Future

The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the New Media Consortium (NMC)’s Horizon Project, a five-year qualitative research effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations. The 2008 Horizon Report, the fifth in this annual series, is produced as a collaboration between the NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCAUSE program.

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The main sections of the report describe six emerging technologies or practices that will likely enter mainstream use in learning-focused organizations within three adoption horizons over the next one to five years. Also highlighted are a set of challenges and trends that will influence our choices in the same time frames. The project draws on an ongoing primary research effort that has distilled the viewpoints of more than 175 Advisory Board members in the fields of business, industry, and education into the six topics presented here; drawn on an extensive array of published resources, current research, and practice; and made extensive use of the expertise of the NMC and ELI communities. (The precise research methodology is detailed in the final section.) Many of the examples under each area feature the innovative work of NMC and ELI member institutions.

Mass media determine public consciousness. But in the US, where mass media are owned and operated almost entirely by and in the interest of a greedy and irresponsible corporate elite, who keep the issues of control and governance of the internet, cable, broadcast and other media off the table. Potential growth of the media justice movement into an arm of a broad and popular social movement is a clear and imminent threat to the nation's bipartisan elite. And it's the only hope for many millions of Americans currently unable to speak with or hear their own voices, or to realize their own power.

What exactly is the Internet and what role does it play in our movement for social change?

In this collection of essays, May First/People Link techie-organizers explore this remarkable social movement:

• analyzing its growth and character as an expression of humanity's resistance and resilience;
• offering an analysis of how it impacts the progressive movement and how we should impact it;
• taking up Internet issues like access, race and gender, threats to the Internet's independence and freedom, free and open source software, spam, email, security and privacy, dns and other Internet protocols;
• and suggesting strategies for the use, protection and expansion of the Internet's technology.

It's a must-read for every progressive activist who participates in the Internet and a good starting point for the movement-wide discussion that has become essential.

The book features:

• The Organic Internet by Alfredo López
• The Political Techie by Jamie McClelland
• Domain Names by Alfredo López
• The Internet Protocol by Eric Goldhagen
• Technical Architecture Shapes Social Structure by Daniel Kahn Gillmor
• The Email Crisis by Jamie McClelland
• FOSS and Proprietary Software by Amanda B. Hickman

You can download a copy of the Organic Internet on line as a pdf file or purchase printed paperback copies for $7.00