platform for testing and implementing of new technologies.</p>
<p>The specific frequency bands that we request for unlicensing are: 433-434 MHz, 902-928 MHz, 1880-1900 MHz, 2483-2500 MHz, 5150-5350 MHz, and 5725-5775 MHz. These demands reflect the widespread market adoption in countries where these bands have already become unlicensed.</p>
<p>Interference concerns to licensed users, which are the predominant reason for the limited allocation of unlicensed spectrum, are greatly diminished. Interference-free spectrum use by multiple operators is enabled by the short-range, low-power nature of most of the technologies operating in these spectrum bands, as well as innovative techniques that facilitate spectrum sharing.</p>
<p>Technological advancements such as Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), Ultra Wide Band (UWB), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Near -Field Communication (NFC) systems, and others have demonstrated that when an opportunity for cost-efficient and flexible spectrum usage is presented in the form of unlicensed spectrum, the market is likely to respond through innovation and expansion.</p>
<p>The value of unlicensed spectrum in bridging the digital divide has been demonstrated through community wireless networking projects as well as inexpensive ITES (IT enabled services) operating on unlicensed spectrum that have been created to spread connectivity to digitally-marginalized areas. As demonstrated by numerous case studies, such networks administer e-learning, e-commerce, telemedicine, e-agriculture, and many other initiatives that lead to equitable social and economic growth, making unlicensed spectrum a “public good”.</p>
<p>The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), European Union telecom regulatory bodies, as well as leading state telecom policy makers and regulators such as the FCC (U.S. Federal Communications Commission) and OFCOM (UK Office of Communications) have recognized that the optimal use of radio spectrum is dependent on flexible spectrum management policies and the multi-time sharing of this precious resource. Of late, the relevance of unlicensed spectrum is being recognized by policy makers in India as well. This is evident from the National Telecom Policy 2012, as well as recent remarks on the subject made by senior government officials.</p>
<hr />
<p>Download the Unlicensed Spectrum Policy brief for Government of India below:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/unlicensed-spectrum-brief.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Unlicensed Spectrum Policy for Government of India">PDF Document</a> [519 Kb]</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/unlicensed-spectrum-brief.doc" class="internal-link" title="Unlicensed Spectrum Policy brief for Government of India">Word File</a> [124 Kb]</li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/unlicensed-spectrum-policy-brief-for-govt-of-india'>http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/unlicensed-spectrum-policy-brief-for-govt-of-india</a>
</p>
No publisherSatya N Gupta, Sunil Abraham and Yelena GyulkhandanyanTelecomPublications2012-09-11T16:23:45ZBlog EntryUniversal Service for Persons with Disabilities: A Global Survey of Policy Interventions and Good Practices
http://editors.cis-india.org/universal-service-for-persons-with-disabilities
<b>The Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies and the Centre for Internet and Societies in cooperation with the Hans Foundation have published the Universal Service for Persons with Disabilities: A Global Survey of Policy Interventions and Good Practices. The book consists of a Foreword by Axel Leblois, an Introduction and four chapters. Deepti Bharthur, Axel Leblois and Nirmita Narasimhan have contributed to the chapters.</b>
<h3>Foreword</h3>
<p>Universal Service definitions have been developed by 125 countries and are the foundation for policies and programs ensuring that telecommunications are available to all categories of population. Universal service funds are the main vehicle used to fund those programs, primarily addressing imbalances such as lack of availability of services in rural areas. While geographic coverage has vastly improved over the past decade with wireless infrastructure, the scope of Universal Service has expanded to include other categories of underserved populations.</p>
<p>Among those, persons with disabilities and senior citizens, who represent 15% of the world population<a href="#fn1" name="fr1">[1]</a> are an increasing concern for legislators and regulators. Basic accessibility features for public telephone booths, fixed line or wireless handsets, customer services in alternate formats such as Braille, or assistive services such as relay services for hard of hearing or deaf persons are in fact not implemented in a majority countries.<a href="#fn2" name="fr2">[2]</a></p>
<p>To address those issues, several countries have expanded the scope of their national definition of Universal Service Obligation to include persons with disabilities allowing programs promoting the accessibility of information and communication technologies to be covered by Universal Service Funds.</p>
<p>The adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities by over 150 countries since March 31st, 2007 will likely accelerate this trend: States Parties have an obligation to ensure that Information and Communication Technologies and Services are made accessible to persons with disabilities. This can be done by aligning the definition of Universal Service Obligation with article 9 of the Convention and expanding the charter of Universal Service Funds to cover programs promoting accessibility for persons with disabilities. This report is the first attempt to document how Universal Service definitions and related policies and programs have been implemented by various countries to ensure that persons with disabilities have full access, on an equal basis with others,to telecommunication services.G3ict would like to express its sincere appreciation to the Center for Internet and Society for its support of this project, to Nirmita Narasimhan for researching and editing this report;to the International Telecommunication Union for providing references and helping identify countries to be surveyed, and to the Hans Foundation for funding the print version of the report. Promoting universal service for persons with disabilities can affect positively the lives of millions of users around the world. We hope that this report may serve as a useful reference for policy makers, operators, organizations of persons with disabilities, and as a framework for good practice sharing among countries currently implementing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.</p>
<p>Axel Leblois<br />Executive Director<br />G3ict – Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs</p>
<hr />
<h3>Introduction</h3>
<p>The advent of the Internet and accessible information and communication technologies (ICT) has opened up exciting possibilities and opportunities for persons with disabilities.The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the ‘UNCRPD’)3 has explicitly recognized the right of persons with disabilities to seek, receive and impart information on an equal basis with others4 and has placed specific obligations on member states to ensure that all ICT based facilities and services (which include telecommunications services) must be made available and accessible to all. To this end, member states are required to formulate and implement appropriate laws and policies at national, regional and global levels. In an age where almost all spheres of life are inextricably woven with and dependent on ICT, Article 9 of the UNCRPD on Accessibility is possibly one of the most powerful and critical tools in the hands of policy makers to ensure that persons with disabilities are assured of basic human rights such as education, health, employment and access to information and participation.While the lack of awareness amongst governments is undeniably a serious impediment to implementing accessible ICT in any country, an equally serious and perhaps more realistic problem is the lack of resources which is plaguing many countries, especially developing nations. The fact that governments are already struggling to ensure basic human rights for all citizens by judiciously dividing their limited resources for the whole gamut of needs makes it difficult for them to outlay separate and substantial budgets which may be required for implementing ICT accessibility. In such a scenario it becomes very important to look around and identify sources of funding, new or existing, which can be leveraged by governments to fulfill their obligation towards making all ICT based applications and services accessible and promoting assistive technologies for persons with disabilities.</p>
<p>This report aims to highlight the extreme suitability of leveraging the Universal Service Fund (USF) to implement accessibility and assistive technologies in telecommunications. It examines the evolution of the concept of USF, its minimum mandate and scope, funding sources, as well as project implementation mechanisms and showcases countries which are using the USF to fund accessibility projects through policies and programmes.</p>
<hr />
<p>[<a href="#fr1" name="fn1">1</a>].WHO Global Report on Disability, June 2011 - <a class="external-link" href="http://www.who.int/disabilities/world_report/2011/en/index.html">http://www.who.int/disabilities/world_report/2011/en/index.html </a></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr2" name="fn2">2</a>].CRPD Progress Report on ICT Accessibility – 2010 by G3ict - <a class="external-link" href="http://g3ict.org/resource_center/publications_and_reports">http://g3ict.org/resource_center/publications_and_reports</a></p>
<hr />
<ol>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/universal-service-braille/view" class="external-link">Click here</a> for the Braille format</li>
<li>Download the Daisy version <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/universal-service-daisy" class="internal-link" title="Universal Service for Persons with Disabilities - Daisy File">here</a></li>
<li>Download the book <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/universal-service-disabilities.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Universal Service for Persons with Disabilities">here </a>PDF [302 KB] </li>
</ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/universal-service-for-persons-with-disabilities'>http://editors.cis-india.org/universal-service-for-persons-with-disabilities</a>
</p>
No publishernirmitaFeaturedAccessibilityPublications2012-10-08T05:43:46ZBlog EntryThe Last Cultural Mile
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-last-cultural-mile/the-last-cultural-mile-blog-old
<b>Ashish’s monograph follows the career of a priori contradiction, one that only mandates a state mechanism to perform an act of delivery, and then disqualifies the state from performing that very act effectively. This contradiction which he names as the Last Mile problem is a conceptual hurdle, not a physical one and when put one way, the Last Mile is unbridgeable, when put another, it is being bridged all the time.</b>
<p>This monograph provides a set of four case studies of the Indian State. The case studies address four technologies, television, telecommunications, networked higher education and the Unique Identity project. It also looks at Wireless-in-Local Loop (or WLL) technology that constituted the first revolution in telecommunications in the early 1990s, the arrival of satellite television also in the 1990s, the low-end IT ‘device’ with which the Ministry of HRD plans to use digitized distance education to increase enrolment of Indian students by five per cent of the overall population, and the celebrated Aadhaar.</p>
<p><strong>Download the Monograph <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/last-cultural-mile.pdf" class="internal-link"><span class="external-link"><span class="external-link">here</span></span></a></strong></p>
<div><br /> <br />
<blockquote class="pullquote"></blockquote>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-last-cultural-mile/the-last-cultural-mile-blog-old'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-last-cultural-mile/the-last-cultural-mile-blog-old</a>
</p>
No publisherkaeruDigital GovernanceInternet HistoriesHistories of InternetResearchers at WorkPublications2015-04-03T10:59:23ZCollection (Old)Know your Users, Match their Needs!
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/know-your-users
<b>As Free Access to Law initiatives in the Global South enter into a new stage of maturity, they must be certain not to lose sight of their users’ needs. The following post gives a summary of the “Good Practices Handbook”, a research output of the collaborative project Free Access to Law — Is it Here to Stay? undertaken by LexUM (Canada) and the South African Legal Institute in partnership with the Centre for Internet and Society.</b>
<p></p>
<p>Almost ten years have passed since the Montreal Declaration on
Free Access to Law (FAL) was signed by eight legal information institutes and other
FAL initiatives. Today, the Free Access to Law Movement (FALM) is growing with over 30 initiatives having signed onto the Declaration and providing free, online
access to legal information. While the movement continues to gain momentum, the
big question no longer remains <em>why</em> we need
free access to law, but instead <em>how</em> FAL initiatives can continue to do so sustainably in the long-term. The principles of access
and justice underpinning the FALM have been well-argued and few would dispute the
notion that citizens ought to have access to the laws under which they are
governed. As the Montreal Declaration states: "Public legal information from
all countries and international institutions is part of the common heritage of
humanity…Maximizing access to his information promotes justice and the rule of
law" (2002).</p>
<p>Regardless of legal system or political context, the
importance of securing free online access to the law has been recognized from a
variety of perspectives. Whether FAL is considered a critical democratic
function or simply an essential efficiency within any legal system, it is
difficult to contest that the internet has increased the accessibility of and
ease with which legal information is being published and shared online. Setting
the ideological and practical foundations of the movement aside, effectively
demonstrating the impact of FAL initiatives and to secure their sustainability in
the long-term remains the next big challenge for the FALM. Today, there is a
growing necessity for grounded and realistic indicators that can validate some
of the long-held assumptions around the impacts and outcomes of FAL initiatives.
Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, there is also a need for a more
nuanced understanding of the factors that influence the sustainability of FAL
initiatives— particularly in resource-scarce and often nebulous legal systems of
the Global South.</p>
<p>This blog post provides some insight into the questions
above through a brief summary of the results of the study <a class="external-link" href="http://crdi.org/ar/ev-139395-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html">Free Access to Law—Is
it Here to Stay?</a> This global comparative study was carried out by LexUM (Canada)
and the South African Legal Institute in partnership with the Centre for
Internet and Society. The project set out to begin providing answers to some of
these critical questions around the impacts and sustainability of the FALM. It
was initially hypothesized in the study that the sustainability of a FAL
initiative rests upon a particular string of contingent factors. To begin, a particular
condition would incentivize the creation of the FAL initiative — more often than
not meeting the unmet needs of those requiring access to legal information. Next, if the FAL initiative is able to provide
the service within a favourable context, it was suspected that it would produce
favourable outcomes for both users and society at large. In turn, if the FAL
initiative was able to provide benefits to users, it was theorized that these benefits
would then stimulate reinvestment into the FAL initiative — forming a positive
and sustainable feedback loop. </p>
<p>As the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/Best%20Practices%20Hand%20Book_03sept11.pdf">Good Practices Handbook</a> highlights, the research
hypothesis provided an accurate reading of what the sustainability chain of a
FAL initiative might look like in<em> practice</em>.
If unable to keep up with the evolving information requirements of their users,
this study suggests that FAL initiatives run the risk of FAL becoming outdated
and even outperformed by either government-based or private sector
initiatives. This is why FAL initiatives
must continue to be innovative and find new ways to meet users’ needs. Approaches take my include keeping their
collections up to date, fine-tuning their services or even reinventing
themselves through the provision of value-added services. Gathered from the
experiences of the eleven countries across Africa and Asia examined in this
study, the following is a brief summary of the nine “Good Practices” that emerging
FAL initiatives can consider:</p>
<ol><li><strong>The FAL initiative
should establish clear objectives</strong>: Before doing anything, the FAL initiative
should decide what exactly it’s setting out to do…critical components such as
content selection, targeted audience, expected reach, search functionalities
and other website features help determine priorities and evaluate capacity to
achieve these objectives.</li><li><strong>How to be small and
do big things</strong>: Most of the FAL initiatives studied as part of this project
were formed of small teams (often less than five individuals). Initially, this may
appear to pose a risk for sustainability. However, we saw a number of ways in
which small teams have proven to be innovative, flexible, and able to thrive in
environments of scarcity. However, as much as small teams can be seen as a
source of innovation, they may also pose a risk in the medium to long-term. </li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
require expertise in both IT and legal information</strong>: Legal information management
experts understand how the law is applied, how different texts and parts of
texts speak to one another, and how these documents are used. IT experts can
imagine a variety of ways to address these needs. If both forms of expertise is
not available within the team of a FAL initiative, institutional partnerships
provide promising sites for collaborative support. For example, the FALM
constitutes a rich source of expertise and has proven to be a site of
collaboration between established and emerging FAL initiatives. Further,
universities have proven to be a significant source of human and financial
resources for several FAL initiatives.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should look to where they are headed (but not too far ahead)</strong>: Because the
purpose of a FAL initiative is to provide free online access to the law, it
must secure access to this data for regular publication. How will legal
information be received and organized by the initiative? In what format will it
be published in? Early on, FAL initiatives need to develop both internal and
external workflow processes to ensure that the initiative is able to provide regular
access to updated information. Furthermore, an important finding of the study
suggests that context plays a much larger role in a project’s sustainability. Consideration
should be given to a country’s ICT infrastructure, the transparency of a
government and their access to information regimes, and the nature of the legal
information market when designing the workflows of an FAL initiative.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should work with the ICT infrastructure in place</strong>: The quality and
consistency of internet access varies across countries in the Global South. FAL
initiatives should remain aware of how stakeholders and users are accessing the
internet and develop their service accordingly. Considering the often
intermittent nature of internet connectivity in the Global South, providing
users with offline access to databases is a practical alternative.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should use Free and Open Source Software</strong>: FAL initiatives should maximise
their use of FLOSS. All FAL initiatives use FLOSS to some extent and without
these flexible and cost-effective alternatives, it would be safe to infer that
the FALM would have grown as quickly as it has.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should be sensitive to culture</strong>: FAL initiatives rely on stakeholders and
communities of users. Staying mindful of the professional and organizational
cultures within a country may provide the initiative with a source of community
support which may become a sustainability strategy. Further, integrated or parallel social
networking platforms can play an essential role in community-building around
the FAL initiatives and can also serve as another source of content in
resource-scarce environments.</li><li><strong>Find your users,
match their needs</strong>: Project goals and appropriate strategies should be based
on an in-depth understanding of the needs of those using the FAL initiative. As
the sustainability chain suggests, when FAL initiatives produce positive
outputs and outcomes, stakeholders will reinvest in the initiative to ensure
its sustainability. If a user’s needs are effectively met by an FAL initiative,
this group can provide either the resources or impetus for its continued
success. Identifying who your users are and staying aware of their needs is a
good way to secure reinvestment into the project.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should diversify funding sources</strong>: This may be easier said than
done — reinvestment can be the most challenging aspect of sustaining a FAL
initiative. Early on, initiatives that receive donor-based funding benefit
substantially upon investment. However, these initiatives are put at
significant risk once initial seed funding has been depleted. Similarly, FAL
initiatives that partnerships with other during their start up phase face
similar fates as securing long-term service delivery can become a challenge.
Possible funding sources included throughout the study include, among others:
government, international development agencies or NGOs, the judiciary, law
societies and the sale of value-added services.</li></ol>
<p> </p>
<p>In addition to these good practices, this study has emphasized
the role the that the FALM has played in helping redefine online legal information as a public good. Each
of the case studies demonstrates in a unique way the value openness plays in a
legal information ecosystem, and how a robust digital legal information commons can be of
benefit to users. Traditionally, the legal information market has been dominated by a select
number of commercial players. In response, the FALM has created an important
transnational space within which conversations around the provision of and
access to legal information as a political right <em>rather</em> than a commodity to be bought and sold
can take place. Encouragingly, governments in the Global South are catching and FAL initiatives from the South have proven to be immense sources of innovation in their own right. In Indonesia, for example, FAL initiatives have laid the
groundwork for emerging government initiatives that are now prioritizing the provision of free, online access to legal and other government information. Today, I believe that we are witnessing an important paradigm
shift as governments are beginning to recognize that “access” to legal information is a
right to be held by the public.</p>
<p>Despite such headway, it is needless to say that FAL initiatives in the Global South
continue to face immense sustainability challenges. However, it is hoped that this
study can provide some practical insights for emerging initiatives
and partnerships. However, as more FAL initiatives begin entering into the next
stage of maturity and growth, it is more important than ever that they are
able to adapt to adverse environmental changes and form
long-lasting partnerships with information sources within government. Most
importantly, FAL initiatives must remain dynamic and responsive to users’
needs. To do so, they must be able to tailor and expand their services, offerings
and user-base. To secure their sustainability and relevance in the long term, they must also be continuously strengthening their ties and maintain open communication flows with
users. If FAL initiatives are able to successfully make the
transition from being supply side initiatives to becoming demand driven services,
the FALM will be well-positioned for another decade of sustainable growth. </p>
<p>Download the collection below:</p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/publications/Links%20in%20the%20Chain%20-%20Volume%20I%20issue%20I.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Links in The Chain - Volume I"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/pdf.png" title="Know your Users, Match their Needs!" height="16" width="16" alt="" class="subMenuTitle" /></a><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/good-practices.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Good Practices Handbook">Good Practices
Handbook </a>(426 kb)<br /><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/publications/Links%20in%20the%20Chain%20-%20Volume%20I%20issue%20I.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Links in The Chain - Volume I"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/pdf.png" title="Know your Users, Match their Needs!" height="16" width="16" alt="" class="subMenuTitle" /></a><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/environmental-scan.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Environmental Scan Report">Environmental Scan Report</a> (860 kb)<br /><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/publications/Links%20in%20the%20Chain%20-%20Volume%20I%20issue%20I.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Links in The Chain - Volume I"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/pdf.png" title="Know your Users, Match their Needs!" height="16" width="16" alt="" class="subMenuTitle" /></a><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/local-researchers-methodology-guide.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Local Researcher's Methodology Guide">Local Researcher's Methodology Guide</a> (1225 kb)</p>
<p>The full collection of case studies and the Good Practices
Handbook was originally published on the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/cij/acces-libre-au-droit/resultats">Project Website</a>. The Centre for Internet and Society oversaw the following case studies: <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/resultats/indiafinaljul11.pdf">India</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/resultats/hongkongfinaljul11.pdf">Hong Kong</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/resultats/indonesiafinaljul11.pdf">Indonesia</a> and <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/resultats/Berne_Final_2011_July.pdf">Philippines</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/know-your-users'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/know-your-users</a>
</p>
No publisherrebeccaResearchFeaturedOpen AccessOpennessPublications2012-02-27T15:06:14ZBlog EntryMaterial Cyborgs; Asserted Boundaries: Formulating the Cyborg as a Translator
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/material-cyborgs-asserted-boundaries-formulating-the-cyborg-as-a-translator
<b>In this peer reviewed article, Nishant Shah explores the possibility of formulating the cyborg as an author or translator who is able to navigate between the different binaries of ‘meat–machine’, ‘digital–physical’, and ‘body–self’, using the abilities and the capabilities learnt in one system in an efficient and effective understanding of the other. The article was published in the European Journal of English Studies, Volume 12, Issue 2, 2008. [1]</b>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Download the paper <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/nishant/material%20cyborgs%20ejes.pdf/at_download/file" class="external-link">here</a></em>.</p>
<p><em>Read the original paper published by Taylor & Francis <a class="external-link" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13825570802151504">here</a></em>.</p>
<hr />
<h2>I, the cyborg</h2>
<p>The cyborg, a combination of hardware, software and wetware, stands as one of the most visible figures of the cybernetic age. A portmanteau of two words: cybernetic and organism, the term cyborg refers to a biological being with a kinetic state that can be transferred with ease from one environment to another, able to adapt to changing environments through technological augmentation. The first living Cyborg to find its way into the human family tree was a rat. Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline – two astrophysicists, in 1960, thought of a ‘hybrid-organism’ system (a rat with an osmotic pump) that provided biological stability to an organism in response to its constantly changing environment. In their paper in Astronautics they wrote:</p>
<blockquote>For the exogenously extended organizational complex ... we propose the term ‘cyborg’. The Cyborg deliberately incorporates exogenous components extending the self-regulating control function of the organism in order to adapt it to new environments. (Clynes and Kline, 1960: 1)</blockquote>
<p>Notwithstanding this, the cyborg is most commonly thought of in a futuristic vein, escaping the confines of the physical body and recreated through various digital forms like databases, networks and archives.</p>
<p>With the emergence of the WorldWide Web, the cyborg has strategically evolved in our imaginations as a metaphor of our times.We are already in the age where the ‘first living cyborg’ (Warwick, 2000: 15) has announced his arrival. In his autobiography I, Cyborg, Stephen Warwick, a professor of cybernetics and robotics, unveils how he became the first human cyborg through a series of path-breaking experiments. He begins his narrative by saying, ‘I was born human. But this was an accident of fate – a condition of time and place. I believe it’s something we have the power to change’ (Warwick, 2000: 5). Cybercultures theorist David Bell, on the other hand, especially with the proliferation of new digital technologies, in his preface to The Cybercultures Reader, locates the cyborg in ‘the crucial mechanics of urban survival’ (Bell, 2000: xxi) that produce everyday cyborgs through digital transactions and technologically augmented practices. Sherry Turkle, looking at the experiments in genetic engineering and reproductive practices, traces the processes of ‘cyborgification’ in the production of ‘techno-tots’ (Turkle, 1992: 154) – a new generation of designer babies who have been augmented by technology to have the perfect genetic composition.</p>
<p>In this paper, I seek to explore the possibility of formulating the cyborg as an author or translator, who is able to navigate between the different binaries of ‘meat– machine’, ‘digital–physical’, ‘body–self’, using the abilities and the capabilities learnt in one system in an efficient and effective understanding of the other. What does the cyborg as a translator add to our understanding of the processes of translation? If we were to examine the formation of a cyborg identity embedded in the digital circuits of the World Wide Web, what is the text of translation? What are the translated objects? Who performs these translations? Is the user the omnipotent translator who brings to this site, her special knowledge of distinct systems to make meaning? When inflected by technology, does the process of translation, performed by the cyborg, enter into realms of incomprehensibility which get translated as illegality? How does the figure of the translating cyborg enable an analysis of the cyborg as materially bound and geographically contained, rather than the earlier ideas of the cyborg as residing in a state of ‘universal placelessness’ (Sorkin, 1992: 217)?</p>
<h2>Configuring the cyborg as a translator</h2>
<p>The cyborg, as fashioned by science fiction narratives, cinema and cartoons, conjures images of human–machine hybrids and the physical merging of flesh and electronic circuitry. Different representations of the cyborg abound in science fiction narratives in print, film, animation and games, from reengineered human bodies showcasing fin de millennia nostalgia for large robotic machines of power and strength to sleek and suave microchip-implanted silicon-integrated human beings who work in their artificially mutated enhancements. The cyborg has covered a wide imaginative range from looking at a happy human–machine synthesis to a degenerate human body made grotesque by machinistic implants to a rise of a potent cyborg community that threatens to overcome the human world of biological certainty and mortality. Some of the most famous instances of cyborgs in popular narratives illustrate this wide spectrum; from Maria the robot in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) to Lara Croft in the The Tomb Raider series (Toby Gard, 1996); from Case in William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) to Mr Anderson a.k.a. Neo in The Matrix Trilogy (The Wachowski Brothers, 1999–2003); from Johnny Quest (Hannah-Barbara Cartoons, 1996–7) in the eponymous animated series to avatars created on social networking sites and MMORPGs <a name="fr2" href="#fn2">[2]</a> like Second Life.</p>
<p>However, with the popularization and democratization of new digital technologies of information and communication (ICTs), we see a certain evolutionary production of the cyborg as an increasing number of people interact with digital spaces and sites and adopt mobile gadgets of computation and information dissemination as an extension of their bodies. The cyborg, as imagined within the digital realms of cyberspace, is imagined differently from the more hyper-real, hypervisible constructs within the fictional narratives.</p>
<p>Arjun Appadurai (1996), in his formulation of post-electronic modernity, explores how electronic media offer new everyday resources and disciplines for the imagination of the self and the world. He argues that the individual body and its ownership are wedded to the logic of capitalism and the notion of ownership that characterized most of the twentieth century. Appadurai suggests that the body becomes a site of critical inquiry and contestation because a capitalist state grants the individual the rights to his/her body and the choice to fashion that body through consumption patterns. When talking of Technoscapes <a name="fr3" href="#fn3">[3]</a>, Appadurai posits the idea of a technologically enhanced sphere of activities and identity formation that defy the processes of capitalism and produce new instabilities in the creation of subjectivities.</p>
<p>Cyberspace has become such a site where the individual body, marked in its being (genetically, biologically, socially and culturally) and circumscribed by the (physical, reluctant and cumbersome) space, can free itself from the relentless materiality of a capitalist set of reference points, to create a truly global self and a universally accessible space. Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, in their comprehensive history of the origins of the web, mention how in 1968 Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider and Robert Taylor, who were research directors of the United States of America’s Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and who also set in place the first online community (ARPANET), prophesied that online interactive communities ‘will consist of geographically separated members, sometimes grouped in small clusters and sometimes working individually. They will be communities not of common location but of common interest’ (Hafner and Mathew, 1996: 44). This prophesy was realised by the end of the twentieth century, as scholars announce the construction of the ‘discontinuous, global agoras’ (Mitchell, 1996: 27) and the arrival of the new commons shaped within the technoscapes of the internet. The imagination of the internet as the new public sphere of communication, interaction and collaboration also brought into focus the skills that a cyborg requires in order to materially exist on the intersections of various domains. Donna Haraway, in her seminal essay ‘A cyborg manifesto’ (1991), posited one of the most influential imaginations of the cyborg as residing in the ‘optical illusion between social reality and science fiction’ (Haraway, 1991: 151) Haraway’s cyborg hints at the possibility of imagining the cyborg as a translator:</p>
<blockquote>The cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity. It is oppositional, utopian and completely without innocence. No longer structured by the polarity of public and private, the cyborg defines a technological polis based partly on a revolution of social relations in the oikos, the household.<br />(Haraway, 1991: xxii)</blockquote>
<p>This cyborg, in the blurring of the public and the private, in the diffusion of the physical and the virtual, and in the yoking together of economic practices and social identities, becomes an agential subjectivity that translates one system into another, using the referents of meaning making and processes of knowledge production in one system for deciphering and navigating through the other system. Haraway’s cyborg is a willing and conscious extension; an illustration of what Judith Butler, in Bodies That Matter (1993) calls the ‘performative’, thus infusing the figure of the cyborg with the ability to negotiate with its immediate environment and shape it through the material practices it engages with. The cyborg as a translator, thus has an interesting role as a mediator between the two systems. The cyborg no longer makes the distinction between an original and a translated text – the two systems occupy equal and often contesting zones of reality and authenticity for the cyborg.</p>
<p>Sandy Stone, in her anthropological study on technosociality – the technologised social order that emerges with ICTs and the social order of the technologised communities – emphasizes this very critical role of the cyborg:</p>
<blockquote>In technosociality, the social world of virtual culture, technics is nature. When exploration, rationalisation, remaking, and control mean the same thing, then nature, technics, and the structure of meaning have become indistinguishable. The technosocial subject is able successfully to navigate through this treacherous new world. S/he is constituted as part of the evolution of communication and technology and of the human organism, in a time in which technology and organism are collapsing, imploding, into each other.<br />(Stone, 1991: 81)</blockquote>
<p>Stone’s idea of the cyborg as collapsing the binary between the organism and technology is indicative of how the cyborg, in its processes of translation, reproduces both the worlds, and in fact allows for a dual process of translation between the two so that systems implode to form a complex set of references that determine the meanings of the text. This dual process of translation produces a critical episteme to revisit the notion of translation where the skills of the translator and the figure of the translator are generally looked upon as residing in a nuanced and close reading of the original text and the interpretative techniques by which it is reproduced in the ‘new’ or translated text, making sure that the original gets suffused with the meaning and ironies of the other language. Stone also adds to Haraway’s conception of the cyborg as she recognizes another distinction that the cyborg as a translator blurs in its being – the distinction between technique and the structure of meaning.</p>
<p>The cyborg as a translator, because it produces its identities through the same techniques that it produces the translated texts, internalizes the very techniques of translation. However, this process of internalization, instead of making the techniques invisible, foregrounds them as essential to the comprehension and understanding of the meanings which have been produced in this dual process of translation. The next section of this paper does a close reading of an instance of particular cyberspatial form – the social networking systems – to illustrate the dual processes of translation and the textuality of the texts involved.</p>
<h2>Lost in translation</h2>
<p>Both Haraway and Stone imagine the cyborg in a process of self-authorship through the interaction with the digital technologies. However, both of them only deal with the conceptual category of the cyborg and do not really examine the specific practices that this cyborg produces. Within cyberspaces, social networking systems, blogs, MMORPGs, multiple user dungeons (MUD), discussion boards, media sharing platforms, p2p networks <a name="fr4" href="#fn4">[4]</a>, etc., all create different conditions within which the physical users, through their digital avatars, interact with each other and form complex models of social networking and personal narratives. In this section I look at the notion of this self-authoring cyborg, embedded in the social networking system of ‘Orkut’, to illustrate and examine the discussions in the preceding section.</p>
<p>Orkut, a Google project, is one of the most thriving social networking systems that allows people to reacquaint themselves with people they have known in the past – friends, colleagues, acquaintances, family – who might be distributed across geography and lifestyles. Orkut also enables people with similar interests to form communities and interact, network and form new relationships with strangers in an unprecedented fashion. Orkut follows the AmWay <a name="fr5" href="#fn5">[5]</a> Economic model for its social networking, whereby an individual person inherits the friends of friends, thus often connecting themselves down more than 50 levels of friendship. Such a connection, such possibilities of networking, and the overall feeling of belonging to a dynamic, ever-growing network, gives the users a heady rush of emotions, using Orkut for various personal and professional reasons – from dating to holding meetings, from public performances to professional networking.</p>
<p>Most users within Orkut find themselves members of communities which are created around themes, hobbies, issues, ideas, movies, heroes, idols, books, religions, universities and schools, organizations, institutions, subjects, disciplines and music. One of the pre-requisites for using the various services on Orkut to their full potential is the creation of a profile. The profile, unlike a personal ad, is a concentrated effort at translating the ‘physical’ self of the person into ‘digital’ avatars that refer to the ‘original’ user behind the profile. Because of the pseudonymous nature of cyberspatial interactions, there is also an extra effort at making these avatars more verifiable, more real and more trustworthy. As an increasing number of users use social networking systems to find friends, to connect with partners and form communities that often translate back into the physical world, they spend a lot of effort on their profiles, trying to simulate (or translate) their personal identities and ideas into the digital world.</p>
<p>Most users put pictures of their face, along with populating their own virtual photo album with pictures of their pets, partners, friends, family and places they have visited. Profiles often change, adding ‘new pictures uploaded’ as a caption, to invite friends to visit their space and find out what is new about their virtual lives. Users can also keep track of all the changes that the people in their networks are making to their profiles, thus giving the sense of a fluid and a changing persona rather than a static description. Applications which allow the users to track birthdays, special dates, online calendars and the important events in their friends’ lives, add to the nature of communication and interaction. Most profiles have a fairly detailed narrative, using poetic imagery, exaggerated style, witticisms and pop philosophy to translate the person behind the screen. The profiles are also filled with their favourite activities, TV shows, music and books. This process of mapping a virtual body and producing texts of the physical body is the first level of translation that the users perform. The model of cyborgs that Haraway and Stone posit look upon the possibility of role playing, of fantasy, of adaptation and of authoring the self, in this process of cyborgification, as extremely liberating and subversive.</p>
<p>The social networking system and the related profiles also draw our attention to the dynamic interactions of the translated self within the digital domains. Through a metonymic process, the digital profile – the translated self – comes to stand in for the bodies of the users who not only create the translated self but also mark it with desires and aspirations. The translated self is largely under the control of the physical body. And yet, there are several ways in which the translated self does not allow for the physical body to emerge as the original, the authentic or the primary self within the dynamics of this site. On the one hand, it is the physical body of the user that authors the digital self, and hence it should be looked upon as the primary or the authentic text. On the other hand, the interactions that happen within the social networking system are interactions of the authored/translated self. The responses that the profile receives, the way in which the self is represented, the techniques used to engage with more people or invite strangers to communicate, are all the practices of the digital self.</p>
<p>Within Orkut, the profile of the person is bound to the physical body of the user behind the profile. While it is of course necessary to invoke a virtual avatar, because of the nature of social networking with people one already knows or has known, there is a certain disinvestment of fantasy within Orkut. Several users select pseudonyms which allow them to remain totally anonymous, but most of them have a visible face which tries to approximate their real-life persona online. Unlike the circuits of blogging or role playing games, Orkut emphasizes the need to be a ‘real’ person, thus validating its unique feature of ‘scrapping’. By employing it, users are encouraged to publicly perform their intimacies and relationships, which can be easily documented and tracked by others outside the one-to-one interaction. Thus, there seems to be a specific need to narrativize the self though the profile and the various functionalities available on Orkut. Members of the Orkut community are encouraged to think of themselves as part of a larger database – transmutable, transferable sets of data which they have authored for themselves – and can mobilize their virtual self across different networks to enhance their sense of social interaction and networking.</p>
<p>Also, the digital self is not translated solely by the physical user. Orkut has a feature of testimonials where the people in the networks of the translated self, also author opinions, observations and endorsements for the profile. Moreover, the public nature of communication and the archiving of this, add to the meaning and the functioning of this translated self. This production of the meta-data introjects the translated self into a circuit of meaning making and producing narratives that is beyond the scope of the physical body. Thus, there is a strange tension between the physical body of the user and the translated self that the user produces, which leads to the emergence of a cyborg identity. The cyborg is neither the physical body nor the translated digital self. It resides in the interface between the two, each constantly referring to the other, creating an interminable loop of dependence. The cyborg, because it is produced by the very technologies of the two systems that it is straddling, makes these techniques or the technologisation of the self synonymous with the processes of producing the narratives or making meaning.</p>
<p>This production of narratives of the self through different multimedia environments is not simply a process of writing biography or making self-representations. The users on Orkut (as well as other social networking sites like MySpace or blogging communities like Livejournal) are authoring avatars or substitute selves which are intricately and extensively a part of who they are. These translated selves do not live independent lives, but are firmly entrenched in the physical body and practices of the users. While there is a certain flexibility in the scripting of the avatar, the projections are more often than not premised upon the possibility of a Real. The avatars are also scripted as engaging in extremely mundane and daily activities to create verisimilitude and to map the physical body on to the avatar. To leave status messages like ‘stepped out for lunch’ or ‘Working really hard’ or ‘I am bored, entertain me’ is common practice for the users. As increasingly more users stay connected but are not always present on these digital platforms, they also let the avatars ‘sleep’ or ‘eat’ or ‘go away for some time’, synchronizing the avatar’s actions with their own.</p>
<p>A look at many other similar sites like blogging communities on ‘Livejournal’, or dating communities like ‘Friendster’, can give us an idea that the first stage in authoring a cyborg rests in creating these profiles, or avatars. Users spend an incredible amount of time trying to create for themselves the best avatars, which will be continued projections of the self. These tend to rely mainly on the visual component, as in games like ‘Second Life’ and chatting platforms like ‘Yahoo!’, but they can also rely on a combination of visual and verbal elements. Thus, the cyborg starts a process of translation whereby both the physical body and the translated self are distilled into data sets that get distributed across different practices and platforms, changing continuously and feeding into each other. Thus, just the first step of translation – the translation of the physical body into the digital avatar – is already a complex state, where we it is not as if the cyborg exists ex-nihilo and then translates from one system to the other but that the cyborg is produced in this very process of translation. Moreover, the translated text is not simply the sole authorship of the cyborg but has other players, who are a part of either of the systems, adding meanings and layers to the text.</p>
<p>The second step in this process is a reverse translation. Even within role playing games, where the alienation of the avatar from the body reaches its highest levels, there is an invested effort on the part of the gamer to provide physical and material contexts to the imagined bodies which they have created. Mizuki Ito (1992), in her work about online gamers, looks at how, with an increased investment in the digital lives, users tend to shape their own physical selves around their projected avatars. Many chronic users of cyberspaces have their language, their social interaction and even the way they dress and behave affected by their practices online. Sherry Turkle, in her analysis of the MUD world in Life on the Screen (1996), points out that an increasing number of users start looking upon their screen lives as a constitutive part of their reality rather than an escape from it.</p>
<blockquote>A computer’s ‘windows’ have become a potent metaphor for thinking about the self as a multiple and distributed system. The hypertext links have become a metaphor for a multiplicity of perspectives. On the internet, people who participate in virtual communities may be ‘logged on’ to several of them (open as several open-screen windows) as they pursue other activities. In this way, they may come to experience their lives as a ‘cycling through’ screen worlds in which they may be expressing different aspects of self.<br />(Turkle, 1996: 43)</blockquote>
<p>In another essay, titled ‘Playblog: Pornography, Performance and Cyberspace’ (Shah, 2005), I illustrate how the process of ‘reverse embodiment’ takes place in the lifecycle of bloggers. This process entails a mapping of the translated avatar on to the physical body of the users. This process of reverse translation often leads to the users abandoning their avatars, cutting down on their public presence or sometimes actually committing ‘digital suicides’, killing their own selves to start new identities and networks. Julian Dibbell, in his celebrated essay, ‘A Rape Happened in Cyberspace’ (1994) looks at the dynamics of this reverse mapping or inverted translation as well. Dibbell was witness to one of the most popular cases of ‘digital violence’ in the late 1990s, when in an MUD, a particular user called Dr Bungle, devised a ‘voodoo doll’ on the Lambda MOO MUD, which gained control over two of the other users, making them enter into a series of involuntary sexual acts of deviousness and perversion, in a public ‘room’ where all the other users could see them. What might be looked upon as a simple gaming aesthetic of a more powerful player taking over the avatars of two players with lesser power became a topic of huge discussion as the physical users behind the translated avatars complained of feeling violated and ‘raped’. This claim had very serious consequences because it no longer allowed for a linear notion of the physical body being translated into a digital avatar but insisted that the translated avatar is always, because of the users’ emotional involvement but also because of the practices that the avatar initiates, mapped back on to the body of the physical user. This is a process of reverse embodiment where the presumed ‘original’ is now re-shaped and re-configured to suit the translated object. Such a phenomenon is perhaps possible only in the domains of the cyberspace. Also, the cyborg, generally presumed as residing in the physical body, is now relocated in this two-way process, at the borders where it not only facilitates meaning but also realizes itself in the process of facilitation.</p>
<p>The digital transactions in which the users within such spaces engage have huge social, economic and cultural purport. The authoring of these selves, of these digital avatars, leads to the idea of the cyborg as not simply a synthesis – a site upon which the synthesis happens – but as a dynamic situation in which all subjects participate, producing and supporting its own identity. The cyborg exists in the interstices of the different oppositions of the real and the virtual, the physical and the digital, the temporal and the spatial, the biological and the technological. Moreover, the cyborg does not reside simply within the digital domains but becomes and embodied technosocial being, with a material body that enters into other realms of authorship and subjectification. It is necessary to recognize that the cyborg is not simply a self authored identity but is also subject to various other realms of governance. These material cyborgs, then, assert the need for the body as central to their imagination.</p>
<p>This bounded cyborg is also subject to the territories that it resides within. The last section of the paper looks at the State as a critical part of the production of these material cyborg identities and analyses how the incomprehensibility of this particular identity reproduces it in a condition of illegality, rescuing it from the boundless universal imagination and reasserting the geographical and the territorial boundaries that the cyborg exists within. In this particular analysis, because of my own familiarity with the context and also because new digital technologies are still emerging and unfolding into new forms in India, I shall speak specifically of the Indian State but hope that the particular case that I analyse shall have resonances for other geo-cultural and socio-political contexts as well.</p>
<h2>The state of the cyborg</h2>
<p>The cyborg, thus residing on the interstices of so many different paradigms, can no longer be limited to aesthetized representations and narratives, but is becoming a part of everyday practices of global urbanism. The range of human–machine relationships is diverse and increasingly varied. We might not be complete cyborgs but we do deal with ‘intimate machines’ (Turkle, 1996: 142) and live in ‘cyborg societies’ (Haraway, 1991: 179). The cities where we we live constantly remind us of the machinations we are dependent on; sometimes they blind us of our dependence on the technology, sometimes they make it starkly visible. Different organizations like the Military, Space Studies, Medicine, Human Research and Education are using new forms of organism–technology interactions in the increasingly urbanised world. Just like the interactions of the translated avatara and the physical users, David Bell and Barbara Kennedy, in their introduction to The Cybercultures Reader, look at the interactions with various different technologies of communication and transport, and posit the notion of an ‘Everyday Cyborg’ that gets produced in everyday practices:</p>
<blockquote>Taking Viagra, or [using] a pacemaker, or riding a bike, or withdrawing cash from an ATM, or acting out [our] fantasies as Lara Croft in the latest Tomb Raider game or as a Nato bomber pilot blitzing Kosovo, or anyone watching footage from Kosovo live on the late-night news.<br />(Bell, 2000: ix)</blockquote>
<p>In their list, the authors are more interested in looking at human–machine interaction and making historical continuities to the production of a technosocial identity or a cyborg self. This ‘naturalized’ cyborg robs the cyborg of its criticality or importance. It seems to posit the cyborg as simply a coupling of organism and machine, and hence a benign cultural formulation which can now be decontextualized and analysed in the digital domains. The cyborg as a translator – initiating a complex and intricate set of relationships between the different systems of meaning making that it</p>
<p>straddles – questions this trvialization of the cyborg and instead helps produce the cyborg identity as an epistemological category which needs to be analysed to see the processes that produce it and the crises it produces in the pre-digital understanding of text and textuality.</p>
<p>It is with these questions that I begin the analysis of what has popularly been dubbed as the ‘Lucknow Gay Scandal’ in India. In India, under the Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, as a part of larger ‘Unnatural Sex Acts’, homosexual activity is a punishable offence <a name="fr6" href="#fn6">[6]</a>. However, the reading of this particular act has always been invoked in dealing with the act of same-sex sexual behaviour and not to punish a particular identity. However, when the queer rights and gay collectives started gaining momentum because of the rise of digital technologies (Singh, 2007), the production of the queer cyborg produced an anxiety about the fantasies, the digital avatars and the material practices of the users behind the avatars. In January 2006, policemen in the city of Lucknow, masquerading as gay men, registered with a popular queer dating website called ‘Guys4men’. Explicitly a gay dating site, it allows users to create their profiles, add pictures and text, translate their personal data in a scripted space, exchange messages and chat. Like the earlier discussed social networking sites, Guys4men also allows users to search and befriend each other, encouraging public discussions and arranging for physical encounters at a personal or a collective level.</p>
<p>These policemen created profiles and listed themselves as gay men, to start interacting with the members of the site. They solicited sex and meetings and finally invited five men to come and meet them in a public garden in Lucknow. When four of the five men turned up for the rendezvous, they were arrested on charges of obscenity, of soliciting sex in public and engaging in homosexual fantasies. The media reported this as ‘Gay Club Running on the Net Unearthed’ (The Times of India, 5 January 2006). The website was looked upon as a physical space where people indulged in ‘unnatural sex acts’.</p>
<p>The four men were punished, not for anything that they did in public or in the physical world but for their projected fantasies online. They were publicly humiliated, exhibited to the media as a ‘homosexual coup’ and put under arrest by the police. While a large part of the political society in India erupted in fury at the gross violation of the human rights and the punishment of fantasies, leading to a raging court case which still has not found resolution, what this paper hopes to glean from this particular case are four interesting points. Firstly, three of the four men, in their physical existence, were married and had children. They were not suspected to have homosexual inclinations by their family or friends, to whom this came as a huge shock. The evidence of the material practices of their physical bodies was not looked upon as strong enough to acquit them. Secondly, the policemen who were luring these men towards a homosexual encounter were themselves projecting similar fantasies. However, as theirs were sanctioned by some high authority, they gained validity and were not to be punished. It was almost as if the fantasies and the avatars that the policemen had were legitimate, sanctified translations of their selves, which made them different. Thirdly, while the men were caught in the physical meeting space, the charges against them were all based on their online activities. What was being produced was not even the act of translating their physical bodies into digital avatars. What was at stake in the particular case was the fact that, in the processes of translation, a reverse translation was also set into place, where the digital avatars and the circuits of consumption and interaction that these avatars entered into were mapped on to the physical bodies, reconfiguring them and marking them as queer. The men were punished not because they claimed a queer identity or because they had fantasies online which did not subscribe to the State’s directive. These men were being punished for the production of a cyborg self – a self which on the one hand was contained by the physical bodies of the users, thus subject to the processes of governance and administration applicable in the geography that they are located in, and on the other hand produced by the imagined selves – the translated avatars which reside outside of the geo-territorial regimes. It is this production of the queer cyborg, residing on the boundaries of sexuality, of nationality and subjectivity that was sought to be punished in this particular case.</p>
<p>On the whole, this case seems to prove that there is a very definite move, on the part of the State, towards the recognition of online avatars as not only extensions of the self but as more powerful identities than the physical self. The State imagines the users of cyberspace as ‘real’ cyborgs and conceives their online activities, fantasies and role-plays as punishable offences. The State also recognizes their translated selves – their datasets that they authored – as verifiable proof of their existence and actions online. The story of the Lucknow incident brings to the fore the possibility that there might also be reluctant cyborgs. The notion of the translator is always somebody who is in a conscious condition of deploying knowledge in order to bridge the gap between different paradigms. However, as the digital world becomes more democratic and becomes a part of our daily transactions, an increasing number of users enter into conditions of translation which they might not recognize as translation. It is also imaginable that a large number of users might resort to the cyberspace to reach a particular aim, without wishing to produce any elaborate narratives of themselves. They might be completely unaware of the processes of reverse translation which follow. However, because of the State’s investment in digital technologies and its infrastructures, individuals get authored as cyborgs, having to take responsibility for their actions and fantasies online, against their will and outside of their knowledge.</p>
<p>The implication of the State or other State-like bodies in the production of these cyborg identities and texts makes us aware of the fact that processes of translation are not simply about the intention and the effort of the translator, but are also severely embedded in the techniques used for translation and the contexts within which the translator and the translated identities are produced. In earlier discussions of testimonials and scraps on Orkut or commentating and editing on blogging platforms, we had already looked upon how the translated text, even when it is a self-narrative, on the digital interfaces, is already a product of multiple authorships and can no longer be attributed to a single individual translator. Similarly, the cyborg identity that is produced in the processes of translation – the cyborg as a translator – is also not a product of individual desire or intention but is often brought into being through the various other players within the internet as well as within the physical contexts of the users.</p>
<h2>Why cyborg?</h2>
<p>The everyday embodied cyberspace cyborg thus becomes subject to the state as well as the technology. People who enter the digital matrices are made accountable for their actions and travels in cyberspaces. There is an increased anxiety around monitoring these processes of translation, of reverse translation and production of translated cyborg identities that are becoming such an integral part of cyberspatial platforms.</p>
<p>The virtual avatars are re-mapped onto the body of the user, thus reconfiguring the notion of the self and the body. The state, through its efforts, becomes a major player in the authoring of the cyberspace cyborg. Other surveillance technologies like Close Circuit Television (CCTV) for instance, also produce unwilling or unwitting technologized narratives of the users caught under the camera. It is possible to use CCTV in public spaces and capture users in different actions which they can be held responsible for later. However, the cyberspace cyborg differs significantly from this model because the users of cyberspace are willing participants of the spaces which they occupy.</p>
<p>The positing of the cyborg as a translator and as an identity that emerges out of translation practices defines a clearer role for translation and a larger definition for translation as it gets inflected by digital technologies. Instead of the universal hyperreal agent, the cyborg as a translator emphasizes one of the fundamental principles of understanding translation – the context of the translator, the agential negotiations of the translator with the original text, the processes by which the self of the translator get produced and the importance of the technologies within which the translation occurs. The collaborative nature of digital technologies and cyberspatial forms illustrates how the process of translation is not singular and that the relationship between the presumed original and the translated text also need to be re-visited. However, more that anything else, the cyborg as a translator makes it clear that the translated text is not produced in isolation or by a single author. There are various contributions that emerge from the networks within which the cyborg translator operates and from the different technologies of governance that the cyborg translators as well as the translated texts are subject to. On the other hand, to the body of cybercultures which has sustained interest in the production and imagination of the cyborg, the cyborg as a translator offers a different way of locating the cyborg identity – not as an identity produced through cyberspaces, but as an embodied cyborg that emerges as an epistemological category to explain the processes of collaboration, sharing, collective authoring and possession of the new digital spaces.</p>
<h2>Notes</h2>
<p>[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">1</a>] This paper owes huge intellectual and emotional debt to Rita Kothari who first invited me to contribute to this issue, helping me formulate the germ of the idea and to Elena Di Giovanni who has been an extremely patient editor, guiding me through the many drafts that gave shape to this final version.</p>
<p>[<a name="fn2" href="#fr2">2</a>] MMORPG – Massively Multiple Online Role – playing game is a genre of gaming in which a large number of players interact with one another in a virtual world. The MUDs that Sherry Turkle studied can be looked upon as the direct antecedents to MMORPGs like Second Life and War of Warcraft – two of the most popular gaming platforms in current times.</p>
<p>[<a name="fn3" href="#fr3">3</a>] Technoscapes are the landscapes of technology. They refer to technology as both high and low, informational and mechanical, and the speed at which it travels between previously impassible boundaries. Appadurai uses the idea of Technoscape to imagine a fluid and transmittable topography of technology, where the different transactions and the identities formed online have material consequences in economic flows and societal formations. The cyborg thus produced actively chooses and negotiates its identity. Identities are no longer solid, but become fractured, in that we no longer have to choose the identities or accept the ideas of the local community. We are actively choosing our programming based on that which is available to us. While the cyborg may choose to act in a manner most appropriate or relative to the cultures and geographies it is embedded within, that is no longer the only programming option available to it and many are choosing to look beyond their own cultural arenas.</p>
<p>[<a name="fn4" href="#fr4">4</a>] P2P networks – peer-to-peer networks – inherit the cyberspatial aesthetics of decentralized networks; of nodes being distributed across the circuits of the internet and talking to each other, collaborating in projects, sharing information and exchanging digital material. The p2p networks have been under severe focus because they allow for unmonitored piracy and exchange of information</p>
<p>[<a name="fn5" href="#fr5">5</a>] AmWay emerged in the 1960s as the first of its kind of multi-level marketing company where the individuals inherit each other’s customers and profits through a simple system of multi-directional networking.</p>
<p>[<a name="fn6" href="#fr6">6</a>] The Wikipedia entry for IPC Section 377 reads: ‘Homosexual relations are technically still a crime in India under an old British era statute dating from 1860 called Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which criminalises ‘‘carnal intercourse against the order of nature.’’ Since this is deliberately vague in the past it has been used against oral sex (heterosexual and homosexual), sodomy, bestiality, etc. The punishment ranges from ten years to lifelong imprisonment’. The relevant section reads: ‘Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine’.</p>
<h2>References</h2>
<p>Appadurai, Arjun (1996). <em>Modernity At Large</em>. New Delhi: Oxford UP.</p>
<p>Bell, David (2000). ‘Introduction I Cybercultures Reader: a User’s Guide’. <em>The Cybercultures Reader</em>. Eds David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy. London and New York; Routledge.</p>
<p>Butler, Judith (1993).<em> Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex</em>’. New York: Routledge.</p>
<p>Clynes, Manfred and Nathan Kline (1960). ‘Cyborgs in Outerspace’ 20 November 2002. <a href="http://search.nytimes.com/library/cyber/surf/022697surf-cyborg.html">http://search.nytimes.com/library/cyber/surf/022697surf-cyborg.html</a>.</p>
<p>Dibbell, Julian (1994). ‘A Rape in Cyberspace, or How an Evil Clown, a Haitan Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society’.<em> The Village Voice</em>.</p>
<p>‘Gay Club Running on Net Unearthed’. <em>The Times of India</em>. 5 January 2006. <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Lucknow/Gay_club_running_on_Net_unearthed/articleshow/msid-1359203,curpg-2.cms">http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Lucknow/Gay_club_running_on_Net_unearthed/articleshow/msid-1359203,curpg-2.cms</a>.</p>
<p>Gibson, William (1994). <em>Neuromancer</em>. New York: Ace Books.</p>
<p>Hafner, Katie and Mathew Lyon (1996). <em>Where Wizards Stay up Late: The Origins of the Internet</em>. New York: Simon and Shuster.</p>
<p>Haraway, Donna (1991). ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century’. <em>Simians, Cyborgs, and Women</em>. New York: Routledge, 149–81.</p>
<p>Ito, Mizuko (1992). ‘Inhabiting Multiple Worlds: Making Sense of SimCity2000TM in the Fifth Dimension’. <em>Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots</em>. Eds Robbie Davis-Floyd and Joseph Dumit. New York: Routledge.</p>
<p>Licklider, C. R. and Robert Taylor (1968) ‘The Computer as Communication Device’. <em>Science and Technology</em>, 21–31 April. <a href="http://www.cc.utexas.edu/ogs/alumni/events/taylor/licklider-taylor.pdf">http://www.cc.utexas.edu/ogs/alumni/events/taylor/licklider-taylor.pdf</a>. Accessed 5 November 2005.</p>
<p>Mitchell, William (1996). <em>City of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn</em>. Cambridge: MIT.</p>
<p>Shah, Nishant (2005). ‘Playblog: Pornography, Performance and Cyberspace’. <a href="http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/the-art-and-politics-of-netporn/">http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/the-art-and-politics-of-netporn/</a>.</p>
<p>Singh, Pawan Deep (2007). ‘Inside Virtual Queer Subcultures’. MA Thesis. Hyderabad Central University.</p>
<p>Sorkin, Michael (1992). ‘See you in Disneyland’. <em>Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space</em>. New York: Noonday Press.</p>
<p>Stone, Sandy (1991). Cyberspace: First Steps. Ed. Michael Benedikt. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 81–118.</p>
<p>Turkle, Sherry (1992). ‘Cyborg Babies and Cy-dough-plasm’. <em>Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots</em>. Eds Robbie Davis-Floyd and Joseph Dumit. New York: Routledge.</p>
<p>Turkle, Sherry (1996). <em>Life on the Screen: Identity in the age of the internet</em>. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.</p>
<p>Warwick, Stephen (2000). <em>I, Cyborg</em>. London: University of Reading Press.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/material-cyborgs-asserted-boundaries-formulating-the-cyborg-as-a-translator'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/material-cyborgs-asserted-boundaries-formulating-the-cyborg-as-a-translator</a>
</p>
No publishernishantBodyResearchCyborgsNet CulturesPublicationsResearchers at Work2015-10-25T05:57:08ZBlog Entrye-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities (Russian Version)
http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/e-accessibility-kit-in-russian
<b>The e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities is based upon the online ITU-G3ict e-Accessibility Policy Toolkit for Persons with Disabilities (www.e-accessibilitytoolkit.org) which was released in February 2010. This is the Russian translation of the same.</b>
<p>The <a class="external-link" href="http://g3ict.org/resource_center/e-Accessibility%20Policy%20Handbook">Toolkit</a> and its companion handbook have contributions from more than 60 experts around the world on ICT accessibility and is a most valuable addition to policy makers and regulators, advocacy and research organisations and persons with disabilities on the implementation of the ICT dispositions of the CRPD.</p>
<p>The handbook is a joint publication of ITU, G3ict and the Centre for Internet and Society, in cooperation with The Hans Foundation. The book is compiled and edited by Nirmita Narasimhan. Preface by Dr. Hamadoun I. Toure, Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union. Introduction by Dr. Sami Al-Basheer, Director, ITU-D. Foreword by Axel Leblois, Executive Director, G3ict.</p>
<p>UNIC Moscow (United Nations Information Centre - Moscow) has translated the English version of the kit to Russian. For more information on the translation initiative by UNIC Moscow,<a class="external-link" href="http://www.unic.ru/news_inf/viewer.php?uid=164"> click here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p> </p>
<p>Download the Russian version <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/e-accessibility-russian-handbook.pdf" class="internal-link" title="e-Accessibility Policy Handbook (Russian Version)">here</a> (PDF, 1045 kb)</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/e-accessibility-kit-in-russian'>http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/e-accessibility-kit-in-russian</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFeaturedBooksAccessibilityPublications2012-04-26T10:04:08ZBlog EntryPorn: Law, Video, Technology
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/porn-law-video-technology
<b>Namita Malhotra’s monograph on Pornography and Pleasure is possibly the first Indian reflection and review of its kind. It draws aside the purdah that pornography has become – the forbidden object as well as the thing that prevents you from looking at it – and fingers its constituent threads and textures. </b>
<p>This monograph is not so much about a cultural product called porn as it is a meditation on visuality and seeing, the construction and experience of gazing, technology and bodies in the law, modern myths, the interactions between human and filmic bodies. And technology not necessarily as objects and devices that make pornography possible (but that too), but as history and evolution, process and method, and what this brings to understanding what pornography is.</p>
<p>Namita’s approach brings film studies, technology studies, critical theory, philosophy, literature and legal studies into a document that reads as part literature review, part analysis, going deep, as a monograph should. Reading through this I was struck by the ways of seeing and writing, that a subject like pornography demands – and allows for. I found the structure of the entire piece well conceived, akin to 3D models of spirals rather than linear, much like the experience of watching itself, perhaps. Personally, I know I’m going to keep going back to this monograph for its rich references as much as for how Malhotra examines visual (con)texts across multiple disciplines. And, far from being a distant academic paper, I see how Namita has worked in and been informed by her own fond appreciation of diverse texts with useful and unusual departures into literature and philosophy.</p>
<p>The emphasis on amateur pornography is critical considering the pandemic of hysterical blindness that afflicts public conversations in India around this phenomenon in particular, and the Obscene more generally. A line from the monograph ‘pornography does ideological work’ stands out for me, as Namita shows how it (the monograph, amateur porn, pornography) effectively slices through the careful fabrications called Nation, Culture and Justice in particular; and also in terms of how porn constitutes particular kinds of knowing, speech and experience that reflect on the status quo of politics and of seeing/visuality. The deep engagement with the Mysore Mallige movie/case is an interesting and tender one, perhaps one of the first such in-depth analyses, and a great example of how amateur porn works and what it means.</p>
<p>Considering the appalling lack of insight in responding to the Obscene and the Pornographic, the messy rhetoric and outrage that result when the Pornographic is made public, when the law acts on the visual, on technology, Namita’s analysis is a sharp lens that provides much-needed rejoinders. The sections dealing with these kinds of past events – the moment of public outrage around the revelation of a piece of porn, it’s journey of creation and circulation, the public and institutional esponses to it, are really excellent analyses of a particular kind of moment in contemporary Indian society that have become (to my mind) increasingly difficult to talk about.</p>
<p>There can only be more sharing of this document, perhaps re-purposed, in parts, to become more accessible to communities engaged with commenting, acting and responding to the Obscene, the Visual and the Law (I say this from a perspective of utility and instrumentality that “activism” necessarily deploys, but within what is possible for cannibalisation. Also, because people don’t read) because there just isn’t enough thoughtful work on pornography in the current climate.</p>
<p>The monograph moves to examining the ‘being’ of the pornographic artifact as a digital image and how and why it, especially “video pornography provides a new model for relating to the mass-produced, one in which the body’s susceptibility constitutes both a yielding and a resistance to the hypnotic seduction of the image.”</p>
<p>I find this quote tantalising for it offers a critical perspective on pornography as a challenging politics rather than as ‘merely’ text, which is what this monograph attempts to do. To take this further and to explore the response between the visual and the human, the “something that takes place between the text and the person watching”, could be to move towards reception studies and studies of the experiencing of porn either as star/creator, fan or audience. There are fascinating possibilities here for inventive methodologies and formats in which this could be done, montage-ing academic text with visual ethnographies, online aggregation and collation of visual data and experiences, and so on. This next stage could be exciting in how it could really engage with the body of porn and its people.</p>
<p><strong>Introduction by Maya Ganesh</strong></p>
<div>Download the monograph <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/porn-law.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Porn: Law, Video, Technology">here</a> [PDF, 3.73 MB]</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/porn-law-video-technology'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/porn-law-video-technology</a>
</p>
No publisherNamita A MalhotraResearchers at WorkHistories of InternetRAW PublicationsPublications2015-04-14T12:43:14ZBlog EntryInternet, Society & Space in Indian Cities
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/internet-society-space
<b>The monograph on Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities, by Pratyush Shankar, is an entry into debates around making of IT Cities and public planning policies that regulate and restructure the city spaces in India with the emergence of Internet technologies. Going beyond the regular debates on the modern urban, the monograph deploys a team of students from the field of architecture and urban design to investigate how city spaces – the material as well as the experiential – are changing under the rubric of digital globalisation. Placing his inquiry in the built form, Shankar manoeuvres discourse from architecture, design, cultural studies and urban geography to look at the notions of cyber-publics, digital spaces, and planning policy in India. The findings show that the relationship between cities and cyberspaces need to be seen as located in a dynamic set of negotiations and not as a mere infrastructure question. It dismantles the presumptions that have informed public and city planning in the country by producing alternative futures of users’ interaction and mapping of the emerging city spaces.</b>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Chapter 1 (City, Technology and Cyberspace)</strong> talks about the presence of a new technology of information communication in the society and how it can possibly impact cities in terms of their material production and other cultures. Does the rush of Information Technology in our society and space mark a radical shift in a manner in which cities will develop or is it a part of a larger continuous process that started with the Industrial revolution and reorganization of cities?</p>
<p><strong>Chapter 2 (The Idea of Space)</strong> examines that cities not only provide the necessary environment for such a change but also readjust their own spatial configurations. It aims to understand the nature of such transformation both from the perspective of the change in material culture and in imagination of cities due to the advent of Internet related technologies.</p>
<p><strong>Chapter 3 (The Imagination)</strong> looks at the fact that city is not only lived in but also imagined. Representation of the city and its part play an important role in shaping the imagination. The imagination is one that often collapses the past with present and future. The perception of the city is as much mediated by the collective imagination (as well as individual interpretation of the same) as by our experience of the space itself.</p>
<p><strong>Chapter 4 (The Transformation)</strong> examines the city restructuring process. Cities like nations are now competing for investments from private corporate. The networked cities of India, Bangalore and Gurgaon have been studied further to understand the phenomenon of this IT related restructuring from the point of view of its transformed physical morphology and its repercussion on the nature of its public places.</p>
<p>Pratyush concludes by saying that cities seem to derive their identities with two kinds of imagination structures when it comes to space. First and foremost is the imagination resulting from the meta narratives of mythology, religious belief structure, position of humans in this world. The other imagination structure is the one, which engages with the land, folk and the immediate cultural practices of the community group. He further elaborates that the city restructuring process in India is supposed to symbolize the existence of the information technology but it is really real estate and economic opportunism more than anything else.</p>
<h4>Download the monograph: <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/internet-society-space.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Internet, Society & Space in Indian Cities">PDF</a> (9.8 MB)</h4>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/internet-society-space'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/internet-society-space</a>
</p>
No publisherPratyush ShankarThe Spaces of DigitalHistories of InternetResearchers at WorkPublications2016-06-29T09:41:25ZBlog EntryRe:Wiring Bodies
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/rewiring-bodies
<b>Asha Achuthan initiates a historical research inquiry to understand the ways in which gendered bodies are shaped by the Internet imaginaries in contemporary India. Tracing the history from nationalist debates between Gandhi and Tagore to the neo-liberal perspective based knowledge produced by feminists like Martha Nussbaum; Asha’s research offers a unique entry point into cyberculture studies through a feminist epistemology of science and technology. The monograph establishes that there is a certain pre-history to the Internet that needs to be unpacked in order to understand the digital interventions on the body in a range of fields from social sciences theory to medical health practices to technology and science policy in the country.</b>
<p><br />Section I (<strong>Attitudes to Technology</strong>) attempts to trace the trajectories of the critiques of technology standing in for science in the Indian context. This section traces the methodology of critique itself that animates the political in India and shows the ways in which these critiques access anterior difference, the ways in which they posit resistance as providing the crisis to closure of hegemonic western science and the ways in which this resistance fails to meet the promise of crisis.</p>
<p>Section II (<strong>Mapping Transitions</strong>) explores in detail the responses to science and technology in feminist and gender work in India. Here, Asha presents an ‘attitude’ to technology as discrete from ‘man’. Feminist and gender work in India have articulated four responses to technology across state and civil society positions. These being the presence of women as agents of technological change, the demand for improved access for women to the fruits of technology, the demand for inclusion of women as a constituency that must be specifically provided for by technological amendments a need for recognition of technology’s ills particularly for women and the consequent need for resistance to technology on the same count.</p>
<p>Keeping in mind that woman’s lived experiences have served as the vantage point for all four of the responses to technology in the Indian context, Asha suggests the need to revisit the idea of such experience itself, and the ways in which it might be made critical, rather than valorising it as an official counterpoint to scientific knowledge, and by extension to technology. Section III (<strong>Working towards an Alternative</strong>) does not address the ‘technology question’ in a direct sense but makes an effort to make that exploration.</p>
<p>Asha concludes by saying that she treats technology as a part of the philosophy of modern western science and the relationship between technology and bodies is the more obvious relationship upon which the formulations of human-technology relationships are built.</p>
<p>Download the monograph <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/rewiring-bodies.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Re:Wiring Bodies">here</a> [PDF, 2.58 MB]</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/rewiring-bodies'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/rewiring-bodies</a>
</p>
No publisherAsha AchuthanRAW PublicationsInternet HistoriesHistories of InternetResearchers at WorkPublications2015-04-14T12:49:46ZBlog EntryArchives and Access
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/archives-and-access/archives-and-access
<b>The monograph by Aparna Balachandran and Rochelle Pinto, is a material history of the Internet archives. It examines the role of the archivist and the changing relationship between the state and private archives for looking at the politics of subversion, preservation and value of archiving. By examining the Tamil Nadu and Goa state archives, along with the larger public and state archives in the country, the monograph looks at the materiality of archiving, the ambitions and aspirations of an archive, and why it is necessary to preserve archives, not as historical artefacts but as living interactive spaces of memory and remembrance. The findings have direct implications on various government and market impulses to digitise archives and show a clear link between opening up archives and other knowledge sources for breathing life into local and alternative histories.
</b>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/archives-and-access/archives-and-access.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Archives and Access">Download the Monograph</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/archives-and-access/archives-and-access'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/archives-and-access/archives-and-access</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaRAW PublicationsPublicationsHistories of InternetResearchers at WorkInternet HistoriesArchives2015-04-17T11:06:20ZBlog EntryDigital AlterNatives with a Cause?
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook
<b>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. </b>
<p></p>
<p><strong>I</strong><strong>ntroduction</strong></p>
<p>In the 21<sup>st</sup>
Century, we have witnessed the simultaneous growth of internet and digital
technologies on the one hand, and political protests and mobilisation on the
other. Processes of interpersonal relationships, social communication, economic
expansion, political protocols and governmental mediation are undergoing a
significant transition, across in the world, in developed and emerging
Information and Knowledge societies.</p>
<p>The young
are often seen as forerunners of these changes because of the pervasive and
persistent presence of digital and online technologies in their lives. The “
Digital Natives with a Cause?” is a research inquiry that uncovers the ways in
which young people in emerging ICT contexts make strategic use of technologies
to bring about change in their immediate environments. Ranging from personal
stories of transformation to efforts at collective change, it aims to identify
knowledge gaps that existing scholarship, practice and popular discourse around
an increasing usage, adoption and integration of digital technologies in
processes of social and political change.</p>
<p><strong>Methodology</strong></p>
<p>In 2010-11,
three workshops in Taiwan, South Africa and Chile, brought together around 80
people who identified themselves as Digital Natives from Asia, Africa and Latin
America, to explore certain key questions that could provide new insight into
Digital Natives research, policy and practice. The workshops were accompanied
by a ‘Thinkathon’ – a multi-stakeholder summit that initiated conversations
between Digital Natives, academic researchers, scholars, practitioners,
educators, policy makers and corporate representatives to share learnings on
new questions: Is one born digital or does one become a Digital Native? How do
we understand our relationship with the idea of a Digital Native? How do
Digital Natives redefine ‘change’ and how do they see themselves implementing
it? What is the role that technologies play in defining civic action and social
movements? What are the relationships
that these technology based identities and practices have with existing social
movements and political legacies? How do we build new frameworks of sustainable
citizen action outside of institutionalisation?</p>
<strong>
</strong>
<p><strong>Rationale</strong></p>
<p>One of the
knowledge gaps that this book tries to address is the lack of digital natives’
voices in the discourse around them. In the occasions that they are a part of
the discourse, they are generally represented by other actors who define the
frameworks and decide the issues which are important. Hence, more often than
not, most books around digital natives concentrate on similar sounding areas
and topics, which might not always resonate with the concerns that digital
natives and other stake-holders might be engaged with in their material and
discursive practice. The methodology of the workshops was designed keeping this
in mind. Instead of asking the digital natives to give their opinion or recount
a story about what we felt was important, we began by listening to their
articulations about what was at stake for them as e-agents of change. As a
result, the usual topics like piracy, privacy, cyber-bullying, sexting etc.
which automatically map digital natives discourse, are conspicuously absent
from this book. Their absence is not deliberate, but more symptomatic of how
these themes that we presumed as important were not of immediate concerns to
most of the participants in the workshop who are contributing to the book<strong>.</strong></p>
<strong>
</strong>
<p><strong>Structure</strong></p>
<p>The
conversations, research inquiries, reflections, discussions, interviews, and
art practices are consolidated in this four part book which deviates from the
mainstream imagination of the young people involved in processes of change. The
alternative positions, defined by geo-politics, gender, sexuality, class,
education, language, etc. find articulations from people who have been engaged
in the practice and discourse of technology mediated change. Each part
concentrates on one particular theme that helps bring coherence to a wide
spectrum of style and content.</p>
<p><strong>Book 1: To Be: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/dnbook1/at_download/file" class="external-link">here</a></strong></p>
<strong>
</strong>
<p>The first
part, <em>To Be</em>, 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.</p>
<strong>Book 2: To Think: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/dnbook2/at_download/file" class="external-link">here</a></strong><strong>
</strong>
<p>In the
second section, <em>To Think,</em> 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.</p>
<p><strong>Book 3: To Act: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/dnbook3/at_download/file" class="external-link">here</a></strong></p>
<p><em>To Act</em> 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.</p>
<strong>
</strong>
<p><strong>Book 4: To Connect : Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/dnbook4/at_download/file" class="external-link">here</a></strong></p>
<p>The last
section, <em>To Connect</em>, 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.</p>
<p>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<strong>.</strong></p>
<p><strong><a class="external-link" href="https://www.surveymonkey.com/MyAccount_Login.aspx">Click here</a> to order your copy. We invite readers to contribute reviews of an essay they found particularly interesting. Contact us: nishant@cis-india.org and fjansen@hivos.nl if you want more information, resources, or dialogues</strong></p>
<p>Nishant
Shah</p>
<p>Fieke
Jansen</p>
<p><strong>For media coverage and book reviews,</strong> <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/media-coverage" class="external-link">read here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook</a>
</p>
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