I am currently a Teaching Fellow in Digital Cultures at SOAS (University of London). A part of my tasks is to design a practical-theoretical course that would look at emerging digital technologies in the non-Western context. One of the key themes to be explored here - that is: what the future media will look like globally and what the implications of these will be for commercial, social and artistic fields. See below the first draft of the course outline that I suggested as a basis for the dialogue. Let’s see how this develops:

EMERGING DIGITAL CULTURES IN ASIA AND AFRICA - THEORY AND PRACTICE

DRAFT V 1.0
JANUARY 28, 2008

OVERVIEW:

The course Media 2.0 in the Global Context looks at the emergence of new media technologies from a distinctly global perspective. We have all heard the buzzwords recently: web 2.0, wikis, Second Life, social software, blogos, locative media, multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG), mobile convergence etc. Much of the debates, however, has so far focused predominantly on the Euro-American context. Yet some of the most interesting developments are happening elsewhere. For instance, in Korea online multiplayer games are now more popular than television among young people. In sub-Saharan Africa, the explosion in the use of mobile phones has led to new innovative business models where paid airtime is now used as a new currency for cross-border interaction and banking. In India, software engineers are busy coding the future applications of the Internet of tomorrow. In Iran, weblogs have emerged as a new turbulent political space where future of the country is debated. What unites all these divergent media is the challenge they pose for media research in the 21st century. The course therefore asks: are the methods and theories that emerged out of the legacy of older media systems such as print, radio and television still applicable to understand the impact of some of these new developments globally? And if not, how should research adapt to the logic of what we could call broadly media 2.0; that is, the emergent new media technologies that increasingly mediate lives across the world?

With this in mind, this course aims at unraveling some of the methodological and theoretical problems that are raised when we look at what we could loosely call media 2.0 in the global context. The course, however, does not pretend to provide a final word on this shifting and emerging field. Unlike many other introductory courses to “digital culture” and/or “new media” (in many variations) the course instead aims at providing students with the necessary tools that allow them to begin investigating the issues that get raised for themselves. Its focus is therefore as much experiential and experimental as it theoretical and academic. It aims at providing both the theoretical background to some of the key debates dealing with contemporary digital cultures globally today but as importantly the practical know-how for students to begin using and exploring these new technologies first hand. It therefore encourages students actively involved in the debates that are taking place around new media technologies globally as well as use these new technologies for conducting, promoting and publishing research in multiple environments.