Author
Nishant Shah
199 items.
22 Jul 2013
Blog post
You Have the Right to Remain SilentReflecting upon the state of freedom of speech and expression in India, in the wake of the shut-down of the political satire website narendramodiplans.com.
24 Jun 2013
Blog post
Big Data, People's Lives, and the Importance of OpennessOpenness has become the buzzword for everything in India right now. From the new kids on the block riding the wave of Digital Humanities investing in infrastructure of open knowledge initiatives to the rhetoric of people-centered open …
18 Jun 2013
Blog post
Whose Change is it Anyway?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 …
16 Jun 2013
Blog post
The Stranger with CandyBeware of online threats, as the distinction between friends and foes is false on the internet.
14 Jun 2013
Blog post
World Wide RuleNishant Shah's review of Schmidt and Cohen's book was published in the Indian Express on June 14, 2013.
22 May 2013
Blog post
It’s Common PracticeTechnologies are no longer abstract. They're habits. What constitutes a habit? The gestures that you make as you read this, the way your eyes flick when you encounter somebody you like, the way you stroke your chin in a moment of …
6 Apr 2013
Blog post
Off the RecordSocial networks track our world but not relationships. We live in a world where things happen. And yet, with the presence of digital objects, the things that happen have increased in intensity and volume.
17 Feb 2013
12 Feb 2013
Blog post
Back When the Past had a Future: Being Precarious in a Network SocietyWe live in Network Societies. This phrase has been so bastardised to refer to the new information turn mediated by digital technologies, that we have stopped paying attention to what the Network has become. Networks are everywhere. They …
28 Jan 2013
Blog post
Remembering Aaron Swartz, Taking Up the FightI encountered the Aaron Swartz memorial the other day that helps ‘liberate’ a randomly selected article from JSTOR, as an act of civil disobedience, to commemorate both the legacy that Swartz leaves behind, but also the high-profile …
26 Jan 2013
Blog post
Habits of Living: Networked Affects, Glocal EffectsBrown University is organizing an international conference that elucidates the networked conditions of our times, how they produce ways, conditions, and habits of life and living, how they spread local actions globally. The conference will …
18 Jan 2013
Blog post
Web of SamenessThe social Web has been an ominous space at the start of 2013. It has been awash with horror, pain and grief. The recent gang rape and death of a medical student in Delhi prevents one from being too optimistic about the year to come. My …
18 Jan 2013
Blog post
The Violence of Knowledge CartelsWe are all struck with a sense of loss, grief and shock since we heard of the death of Aaron Swartz, by suicide. People who have been his friends have written heart-felt obituaries, saluting his dreams and visions and unwavering commitment …
29 Dec 2012
Blog post
Tomorrow, TodayOur present is the future that our past had imagined. Around the same time last year, I remember taking stock of the technologies that we live with and wondering what 2012 would bring in.
8 Dec 2012
Blog post
Not Just Fancy TelevisionNishant Shah reviews Ben Hammersley's book "64 Things You Need to Know for Then: How to Face the Digital Future Without Fear ", published by Hodder & Stoughton
2 Dec 2012
Blog post
So Much to LoseUnless you have been hiding under a rock, you have been a witness to the maelstrom of events that accompanied the death of the political leader Bal Thackeray.
18 Nov 2012
Blog post
Alt needs to ShiftPeople maybe talking more online, but they all seem to be talking about the same kind of thing.
8 Nov 2012
Blog post
Whose Change Is It Anyway? | DML2013As a preparation for the DML conference, Nishant Shah had an interview with Howard Rheingold, a cyberculture pioneer, social media innovator, and author of "Smart Mobs. Nishant Shah is chair of 'Whose Change Is It Anyway? Futures, Youth, …
29 Oct 2012
Blog post
The Rules of EngagementWhy the have-nots of the digital world can sometimes be mistaken as trolls. I am not sure if you have noticed, but lately, the people populating our social networks have started to be more diverse than before.
23 Oct 2012
Blog post
Who’s that Friend?If you are reading this, stand on your right foot and start hopping while waving your hands in the air and shouting, “I am crazy” at the top of your voice. If you don’t, your Facebook account will be compromised, your passwords will be …
23 Oct 2012
Blog post
Habits of Living: Being Human in a Networked SocietyRecently, in Bangalore, a cluster of academics, researchers, artists, and practitioners, were supported by Brown University, to assemble in a Thinkathon (a thinking marathon, if you will) and explore how our new habits of everyday life need …
23 Oct 2012
Blog post
Digital Habits: How and Why We Tweet, Share and LikeThere aren’t always rational explanations for the ways in which we behave on networks. While there are trend spotting sciences and pattern recognition methods which try to make sense of how and why we behave in these strange ways on …
17 Sep 2012
Blog post
One. Zero.The digital world is the world of twos. All our complex interactions, emotional negotiations, business transactions, social communication and political subscriptions online can be reduced to a string of 1s and 0s, as machines create the …
25 Aug 2012
Blog post
What lurks beneath the NetworkThere is a series of buzzwords that have become a naturalised part of discussions around digital social media—participation, collaboration, peer-2-peer, mobilisation, etc. Especially in the post Arab Spring world (and our own home-grown …
25 Aug 2012
Blog post
Social media, SMS are not why NE students left BangaloreI woke up one morning to find that I was living in a city of crisis. Bangalore, where the largest public preoccupations to date have been about bad roads, stray dogs, and occasionally, the lack of night-life, the city was suddenly a space …
24 Jul 2012
Blog post
Deconstructing Digital Natives: Young People, Technology and the New LiteraciesNishant Shah was invited to do a book review of a new anthology 'Deconstructing Digital Natives', edited by Michael Thomas. The review was published in Routledge's Journal of Children and Media on July 18, 2012.
18 Jul 2012
Blog post
Bangalore Thinkathon Surrogacy: Bodies, States, NetworksThe first workshop of the Habits of Living project will be a Thinkathon (Thinking Marathon) focused on the notion of surrogate structures that have become the visible landmarks of contemporary life and will be hosted by the Centre for …
13 Jul 2012
Blog post
Internet Censorship: Anonymous Can’t be Just Harmful HackersIf there was ever an interesting time for people concerned with freedom of speech and expression to live in, it is now, and it is definitely in India. It has been a series of battles the last couple of years, where a slightly out-dated …
11 Jul 2012
Blog post
Revisiting Techno-euphoriaIn my last post, I talked about techno-euphoria as a condition that seems to mark much of our discourse around digital technologies and the promise of the future. The euphoria, as I had suggested, manifests itself either as a utopian view …
11 Jul 2012
Blog post
Across BordersA friend and I were at a cafe in Bangalore the other day, when an acquaintance walked in. After the initial niceties, and invitation to join us for coffee, the new person looked at us and asked a question that sounded so archaic and so …