Theme Symposium

The Internet, cellphone and video are essential to how we communicate now. Massive numbers of people put themselves on display in weblogs and on sites like Flickr, MySpace and YouTube. A “second life” is being marketed under the buzzword Web 2.0.
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We publicize our view of the world and of ourselves in weblogs and at sites like Flickr, MySpace and YouTube. Many of the services that are being marketed under the banner of Web 2.0 are based on network linkup, exchange and the voluntary revelation of private information. With the emergence of this new “public life,” the value of that which is private has changed. Thus, there are indeed more and better forms of participation, but the staging of the private sphere before a mass public reduces the cultural status ascribed to it. At the same time, there's a bull market in detailed information about private individuals. The automatically analyzable data traces we leave behind give rise not only to new service industries but also to the architecture of surveillance and control. Figures, data and quantifiability have long since become conventional means of social selection and organization. Are we well on the way to a transparent society? Or is this hymn in praise of the new openness precisely what is paving the way for the abuse of power behind the scenes?This year’s Ars Electronica symposium will scrutinize this updated private sphere under the new conditions of terrorism and Web 2.0.
Ina Zwerger, Armin Medosch
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The Internet, cellphone and video are essential to how we communicate now. Massive numbers of people put themselves on display in weblogs and on sites like Flickr, MySpace and YouTube. A “second life” is being marketed under the buzzword Web 2.0.

Huge quantities of data are available—often made public by the subjects themselves, though mostly with hardly a clue about the potential consequences of having done so. In the digital world, is it even possible to enforce our fundamental rights to the protection of our personal information and our private sphere? What exactly does it mean to have a fundamental right to information? How is the private sphere changing in the transparent world of digital media?

Ars Electronica and the Fundamental Rights Section of the Austrian Judges Association are jointly organizing this interdisciplinary symposium. Following an introduction to the subject by international experts, the first afternoon session is intended to heighten judicial consciousness of the need for legal protection in certain areas. On the second day, attention will shift to society’s current conception of the private sphere in the novel context of terrorism and Web 2.0.
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