Technology Change, Community Creation, and Common Values

Irene Wu, Ph.D.
Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet

Research Paper: Information, Identity and Institutions: How Technology Transforms Political Power in the World

The more communication technology changes, the more time and space can be abridged. People achieve a sense of belonging in a community because they have a shared sense of locale and history. Today is so filled with media, that common locale stretches across space and common history stretches across time. Increasingly, people feel a part of groups which are constituted through meaning communicated over technology, not just groups built on face-to-face interaction. In this context, the Internet is just one more technological innovation in a long line of inventions from the telegraph to the telephone to the television.

While in many respects, the Internet is changing communities just as previous technological innovations changed communities, in one respect it may be different, and that is on the value of information. Information is super abundant because digitalization has made copying it cheap and easy, and the development of the Internet has made sending it cheap and easy. The scarcity is in insight. The scarcity is the ability to make sense in the face of super abundance of information. Those who are full of insight have an advantage compared to those who do not.

Using this understanding of how the Internet is changing the creation of communities and made information super-abundant and insight scarce, I propose to investigate the issue of freedom of expression online in China, Russia, India and Brazil. In general, I will examine recent cases of government restrictions placed on the use of Internet. These contemporary incidents I will compare with examples of government policy toward historical changes in communications technology. The research question will be whether past government practice toward new developments in communications technology predicts or contradicts current practice toward the Internet.

On April 3, 2008, Dr. Wu discussed her paper, Information, Identity and Institutions: How Technology Transforms Political Power in the World, before an audience of students, faculty, business leaders and policy-makers. Also included in the discussion was Yahoo! co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang.

Junior Yahoo! Fellows

MSFS graduate students are also selected to receive partial-tuition fellowships as Junior Yahoo! Fellows. The selected students will engage in study and research associated with the Yahoo! Fellow in Residence and/or other faculty engaged in related project activities.

The Junior Yahoo! Fellows for 2007-2008 are:

Elizaveta Chuykova

Steve Leu