Exploring the internet's potential to change society
Programme Details
25 Nov 2007 & 2 Dec - rpt 28 Nov & 5 Dec
Matthew d'Ancona asks whether the World Wide Web has the potential to reshape society, just as the printing press did more than five centuries ago.
Programme One
Sunday 25 November, repeated Wednesday 28 November 2007
The internet allows tiny groups of people to establish an identity and become a political force. How is this happening and what are the implications for society?
Political journalist Matthew d'Ancona meets some of the people in the avant garde of the internet revolution - from grass roots campaigners to bloggers - and explores how the web is changing our view of age-old power structures.
Tescopoly - (a network of groups worried aboout supermarket power)
Newham Council - (local government website for the London Borough of Newham)
Pickled Politics - (a group blog focusing on issues around race, religion and identity politics)
Howard Rheingold - (website for the technology guru and author of 'Smart Mobs, the next social revolutiion')
Programme Two
Sunday 2 December, repeated Wednesday 5 December 2007
For under-30s, the internet is not an exciting new technology but a fact of life. How is this changing the way they see and interact with the world and what will be the implications for power and democracy?
Matthew d'Ancona finds out how web use is changing the way the Net Generation's brains are wired and creating a generation that rejects hierarchies and is demanding a new kind of transparacy and integrity from its leaders.
Pro-Test - (a campaign group in support of animal testing for scientific research)
Wikinomics - (a website about how mass collaboration is changing the world)
New Paradigm - (a think tank focussed on business innovation in the global economy)
Matthew d’Ancona is an award-winning journalist. He's been editor of the Spectator magazine since 2006 and has been political columnist for The Sunday Telegraph since 1996. Before moving to the Spectator he was the Sunday Telegraph's deputy editor. He's the author of two acclaimed novels, 'Going East' and 'Tabatha's Code' and is a regular presenter on Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.
In 2004, Matthew was named one of Britain’s top 100 public intellectuals by Prospect magazine and The Observer included him in its list of 80 young people who “will shape our lives in the early 21st century”.
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