"Building a Digital Public Space" - Bill Thompson, journalist and technology critic, UK

Bill Thompson, journalist and technology critic, will talk about "Building a Digital Public Space". Abstract: In 2003 journalist and technology critic Bill Thompson coined the phrase ‘the dot.commons’ to describe the open, enabling public online space that the internet made possible, and expressed his concern that pressures from government and commercial players were limiting its potential. The dot.commons is now usually referred to as the Digital Public Space, but the principles are the same, and both his hopes and fears have been realised. In this talk Bill Thompson will describe the evolution of the model of the DPS and explore some potential online futures that might emerge, considering how people will engage online as media converge, access becomes pervasive and interactions rely on digital networks, and what that might mean for the wider society. (The original paper is at https://medium.com/@billt/towards-a-new-dot-commons-45472050912b) About the speaker: Bill Thompson is a well-known technology journalist and advisor to arts and cultural organisations on matters related to digital technologies. He appears weekly on Click on BBC World Service radio and writes a monthly column for Focus magazine. He is Head of Partnership Development for the BBC Archive, a member of the boards of Writers’ Centre Norwich, Britten Sinfonia and The Collections Trust, and a Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Art. The talk will take place on Monday 2 November at 1530 in the Room Georges Charpak (Room F). The talk is part of the series of "Library Science Talks" jointly organized by the Swiss National Library, CERN and the Association of International Librarians and Information Specialists.