Round Table:
Chairs: Jacinto Lajas

Jose María Olmo

Free Software penetration in the Administration still low. This also means (cause or consequence?) that bidding processes don’t usually include free software in their requirements, either as a condition or as a possibility.

Consequences of this situation:

• Lack of cooperation and collaboration between administrations
• Interoperability made more difficult
• There is a lack of communities of free software for the Administration in which developers and users can meet and exchange impressions and design common strategies

Francisco Huertas

Free Software as a strategy to develop the Information Society.

Free Software avoids:

• A unique provider
• Insecurity
• Imposed adaptability
• Provider monopolies
• R+D outshored
• Lack of local support
• Functional submission
• License costs
• Lack of standards that threat the persistence of public information
• Impossibility to publicly share common goods

The cost per computer (12,000 PCs) of the operating system and main desktop applications is 1.8 euros.Updating these computers to the last version of MS Windows + Office would have cost 6 million euros. Besides the aggregates, a important aspect that matters at the margin: while with free software adding one more computer means reducing software costs per unit (while being constant at the aggregate level), with proprietary software one more computer means more costs, at both the total and per unit levels.

Lourdes Muñoz Santamaría

Three keys: focus on the use, not the tool; the importance of broadband access; keep Net neutrality.

In political terms, it is unacceptable that public investment is not public. Hence, investment in software solutions and content has to be made in free software so that they can be put at anybody’s reach.

In the same train of though, intellectual property rights need to have recovered their original purpose: public benefit, the protection of the author so that society gets more and better culture and innovation.

Two steps in the free software debate:

• Non-discrimination because of the technological solution: neutrality, access warranties… for both the user and the provider
• Opt-in for free software because of argued and objective reasons

A cause does not win just for being fair. If free software is good, its benefits have to be made broadly known, so that the citizenry is eager to get those benefits.

Round Table:
Chairs: Goyo Tovar

Antonio Fumero

The Web: technologies, people and content. The Web brings potential, but using it is another issue. And in using it, context matters.

Ícaro Moyano

Age is a clear limit of Web 2.0.

Three stages of the web:

• The web as a journal: unidirectional
• The web as media: everyone’s a journalist
• The web as a sharing place

New Internet users no longer identify themselves with a nickname, but with their real names, including a snapshot of their own.

And it seems that youngsters, that are usually said not being interested in politics, do use Social Networking Sites to engage in activism and promote campaigns.

Marc Vidal

Are the limits of the Web 2.0 the limits of the Society 2.0?

Is the Web 2.0 revolution a technological one, or a social one?

Characteristics of a Technological Revolution

• New products, technologies and dynamics
• Important growth or new enterprises
• Renewing of the existing productive apparatus
• Evident generation of wealth

Has the Web 2.0 (clearly) generated this wealth? Is there a new business plan?

But, socially? Is it a Revolution?

• It’s a scholar “seppuku”
• It’s a copyright unsolved “violation”
• Has not an associated consolidated business plan
• It’s amateur information

But attracts any kind of people. Just because of this: it is a technological revolution living besides a social change.

Web 2.0 tools are an array of e-exclusion and, more generally, exclusion. People not interested or without means to catch up with the speed of change of the Web 2.0 are being put out of the system at high speed. Thus, if the Web 2.0 is said to be a democratizing driver, it’s just having the contrary effect.

Society 2.0 is not accessing info but taking part in the making of it. Society 2.0 does not debate the solutions, but the question.

Debate: The Handbook of the blog in the enterprise.
Chairs: César Ramos

Genís Roca

We should focus on what is an enterprise and not on blogs. Do we agree on what do we understand by “enterprise”? An enterprise is:

• the acknowledged and legal way to have a personal adventure.
• A temporal union of people around an interest
• An interest group
• An institution: a big telecom is like a ministry, and a ministry like an enterprise.

There are many enterprises: working for your own or employed, with or without employees, with or without workmates, with or without leadership, with or without partners, etc.

Blogging in the enterprise is easy when you’re alone (e.g. freelance) or part of a network and with small decision-taking capacity. If you’re a big decision-taker in a big institution, blogging is more difficult.

The problem is that most GDP and employment is generated at big institutions. So, blogs and GDP and employment do not (so far) go hand in hand. And more, while freelances are 2.0 and explain how do they do things, and the others explain what they did achieve and their version is the number of the inflation rate, which is the number that counts.

Real value of blogs: do they affect the ROI? EBITDA? power quota? value of shares? brand? customer satisfaction? …really?

Enterprises need to improve performance. If blogs play this game, great. If not, forget about them.

The bigger the enterprise, the deafer it is to customer “noise”.

Alberto Ortiz de Zárate Tercero

So, what’s a blog?

• A tool
• A communication medium
• A lifestyle
• A participative social action
• A part of a biggest thing: the blogosphere
• A selling platform?
• An advertising platform?

A blog is a way to listen and talk with the network (not to the network)

The blog can be used to listen and know about your:

• Customer habits
• Campaigns
• Branding
• Reputation
• Notoriety
• Competence
• Ways to innovate and improve
• Authority
• Ways to listen inside the enterprise

The conversation is ubiquitous.

Once you’ve listened, now it’s time to speak and share: listen, reflect, link. Some uses:

• Viral campaings
• Microniches
• Public Relationships
• Communication medium
• Show authority
• Leverage notority
• Create communities
• Team building
• Innovate with the user
• …but not intended for selling

The keys to success… in a World that’s changed:

• Be connected
• Openness to the World
• Weave networks
• Become an attractive place
• Control is not relevant
• Having is not important, but linking

My reflections

I don’t think the size is that important in the reason behind having or not a blog (to impact the ROI, etc.), but:

• Their dependence on the customer’s opinion
• Their degree of competition within the sector
• Their dependence on innovation for survival

Two examples: IBM and Dell are increasingly becoming more 2.0. They are big, but depend on the customer, on innovation and the market is really competitive. On the other hand, big banks, big oil enterprises or the Administration, are almost monopolies (or oligopolies), do not depend on the customer and do not depend on innovation.

Antoni Gutierrez-Rubi adds to my arguments another reason: dependence on brand and reputation.

Genís Roca adds that this might be more a cultural issue (i.e. we are native digitals and think openness as a natural and a necessary thing) than a business valid argument. Maybe, if decision-takers happen to know and learn and perceive this cultural change and see how it really affects their firm, maybe then they’ll shift towards 2.0, but…

Round Table: Eager Citizens. Entrepreneurs.
Chairs: Oscar Espiritusanto

Lorena Fernández

In the “web 2.0 gold rush”, are we constantly looking for gold? And what happens when one finds gold in a bed? How many Youtube clones? How profitable those clones?

But… what’s profit? Money? Only an entrepreneur if wins money? What about the benefits of linkonomics (link and being linked)?

The engine of the Net is people, not money.

What’s an entrepreneur? Is an entrepreneur someone that starts up an enterprise… to be sold to Google?

The (typical) Entrepreneur — builds an enterprise for… — vs. the Social Entrepreneur — builds an enterprise with… — (Mak).

If people and data are the wealth of the network… why not be a social entrepreneur that builds an enterprise with these people?

Let’s not forget about Freeconomics: people won’t pay for what they can get for free. How to pay your bills?

• Ads
• Sponsorships
• Donations

Though it is true that a virtual entrepreneur has less costs: no physical headquarters, most software is free, a contributing community (e.g. translations), standards, etc.

Not the strongest survive, but the ones that better adapt to the changing situation (though the latter are afterwards bought by the former).

Edu William

How can we apply the Web 2.0 to tourism? How to customize at the individual level tourism services?

It should be possible to generate networks of tourists that can exchange experiences, impressions and information about their trips. But also networks between tour operators: not only demand will be generated as a network, but also supply will be generated in a distributed way, in a network.

Open tourism: collaboration between all stakeholders.

Ildefonso Mayorgas

The idea can be good, but most probably it is not original: it is the good entrepreneur that makes the idea really good and drives it towards success.

Flexibility and capacity of adaptation are key, more important that a mint business plan.

Round Table: Networked Citizens. Blogs, Where to?
Chairs: Pau Llop

Víctor Ruiz

Blogs come from the participative sites that flourished after the Slashdot experience, both technically and conceptually.

Blogs have been an evolution of forums, but only at the usability level, but the general idea has not really changed that much.

And like forums, they are of short reach. Only 6% of the population read political blogs… but we keep telling politicians that they have to be on the Net and have their own blog. Does this make any sense at all? When everyone has a blog (if that ever happens), will we at last make of them an influential tool?

Fernando Tricas

Some questions about the state of blogging

• Whose are my data?
• Who’s the master?
• What’s true?
• Near? Far?
• How do I see it? Where from?
• Who are you? Who am I?

Forecast

• Normalization of the blog phenomenon
• Tools will be improved: they are not that easy to use…

A challenge: threats to sites/blogs related with intellectual property rights, privacy, etc.

Jaime Estévez

There is an increasing trend in Internet users reducing their amount of time watching TV. Besides other browsing, they can now reach TV content on the Internet, especially videos.

Investment in Internet grows at a 50% rate, while in general broadcasting media grows below the inflation rate (which means that actually decreases). As an example, investment in blogs duplicated last year, investment in videos was multiplied by four, etc.

• El Patio de Atrás

Citizen journalism:

Blogs are the only way to avoid the (total) commercialization/commoditization of the Internet.

José Luis Prieto

Personal blogs (i.e. blogs about personal stuff) are majority. Politicized, reflection, journalist-like blogs are minority. Influence of the latter?

They might not be influent individually, but in aggregate terms, they at least generate some buzz and can raise awareness and generate some reactions… not on the citizenry at large, but on firms and lobbies that see their brands or interests menaced.

The upsetting answer to this has been legal threats that sometimes end well and sometimes don’t.

Round Table: Round Table: Journalism on the Net
Chairs: Julio Rodríguez de la Plata

Are we creating/entering the Global Village?

Fernando Jáuregui

(New) Social Networks challenge the traditional way people is informed. Journals (and media in general) have to shape their discourse to this new reality. Hence, digital journalism is not geek stuff, but a “legal revolution”, a habits revolution, etc. to cope with this new civilization. We have to “naturalize” the new information needs and the solutions to meet these needs.

Requisites for the mainstreaming of digital journalism:

• End of anonymity: opinion has to be signed by real people.
• Interactivity.
• End of piracy and non-attribution of content, from both sides: mainstream journals have to cite citizen journalists, and citizen journalists have to cite their mainstream sources.
• Not everything is information, not everything is news: impact, for the sake of it, is not good. And the way (real) information is published also matters.
• Ads are not confidential information: this is misleading the reader.

Blogs are journalism, but are not media. Media require some infrastructure behind, some resources. Media are professionals and earn their living this way, these two issues do make a difference.

Ignacio Escolar

It is an error not thinking of digital journalism as the journalism of the future… as it is an error not realizing that paper journalism is the journalism of the present.

Liability on the comments published in a digital journal is neither “letters to the director” not “something I’ve nothing to do with it”. We have to learn how to deal with these comments… especially when they’re anonymous.

The quest for economic sustainability determines some behaviors of some digital papers. And, somehow, the democratization of media makes them less profitable.

Competition in the digital arena is way bigger than competition in the paper arena: the digital reader can choose from within (literally) billions of websites. Paper journals do not face this landscape.

Manuel M. Almeida

There is a lot of people that want to turn communication into journalism in opposition to traditional or mainstream journalism (this could be called Communication 3.0). But communication is not necessarily journalism. We’re maybe talking about citizen communication, not citizen journalism.

Interaction between citizen communication and mainstream journalism is a must. Hence, it is somehow a necessary but sometimes absurd debate the fight between both positions, one against the other.

Round Table: Connected Citizens. Cyberactivism.
Chairs: Rosa Jiménez Cano

Alana Moceri, president Democrats Abroad Spain

First time that primary elections can be done on-line. This means increasing the number of countries where voting is possible from 34 up to 161.

Online, everyone can contribute: absolutely everyone can upload videos to YouTube, photos to Flickr or text to any blog. Pro: democratization. Con: loss of control over your campaing.

Fundrising is key and is a good proxy to test the health of a political campaign.

Obama’s discourse is really 2.0: you can, empowerment, engagement. MyBarackObama.com is a good example of it, where you can even earn points as a reward for your implication and helping recruit other people. This really builds up a formidable base of activists.

Marshall Ganz: It’s values, not only interests, what drives people to take part in civic movements.

Sebastián Lorenzo

Fundación Generación Libre: how voters connect to social networks in Argentina. Not centralized, not decentralized, not distributed, but complex networks. They best way to boost complex networks is to build software that enhances the connection between peripheral nodes to the central ones (leaders).

Cyberactivism: activities to help bridge the digital world with the off-line world, with impact in the “real” world.

Cybermilitant: someone commited in the long-run with “someting beyond” cyberactivism. We’ve yet to find out what this really means.

Noticias LA: a distributed network of volunteers, living in all coutries of Latin America and Spain, selecting local news and feeding them to the site, acting as a news agency 2.0.

César Calderón

Social mediators are no more the protagonists in the Administration-Citizenry interaction: it’s the citizen the one that has to lead the approach towards their Government.

We are used to long run political campaigns, this is why, how and what for political parties were created for. But now people gather around more ephemeral and ad hoc actions. And, indeed, the top-down way of designing engagement has given place to a more bottom-up way of participating. Horizontal replaces vertical.

Antoni Gutierrez-Rubi

Goals of activism: have to be possible to reach and well planned. Assessment is a must and often overridden because of the speed of times and lack of time to reflect.

Proposals: agitation is good, but also reflection. A choral voice (i.e. making the same proposal from different places and points of view, but the same one) might be desirable now and then. Continuity and orientation of the discourse would help in the long-run engagement of our target.

Arguments: less opinion, more arguments. Ideas are good as long as they are “well packed” and backed with arguments.

Leadership: hyperleadership is good to avoid fragmentation, but has to leave room for shared leadership. Of course, leadership to achieve changes and goals. The ROI on leadership has to be positive and as big as possible. What matters is not getting there alone and early, but with everyone and on time (León Felipe).

Activists: they have to feel comfortable working without parties and organizations. But linked to the causes by following some basic rules. ARTivists: someone to be taken into account to help in the “packaging” of our ideas and arguments.

Plurality: are we in a networked world without boundaries… or sheltered in our trenches? Open minds.

Influences: credible, proximate, creating opinion. We have to impact “reality 1.0″, not think from and for the minority.

Round Table: mGovernment. The Mobile Phone and its integration in e-Government
Chairs: Nacho Campos

What is a mobile phone

• Mobile
• A device you use every day
• 110% of penetration
• Many features

Tomy Ahonen: the mobile phone is the 7th medium:

• Personal
• Always on
• Always with us
• Integrated paying method
• Immediate tool

mGovernment: how the Administration adapts itself to the nomadic style of the citizen (The Economist)

Goal: from m-murmur to m-chat to m-conversation (unidirectional, bidirectional, multidirectional).

Barriers:

• Lack of leadership, political and technical
• Infrastructures
• Resistance to change of public servants
• Telecommunication Operators
• Lack of communication plans
• Digital Divide

Mario Moreno Sánchez: Mobile Marketing expert

The advertising market is absolutely saturated: the customer can no more get a bigger amount of ads.

The key of m-development is multistakeholder partnerships between the Administration, Banking and Telecoms. An appropriate legal framework is a must.

MMS is likely to be the next multimedia revolution… maybe more than SMS, because, among other things, it’s really multimedia.

Virginia Moreno: CIO Leganés City Council.

Why mobile communication between the Administration and the citizen?>/p>

• Highest penetration
• New communication channel with the citizen
• Integrated with other channels
• Secure systems

Almudena de la Fuente: Vodafone Government and Public Services Director

How do you sign? With a pen or with a mobile phone?

Multistakeholder partnership: service provider, the Administration, the certifier of the digital signature.

Very simple for the user: just change the SIM (keeping the telephone number) and pay (!) the registration to the service.

Víctor Solla: CIO Avilés City Council

First things first: organizational change before the application of new communication channels.

Technically, it’s everything already done: penetration is (almost) total in the user’s part, and knowledge/data digital management in the Administration part is (or should be) already a reality. It’s “just” a matter of making it happen.

Thus, sometimes the only problem is cost, but not developing cost, but the cost of leadership and organizational change.

The Administration should watch over the existence of an appropriate connectivity so its services can be properly reached. Otherwise, it should foster the establishment of the needed infrastructures, supplied directly or through partnerships with the private sector.

Case Study: Gijón. The Connected City
Chairs: Chiqui de la Fuente

José M. Pérez

The political role is fundamental in the process of change.

Active listening is crucial, and it’s very important to avoid the “Big Brother” paranoia in order to let information flow free. Only with absolute openness can the Administration make its information interact with the citizen’s. Interconnection requires openness and access to private information — not the same thing as surveillance. This can be made possible by making public the “what” but anonymizing the “by whom”.

Interesting experience: digital literacy courses which enrollment had to be done through the Internet. Contradictory? No: there were computers and connectivity in households, but only used by kids. Thus, by making on-line enrollment compulsory parents (and grandparents) had to ask their sons (or grandsons) for help. A complicity was sowed.

Benefits and empowerment are the keys to engage the citizenry in the e-Administration.

The city council has created and ID Citizen Card — an e-ID Card — that can be operated in “ATM” run by the city council that, instead of producing money, they run administrative tasks/services. 24h a day, 365 days a year. Without queues. Absolute trust (e.g. no credit card numbers and passwords submitted on a “suspicious” website).

Think of the e-Administration as the “permanent beta” concept: constant innovation, thinking ahead, vision of future, etc.

The Administration cannot wait the demand to grow and reach a critical threshold before setting up the service that will fulfill this demand: it is the Administration’s commitment to generate demand through the creation of several services ahead of the citizenry’s will/needs.

The Web 1.0 is not exhausted: there’s still path to run in the field of Web 1.0 services that can be useful to citizens and/or that citizens are demanding.

Round Table: Innovation and Change. Is it possible to make the citizen’s life easier?
Chairs: Jose Antonio Donaire

Xavier Llinares Sala

Users and managers don’t usually think equally concerning the design, use and satisfaction of a specific service.

To make ends meet, some changes have to take place:

• There are too many public servants… in exchange of better, up-to-date, adding-value ones.
• Public servants that add value have to be rewarded.
• Barriers have to be removed.
• More management, less bureaucracy.
• Politics have to be de-professionalized and put, instead, professionals. Politics not as a career, but as a place for real experts to bring in ideas.
• The shift from the private sector to the public sector is good because it adds value. The contrary is not.

The long tail in politics is narrowing: open lists in elections.

Added value, governance (not administration), citizen-oriented, more choice, more transparency, more and cheaper services, proactivity, transformation, connectivity…

Carlos Guadián Orta

Innovation has to be based on citizens’ needs. On one hand, the Administration has to help the citizen. On the other hand, it has to aim towards active listening.

If you build it, they will not come: it’s the Administration the one that has to approach the citizen, listen and know what are they talking about.

Roc Fages

Nowadays there’s a “wall” that does not allow the entrance of some social software (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) in their mainstream and daily life.

We can imagine some “uchronies” where some social software adoption takes place in the Administration, such as the “Funciotwit“, twitter for public servants, or “GencatGoogCal“, shared Google Calendars among the Government and the citizens, or “AdmiDopplr”, where public servants and/or citizens can (professionally) share their trips and geolocalize their actions, or the “Admibook”, the Facebook of the Administration where all public services are gathered.

For these initiatives to really work:

• Act according to the citizenry needs.
• Individual effort in the network is beneficial if it reports collective benefits.
• The Administration has to think from the costumer’s point of view, not as a service provider: citizens are customers and this is how they think and behave.
• Combine off-line and on-line.
• Perform actions to dynamize the network.
• Let’s forget about the unified Administration and let’s work together with the private sector.
• Open environments have to be somehow secured (privacy, security, moderation, etc.) by the Public Sector.

Comments

Is it technology, or it’s “just” knowledge management? (Ildefonso Mayorgas). Roc Fages: there sometimes already is knowledge management, but we don’t get the most of it because of lack of technology and innovation.

Is it technology or is it human resources? Carlos Guadián answers: it’s both, it’s a virtuous/vicious circle.

The only problem is the Administration? Carlos Guadián: A proximity policy can only work with an engagement will.

Opening Session (part II)

Chairs Carmen Sánchez-Carazo

Intelligent Cities
José Gumersindo García

ICTs will improve the image that public administrations have before the citizenry: proximity, transparency, etc.

e-Administration and Modernization go hand in hand and they are co-requisites for the development of both.

The Public Sector does have to bet on digital literacy training for their public servants. But not only their employees, but also firms. With this digital literacy many projects can take place: instant messaging for better communication, datasharing through wireless networks, e-commerce, etc.

Free software is very important for the Public Sector, and again, also for enterprises.

Some reflections:

• To be connected does not mean appropriate use of the Internet
• To be in the Net does not mean being in the Net.
• Technological quality does not guarantee quality in Politics

Plan Avanza
David Cierco Jiménez de Parga

Video in Spanish about the Plan Avanza, the Spanish Government plan to foster the Information Society:

The Plan Avanza is a bottom-up aimed plan, where it pursues empowering citizenship initiatives, the main asset being sharing: experiences, resources, knowledge, etc.

Thus, many nonprofits are being the actual leaders of many projects.

Comments

For an e-Administration to be really “2.0″ in the field of development cooperation, the output of the development cooperation founds should be open: open contents, open educational resources, free software… Once payed with public money, all output should be made freely available to the society at large.

There’s an agreement that there’s an urgent need for training:

• training on use, to learn how to get the most benefit from digital technologies, specially to the citizenry at large
• training on e-awareness, to learn how to change our functioning paradigms and models (and business models), specially to decision-takers and policy-makers

Opening Session (part I)

Chairs Carmen Sánchez-Carazo

Digital Citizens vs. Analogue Institutions
Ismael Peña-López

These are the materials I’m using at the iCities: Primeras Jornadas sobre Blogs, e-Government y Participación Digital [First Conference on Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation], for the opening speech, in which I take part on Friday 9th May 2008.

Slides:

Video

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Ricard Ruiz de Querol deserves my sincerest gratitude for his always challenging insights about the Information Society. Jaume Moregó also pushed me to a project that payed back with good reflections. A good buch of this conference was inspired by them both, thank you. And also thanks to Julio Meneses for his lightning fast and valuable help with some graphic materials.

These are some of the questions behind iCities: Primeras Jornadas sobre Blogs, e-Government y Participación Digital [First Conference on Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation]. Preparing the opening speech, which I impart on Friday 9th May 2008, I found some interesting things.

Even if data have to be taken with maximum care and minimum work was performed on the statistical apparatus, it does seem that there is a relationship between the amount of existing liberties in one country and its degree of development of the Information Society. Data come from the Freedom Aggregate Scores published at the Freedom in the World 2007, and the Networked Readiness Index published at the Global Information Technology Report 2007-2008: Fostering Innovation through Networked Readiness.

First chart compares the Networked Readiness Index (Y) with the Civil Liberties score (X). We can see that, beyond a threshold (here arbitrary set at the 50% of the total score), there is a relationship where the more rights, the more developed an Information Society is. Or the contrary: as no causality has been analyzed, we can also state that the more digitally advanced a society is, the freer. Anyhow, these are two variables that do go hand in hand.

Civil Liberties and development of the Information Society
[click to enlarge]

But the next chart is even more interesting. This second chart compares the Networked Readiness Index (Y) with the Political Rights score (X) — again split in two at the 50% of the total score (democratic vs. not democratic). First thing we can see is that the relationship tightens: political freedom seems to be really important for e-readiness, for the development of the Information Society. Surprising? Not really: once the main infrastructures are set, e-Readiness strongly depends, for it to increase, on market liberalization, e-Government, content, communication channels, users… If you want these variables to increase, it looks plausible that freedom and participation is a must.

Political Rights and development of the Information Society
[click to enlarge]

But we have added, as the buble size, the Gross Domestic Product (the bigger the bubble, the bigger the country’s GDP). This gives us, at least, two more hints:

• First one: beyond a threshold, you’re e-readiness won’t grow despite the power of your economy. The two big pink bubbles on the left are China (far left) and Russia. Their GDP is quite big (let’s not forget that there are only +120 countries plotted in this chart: most of the remaining +100 countries/territories just “don’t count” as per e-readiness matters because they are too poor to). But both Russia and China seem to have topped a crystal ceiling on e-Readiness development. Could it be because of the evident lack of liberties in these countries?
• Second one: in the Information Society, the international environment matters. Malaysia and Singapore are the two pink dots on the upper part of the chart, almost in the horizontal middle. The first thing to say is that, even if they are but democratic, they are nor the typical corrupted and/or tyrannic system. On the other hand, they are surrounded by ICT early adopters, which is something Helen V. Milner has already pointed as being very important to set an Information Society agenda in her work The Global Spread of the Internet: The Role of International Diffusion Pressures in Technology Adoption. Nevertheless, these are two interesting exceptions that surely need deeper analysis.

Summing up

• Are blogs a good measure of (a) the freedom in a country and (b) the degree of development of a country’s Information Society?. Maybe. What seems clear — though more and better analysis should be performed — is that these are social variables that go together.
• Are non-democratic regimes to survive the Information Society? Who knows. But, again, it seems clear that there is a trade off between authoritarianism and digital development. The rulers — and their citizenry — will perhaps have to choose between democracy and digital development or keeping the power. But power cannot be kept at all costs and against all odds. How much will the e-excluded tolerate losing the digital train towards development?