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Harness the Power of a Fluid Identity with 3 Simple Strategies

Don’t mind me while I drive through your neighborhood taking photo’s of your house, gathering your emails, passwords and other private information from your wifi network. It’s nothing personal, I’m doing it to everyone, in every street, in over 30 countries. Perhaps you can also excuse me while I give access to data you and your friends shared with me and each other, to individuals and companies I have no relation to or control over at all, and while leaking your data, again it’s nothing personal, I’m doing it to 87 million others, you probably won’t mind me showing you and 126 million others some political disinformation, there’s an election coming and I could really use the money. It’s not as if we don’t know each other, I’ve been following your every move online for years now, and it’s no secret that I’m worth hundreds of billions because I sell access to you, promising my customers influence over your voting and purchasing behavior. I’ve got power. Monopolies are rare lol. If all this makes you uncomfortable, you can always cut ties with me and everyone you work and communicate online with, but what would that solve? Your friends are totally oversharing…

Space is the Place

Conference report on Media and Learning Conference, Brussels, March 9th & 10th, 2016

On March 9th and 10th Zac Woolfitt attended the Media and Learning Conference in Brussels. The programme of this annual conference examines ‘developments, services and uses of media in education and training to […] identify policies and initiatives that promote digital and media competence at all levels of education and training as well as to promote best-practice in the take-up and application of media in education and training.’

From efficiency to reduction

This book presents the results of the international research project CODALoop: Community Data Loop for Energy Conscious Lifestyles. It dissects the energy practices that make urban households demanding energy in their daily life and reveals the pathway towards reducing this energy demand.To unpack energy practices, the authors of this volume move away from efficiency problems studying the interaction between human and new technologies. Instead, they use a repertoire of different analytical instruments to study how interaction between humans, and between humans and data, change the social norms that shape energy needs.The volume offers a synthesis of a cross-disciplinary study of energy reduction carried out in three different countries through multiple methodological approaches. The project at the source of the book was funded under the Joint Program Initiative 'Urban Europe' and the ERA-net framework.

Shaping energy norms in digital communities

Reducing energy consumption in urban households is essential for reaching the necessary climate research and policy targets for CO2 reduction and sustainability. The dominant approach has been to invest in technological innovations that increase household energy efficiency. This article moves beyond this approach, first by emphasising the need to prioritise reducing energy demand over increasing energy efficiency and, second, by addressing the challenge of energy consumption at the level of the community, not the individual household. It argues that energy consumption is shaped in and by social communities, which construct consciousness of the energy implications of lifestyle choices. By analysing a specific type of community, a digital community, it looks at the role that communication on online discussion boards plays in the social process of questioning energy needs and shaping a “decent lifestyle”. The article explores three social processes of community interaction around energy practices – coercive, mimetic, and normative – questioning the ways in which they contribute to the activation of energy discursive consciousness. In conclusion, the article reflects on the potential implications of these social processes for future research and interventions aimed at reducing energy demand. To illustrate how the three selected social processes influence one another, the article builds on the results of a research project conducted in Amsterdam, analysing the potential contribution of online discussion boards in shaping energy norms in the Sustainable Community of Amsterdam Facebook group.

Unpacking Energy Needs