Social Tapestries

Social Tapestries:public authoring and civil society
By Giles Lane
"Social Tapestries is a two year research project developing experimental uses of public authoring* to demonstrate the social and cultural benefits of local knowledge sharing enabled by new mobile technologies."
Further
"....Agency and Authorship'... stories are becoming private and sink into the secluded places in neighbour-hoods, families or individuals... while the rumours propagated by the media cover everything...'Michel de Certeau, "Walking in the City" in The Practice of Everyday Life
As we move into a new century, new paradigms of communications are beginning to take hold. The range of sources of information have multiplied exponentially with the arrival of satellite communications and the internet. No longer are we reliant on a single or limited number of sources that define our understanding and opinions, but we may gather information from a heterogeneous collection of places. Although much of it is the same, we now have at our
disposal an unprecedented ability to see from other perspectives, through different eyes.Not only that, but it is two way: people do wish to comment, to communicate their interpretation of events, to participate in the culture they are part of. I believe that this radical shift in information flow and control away from large institutions (both public and private) to ordinary people could have a profound social and cultural impact on the uses and implications of wireless and mobile technologies in daily life, as well as social and community relations....."

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