Late last week I spent a day and a half at NetHui in Auckland. Couldn’t make the full 3 days. It’s a new initiative, organised by InternetNZ.
It will be an annual event. That all MPs should attend and all of you.
It was all about the internet. What it means for us. What the opportunities and the scary challenges are. And that it’s about equality.
Lawrence Lessig was the keynote speaker.
Some takeout messages:
- Kids, dropouts, outsiders have been the innovators and have developed the major changes on the internet
- The internet is about reviving a culture of passive consumption to re-creating a culture of sharing, participation and making new stuff.
- The need for truth tellers about the network.
- The enormous challenges for policy-makers and law makers. One of which is for politicians to move away from a culture of being funded and therefore influenced by private interests. To halt law-making by lobbyists. And consider other ways.
- How NZ could become a beacon of light in showing the way forward on many of the issues that arise because of the internet
If you watch nothing else for a while, watch his speech. It’s on Youtube in 3 parts.
@ Clare
Sounds like an interesting forum.
Are you able to translate what the takeout messages actually mean in terms of possible policy initiatives? (aside from point 1 which I’m sure Stephen Wolff, Tim Berners-Lee, Marc Andreesen, Eric Bina, and Sergey Brin {just a handful of the creators of the modern internet} would probably not agree with).