How Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts Are Transforming the Information Age
25th April 2007
The way in which internet technologies are revolutionising how we receive and exchange information will be looked at in a lecture by a world-leading expert in computer ethics next week.
Professor Simon Rogerson, of De Montfort University Leicester, is part of a delegation of British academics appearing at a three-day conference in Israel, focusing on issues surrounding information and the web.
His talk on Monday 30 April, entitled 'Information in the Information Age', will look at the way converging technologies are shaping communications and interactions on the web.
The talk is part of 'The Future of Web Interactions' conference, organised by the Department of Information Science at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan and being held between 30 April and 2 May across three venues in Israel: Bar-Ilan University; the Hilton hotel in Tel Aviv; and the University of Haifa.
Professor Rogerson said: "Traditional models of information suppliers and consumers no longer seem appropriate in a world of blogs, wikis and podcasts.
"Converging technologies have raised a set of fresh issues which need to be fully explored and addressed if we are going to realise the full potential of the Information Age.
"This talk will review the notion of information using illustrations from the virtual world."
The British delegation is funded by a grant from the Friends of Israel Academic Study Group, which promotes cross-national research collaboration between British scholars and centres of excellence in Israel.
Professor Rogerson is Director of the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility (CCSR) at DMU.
He has won a string of awards including the prestigious international ACM SIGCAS 'Making a Difference' award in 2005 and the 1999 IFIP Namur Award. He was named a Fellow of the British Computer Society in 2004 and declared one of the world's top computer ethics experts at the World Technology Awards in 2003.
Professor Rogerson conceived the groundbreaking Ethicomp Conference Series in 1995 and remains its co-director with Professor Terry Bynum of Southern Connecticut State University. The series explores issues of ethics and society in ICT and attracts speakers and delegates from across the world.
This year, Professor Rogerson helped launch a special series of international Ethicomp events, called Ethicomp Working Conferences, which focus on current issues in the field of computer and information ethics and the role of education in creating awareness of the subject. The first event was held in China earlier this month.
Earlier this year, DMU Creative Writing and New Media students joined forces with Penguin Books UK to launch the world's first ever truly collaborative wiki novel. The global experiment in new media writing saw thousands of people from across the world helping to write a novel entitled 'A Million Penguins'.
For further information or to be kept informed about IOCT activities, please contact:The Director, Institute of Creative Technologies,
De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH
Tel: (+44) 0116 250 6146
Email: eedmonds [at] dmu.ac.uk
www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk