I spent the day listening to speakers address issues related to emergining technologies and globalization at Santa Clara University's Center for Science, Technology and Society's Digital Divide or Digital Commons conference. An array of topics were covered from a global perspective including issues such as the history of information technologies, how market forces are driving technological innovation, the political economy of information, intellectual property rights, and grassroots literacy campaigns. The conference blog has a pretty good overview of the proceedings and great links to some of the speakers.
This is the third year Santa Clara University has hosted the conference and about 200 industry professionals, educators and students attended the event.
Whenever I attend anything of this sort, I always leave feeling overwhelmed with ideas and information. At the same time, there is no doubt that a lot of very smart people have been working really hard to wrap their brains around the enormous impact technology has always had on human civilization, for better or worse.
To be continued....