Connected Knowledge Information

What do electronic and indigenous networks have in common? What does sovereignty mean outside of nation-states? How can we build networks of trust in the 21st century? Can democratic access to information be reconciled with the right to privacy? The Cross-Cultural Partnership working group has brought together artists, scholars, and activists from over a dozen indigenous and developed nations for the purpose of answering questions like these. Its ongoing mission is to envision a legal and cultural framework for sharing connected knowledge in a way that is responsible and sustainable. Public Interests in Technologies. Partnership featured at Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), Cambridge University, 24-26 April 2008. More... Learn more about the Partnership's series of international conferences, or explore other aspects of the project via the menus above. Sustainability may be a common catchphrase among environmentalists, but it applies to ecologies of all kinds, not just the biological ones. Cultural producers need creative ecologies to thrive, yet in practice exclusive markets often exploit the creators who feed them products to sell, whether they are painters trying to break into the gallery scene or musicians trying to land a recording contract. While the Internet provides new ways to collaborate outside of the usual business model, online relationships are not known for their sustainability, and many community Web sites disappear or wither due to a lack of sustained dialogue or connection among their participants. By contrast, one of the essential features of partnership is a desire among the Partners to forge a relationship that endures beyond the hit-and-run transactions of market economies and most online social networks. Furthermore, true long-term sustainability requires accountability beyond the individual partners themselves to the broader goal of nurturing cultural and natural diversity. Hence the goal of this working group is to investigate new structures that ...