Hi. In my day job I am a doctor of law and consultant in internet law and information law (www.internetlaws.co.il). My special expertise is in information security, computer crimes and forensic evidence. Still, to Kinnernet I relate from a different perspective: my interest and research in the fields of digital culture, hacktivism, and culture jamming. In the last few years I have been fascinated by the rise of resistance movements using the Internet to gain voice in the public discourse. I have researched the political dimension of hackers’ culture, the fight over the construction of code, and the use of the new medium to register protest (from defacement, site hijacking to Google fights). I further found interest in the way that culture is created in the new medium and how anti-globalization movements use the medium for political mobilization. The freedom to think, enjoyed at Yale Law School, and the amazing guidance of Prof. Jack Balkin and Prof. Yoachi Benkler enabled me to deep into this emerging cultural scene and to understand the power structures in the new medium, while completing my doctorate at law and Post-Doc in Computer Science (in the field of computer crimes).
I am fascinated for example with the following questions: How Barbie has become a global tool of protest? How WikiPedia changes the political dimension of narrative construction? How culture jammers turn advertisement against the message that the advertiser wants to convey? How Memes (units of information, analog to Genes in the bio-sphere) are created, transferred and join together? How Hackers are conceived and self-conceived? How technologies empower people and change democratic processes? In what sense the "language" of digital media is different?
I am excited to be invited to Kinnernet and have the chance to share thoughts, demonstrate some of my findings and be part of the party of the new digitial culture.
