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Transparency and Politics: Talk by Barun Mitra
A talk by Barun Mitra, Chairperson of the Liberty Institute, a Delhi-based think tank, was held at CIS recently, organised by Zainab Bawa in relation to her CIS-RAW project on 'Transparency and Politics'. In this post, the third in a series exploring questions of transparency and politics, Zainab reports on the lecture and discussion.
Archive and Access: The Inalienable Right to the Archives - Entering the Capital
This entry complements the prior discussion by Aparna Balachandran of the Delhi State Archives and its status as a repository of records. Her discussion compares the place of the user and that of the document in the Delhi State Archives as opposed to in the National Archives. This post by Rochelle Pinto discusses questions relating to the National Archives of India and other archival entities.
Archive and Access: The Delhi State Archives
In this, the fifth entry in a series on the CIS-RAW Archive and Access project, Aparna Balachandran reports on two state archives located in Delhi, the National Archives of India, and the Delhi Archives.
Postcolonial Hybridity and the ‘Terrors of Technology’ Argument
In the last couple of posts, Asha Achuthan has been building towards an understanding of how the anti-technology arguments in India have been posed, in the nationalist and Marxist positions. She goes on, in this sixth post documenting her project, to look at the arguments put out by the postcolonial school, their appropriation of Marxist terminology, their stances against Marxism in responding to science and technology in general, and the implications of these arguments for other fields of inquiry.
Journals, Open Access, Copyright, Repositories
Prof N. Mukunda, Editor of Publications, The Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, discusses open access in his keynote address at the 26 March 2009 one-day conference on 'Scholarly Communications in the Age of the Commons'.
ಚರ್ಚೆ: ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ವಿಜ್ಞಾನ ಹಾಗು ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನ ಕುರಿತ ಬರವಣಿಗೆ (Discussion: Writing Science and Technology in Kannada)
ಭಾನುವಾರ, ಮಾರ್ಚ್ ೨೯ ರಂದು ಸಂಪದ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞರ ತಂಡ ಹಾಗು ಸೆಂಟರ್ ಫಾರ್ ಇಂಟರ್ನೆಟ್ ಎಂಡ್ ಸೊಸೈಟಿ ಜೊತೆಗೂಡಿ "ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ವಿಜ್ಞಾನ ಹಾಗು ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನ ಬರಹ" ಕುರಿತ ಚರ್ಚೆ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ ಇಟ್ಟುಕೊಂಡಿದ್ದರು. ಈ ಬರಹ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದ ವರದಿ. ಕನ್ನಡ, ಭಾರತದ ಹಲವು ಭಾಷೆಗಳಂತೆ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನ, ವಿಜ್ಞಾನ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಶೇಖರಿಸಿಡಲು ತುಂಬ ಕಡಿಮೆ ಬಳಕೆಯಾಗುತ್ತಿದೆ. ಹೀಗಿರುವಾಗ ಕನ್ನಡ ಭಾಷೆಯನ್ನು ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಸಂಗ್ರಹಿಸಿಡಲು, ವಿಜ್ಞಾನ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನ ಕುರಿತ ವಿಷಯಗಳನ್ನು ಹಂಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಬಳಸುವಾಗ ಏನೇನು ತೊಂದರೆ ಅಡಚಣೆಗಳನ್ನು ಎದುರಿಸುತ್ತೇವೆ ಎಂಬುದರ ಸುತ್ತ ಚರ್ಚೆ ನಡೆದಿತ್ತು. ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದ ಸವಿವರ ವರದಿ ಲೇಖನದಲ್ಲಿದೆ.
Pleasure and Pornography: Pornography and the Blindfolded Gaze of the Law
In the legal discourse, pornography as a category is absent, except as an aggravated form of obscenity. Does this missing descriptive category assist in the rampant circulation of pornography, either online or offline? Rather than ask that question, Namita Malhotra, in this second post documenting her CIS-RAW project, explores certain judgments that indeed deal with pornographic texts and uncovers the squeamishness that ensures that pornography as an object keeps disappearing before the law.
RTI Application to Visvesvaraya Technological University
The Centre for Internet and Society filed an RTI application to Visvesvaraya Technological University asking it to provide details about its curriculum design, and its tie-ups with various software vendors.
The (Postcolonial) Marxist Shift in Response to Technology
In her previous post, Asha Achuthan discussed, through the Gandhi-Tagore debates, the responses to science and technology that did not follow the dominant Marxist-nationalist positions. Later Marxist-postcolonial approaches to science and responses to technology were conflated in anti-technology arguments, particularly in development. In this post, the fifth in a series on her project, she will briefly trace the 1980s shift in Marxist thinking in India as a way of approaching the shift in the science and technology question. This exercise will reveal the ambivalence in Marxist practice toward continuing associations between the ‘rational-scientific’ on the one hand and the ‘revolutionary’ on the other.
The 'Dark Fibre' Files: Interview with Jamie King and Peter Mann
Film-makers Jamie King (producer/director of the 'Steal This Film' series) and Peter Mann, in conversation with Siddharth Chadha, on 'Dark Fibre', their latest production, being filmed in Bangalore
Analysing Wikipedia: An Introduction
Kiran Jonnalagadda and Hans Varghese Matthews introduce their project, aimed at producing tools that will allow anyone to analyse editing behaviour on Wikipedia. This is the first in a series of posts documenting their work.
Hindi Translation of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
A Hindi translation of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 was commissioned by the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) and is now available for download.
Transparency and Politics: An Introduction [II]
In this post, the second in a series documenting her CIS-RAW project, Zainab Bawa explains how transparency is embedded in particular institutional contexts. This impacts the ways in which transparency materially manifests and also has implications for administrative politics.
Report on National Workshop on Web Accessibility
This entry contains links to download a report on a workshop on web accessibility organised by CIS for web developers (16-18 February 2009).
First Meeting of the Core Group on Communication and Information Technology
This is a report on the first meeting of the Core Group on Communication and Information Technology, which was held in New Delhi on 5 March 2009.
Applications to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment under the Right to Information Act
The Centre for Internet and Society filed two applications to the MSJE under the Right to Information Act seeking certain information relating to the implementation of the National Policy for Electronic Accessibility and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).
Report from DigiActive’s Bangalore Meet-up
A blog entry by Mary Joyce on the meet-up hosted at CIS, Bangalore
Rewiring Bodies: Technology and the Nationalist Moment [2]
This is the third in a series of posts on Asha Achuthan's Rewiring Bodies project. In this post, Asha looks at the Tagore-Gandhi debates on technology to throw some light on the question of whether there was a nationalist alternative to the technology offered by the West.
Department of Information Technology Meeting on a National Policy on E-Accessibility
On 30 January 2009, the Department of Information Technology hosted a meeting in New Delhi bringing together important stakeholders to discuss the issue of electronic accessibility for the disabled and persons with special needs in India.
Rewiring Bodies: Technology and the Nationalist Moment [1]
This is the second post in a series by Asha Achuthan on her project, Rewiring Bodies. In this blog entry, Asha looks at the trajectory of responses to technology in India to understand the genesis of the assumption that the subjects of technology are separate from the tool, machine, or instrument.
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