LIFT! Workshop Ideas

Just some quick thoughts on possible workshop topics:

Ariane sent around an interesting e-mail, proposing a discussion on a workshop topic which could be organised by the Gebert Rüf fellows at Lift! Conference.

She explains one of the pillars of Henry Jenkins' theories: “participatory culture” or the participation of consumers in the “active” seeking of information and media experiences across various technologies and media resources.

This deeply resounds with what I am reading on and thinking about at the moment.

For me, the deciding question is: "Is the development of the web and IT deepening the gap (to be defined, e.g. "influence on decision making processes in society") between (knowledge) have-nots and information literates?"

How, you might think now, is this question related to the active seeking of information, mentioned by Henry J.?

For me, the underlying question of Henry's thinking is: what are the (web-)technologies (social bookmarking, RSS, feedreader, aggregators, ...), the skills (information literacy, ...) as well as motivations needed to be able to effectively enter into this "active seeking" mode?

Which then leads to the questions: who will be those active seekers? Are we seeing enough efforts to democratize tools, to bring information and media literacy not only to college students but to schools, not to mention to developing countries on a broad scale?