ACTIS 2015 - Asian Conference on Technology, Information & Society 2015

Power as a commodity has challenged the minds of social scientists and philosophers while its exercise has always fascinated historians. From classical thinkers’ works such as Aristotle’s Politka or Machiavelli’s Il Principe through modern figures who manipulate power in the media, like Silvio Berlusconi or Rupert Murdoch, to the vast networks that support major heads of state, power has been a necessity to some or like an aphrodisiac to others. The dynamics of power and its associations with wealth and status now shape the contemporary world more visibly than ever. It is a research challenge to all fields in the academy to offer some explanation of its magnetism and its mechanisms.
The era of Big Data has created great change and opportunity. It has allowed us to make more and more information accessible, and to catalogue and archive, as well as communicate more freely. However, the era of Big Data has ushered in an era of Big Brother. New technologies have facilitated such resistance movements as those in Hong Kong, but have also empowered governments to unparalleled levels of surveillance and breaches of privacy. In the context of this conference, the ambiguous concept of power will encourage reflections on questions of rights, responsibilities, and trust, as well as hegemony, ownership, and resistance; control, transparency and censorship. Similarly we expect to see explorations of the relationships of power between individuals, corporations and governments, as issues of privacy, surveillance, and freedom of information test these.
As a conference theme, power in its many aspects is a hub concept that researchers, analysts, and practitioners alike can reflect on and speak about both in the abstract and from experience. Power and its perception can therefore be an invaluable concept in the exploration of the globalization of corporations, and we expect this theme to excite a number of stimulating research paths.