Digital Communities

To mark its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2004, Ars Electronica had expanded its international competition for cyberarts to include a new category called "Digital Communities." "Digital Communities" encompasses the wide-ranging social consequences of the Internet as well as the latest developments in the domain of mobile communications and wireless networks. "Digital Communities" will spotlight bold and inspired innovations impacting human coexistence, bridging the digital divide regarding gender as well as geography, or creating outstanding social software and enhancing accessibility of technological-social infrastructure. This new category will showcase the political potential of digital and networked systems and is thus designed as a forum for the consideration of a broad spectrum of projects, programs, initiatives and phenomena in which social innovation is taking place, as it were, in real time.