BarCamp: How the Internet Changes our Reality

Organized by the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Future Challenges and The Club of Rome, the one-day BarCamp on November 28th 2011 was intended to explore the ways in which the internet helps to shape our own reality and our view of the world. Specifically, the BarCamp wished to sketch out answers to questions like “How can we use these new forces in our global society to productively address the chronic problems of humanity? What are the limitations of these tools and movements? How can these new tools be used by decision-makers and others to cope with our future challenges? Where do the internet and “real world” communities intersect, sharing real concern about the same issues? And how does this look in countries outside of Europe?“

The 28th November event brought together some 140 participants from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds, from neuroscientists, consultants, filmmakers and lawyers to bloggers, students and political scientists. This diversity encouraged the lively discussions that followed.

In BarCamp fashion, participants were asked to propose their own ideas for sessions on registration. Seven sessions were agreed upon, the first two in the morning and the following five in the afternoon after the lunch break. The topics chosen for discussion were:

1. Internet and democracy – is there a future for democracy?
2. Structuring data chaos
3. Crowdsourcing
4. BarCamps can change the world
5. Decentralized transactions – how to reform our economic system
6. How the internet changes realities
7. Digital MPs – online democracy in parliament

Professor Rademacher of the University of Ulm, a member of the Club of Rome, gave the day’s closing keynote speech.

Blogposts on the BarCamp written by FutureChallenges’ bloggers:

• Measuring the Influence of Internet Movements on Reality
• The Age of Too Much Information and How to Deal With It
• Between theory and reality – My day at the fc_org barcamp “How the internet changes our reality”
• The internet and democracy – An unlikely couple? German blogger Michael Seemann and Ingolf Pernice professor of law