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Big Tings be Agwan
Related to country: Canada

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic



So many changes! Josue and I are settling into our life in Toronto and I have to say that the city is treating us very well. So many amazing smart people working on incredibly innovative projects, with lots of ideas in the mix. The last article I posted talked about Toronto 2.0, and boy are we ever on the run. In the last half a year I have been blown away by the amount of cool internet applications from TTCUpdates to my new place of work as Community Evangelist with GetInvolved.ca. The thing that touches my heart is not just the technical talent embedded in this city, but the city's many artists and activists that are creatively forging ahead using the urban landscape as their canvas, from community mural projects to large festivals and conferences.

Not only is this city beaming with talent, it's beaming with opportunity. Collaboration is in the air, and when there is a will there is away. People are enthusiastic about supporting innovation be it social, creative, technical or otherwise. I really feel like anything is possible at this point, and that Toronto is rapidly challenging large American cities for supreme coolness. Will Toronto murals rival San Francisco's? Will our artists challenge NYC and LA as the top North American art market? Will we take over Silicon Valley with our startups, or should we leave that for Waterloo? Either way Toronto is kicking ass!

July 3, 2009 | 12:27 PM Comments  1 comments



Toronto 2.0
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic



In a corner of his wife's office in the Centre for Social Innovation, in an old red pile on Spadina, Mark Surman is trying to find a spot quiet enough for a phone interview.

"Tonya, can I sit here or will I drive you guys nuts?" he asks above clattering keyboards.

"You'll drive us nuts, but we love you."

The space is a bit too open to afford much privacy. The centre is a buzzing hive of glass offices and wood beams with a movie-set quality to it; it's an open-concept home for dozens of social-minded groups. Tonya Surman, 39, is the centre's executive director. Her husband, also 39, is the new, Toronto-based executive director of the open-source Mozilla Foundation, the organization behind the popular Web browser Firefox.

"Open" is a hot item in Toronto these days. Mr. Surman is an evangelist for the cause of openness. It's not just free, open software like Firefox, built by a coalition of volunteers and paid staff. It's open ideas, open information, and now, open government. And activists like his wife are pushing these ideas into the realm of social innovation.

Nobody ever accused Toronto of being Silicon Valley North. But the ethos of open-ness has caught on, and it's starting to turn Toronto into a capital of a different kind.

The Surmans are in the midst of an emerging scene that's sprung from geek culture to embrace not only programmers and designers, but also wonks and activists and politicians, right up to the mayor's office. Social change and Internet ideals have gotten hitched, and the results are going to change the way Torontonians live.

If open culture is thriving in Toronto, it's in part because Toronto is a conspicuously connected place. It's not just its modest but vibrant Web-startup scene, or the fact that Google recently opened offices in Dundas Square, in the heart of downtown. The city is a perennial front runner in social-network rankings, most recently coming in eighth worldwide in a survey of Twitter users.

Read more!

January 31, 2009 | 11:36 AM Comments  1 comments



TakingITMobile Working Group
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic



This project is a working group for TakingITGlobal members who are interested in mobile communications. The aim of this working group is to share innovation in the field of youth mobile innovation, and to brainstorm projects and solutions for the TakingITGlobal platform. By sharing examples of mobile innovation, we can examine ways of building mobile tools that are compatible with the existing mobile platform. As well this group aims to tap the larger community's mobile practices by developing a Global Mobile Survey. By sharing our practices we can start to brainstorm questions, and a survey will be distributed to the over 200,000 TakingITGlobal members. From the data gathered an environmental scan will be written up to document mobile trends among TIG users and create a list of recommendations for future applications and services. Click here to get involved!

January 21, 2009 | 12:38 PM Comments  0 comments



Youth Culture and Globalization
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic



American cultural imperialism has a large effect on how youth construct their identities, creating hegemonic ideals of beauty, and most importantly defining cool for an entire generation of youth. Yet culture is not a one-way transaction, as much of global youth pop culture has been appropriated into the mainstream media, creating alternative reverberations. Gramscian notions of hegemony come into play, as we can observe how global corporations extract consent and incorporate dissent from global youth culture. Concepts around hybridity and mestizaje help to shape how we perceive these shifts, as marginalized cultures borrow from the status quo, and vice versa. Youth are targeted more than ever by the global cultural industry through television and advertisements. The culture of consumerism is not only affecting youth in developed nations. The Haatso Youth Club in Ghana articulates this phenomenon in their report to the International Youth Parliament (Heaven & Tubridy 2003):

Globalization has brought us a life surrounded by mass-production and mass-consumption. We are driven under enormous pressure, into a very consumerist lifestyle, stimulated by transnational corporations as well as commercial mass media. In contrast, we witness at the same time the stark poverty widespread in our region and the world. We see our own cultures giving way to a consumerist monoculture. There is an urgent need to revisit, appreciate and participate in the evolution of our own cultures, which are community-orientated, non-materialistic, eco-friendly and holistic in their worldview. We need to develop our capacity of cultural perceptibility towards creative interaction between cultures.


The art of the remix has infused itself into youth culture across the globe, as genres such as Hip Hop find themselves in Australia, and Punk Rock takes popularity in Japan. Hybrid artists such as M.I.A., and Up, Bustle, and Out have blended genres of music, sampling artists across the world to create a fusion of global sounds. New genres emerge out of the ashes of the old, as Reggaeton takes the stage, combining Reggae with Hip Hop, with a distinct Latino flavour. Television shows like Heroes take place across the world, and across time. The movie Babel marks a theme for this generation, transcultural narratives which weave through our lives, showing the invisible connections which we all share.

As cultures transfer, they take on different meanings, and risk hybridizing in ways which can be offensive and detrimental to indigenous cultures (Loomba 2005). bell hooks cautions us that (1992:21), "Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture." When is hybridity appropriate, and when does it verge on cultural theft? Ella Shohat reminds us (1993:100) that in order to understand these concepts, we need to "discriminate between the diverse modalities of hybridity, for example forced assimilation, internalized self-rejection, political co-optation, social conformism, cultural mimicry, and creative transcendence." With these tensions in mind it is important to incorporate media education into the learning canon, preparing the youth of today for the challenges and opportunities of new media technology.

October 26, 2008 | 7:33 PM Comments  1 comments



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