Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

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c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s
As a footnote here (oh good, a footnote! my Turnitin score just went up!), an
interesting irony about the use of Turnitin occurred recently in a law suit in which a
number of students sued the iParadigms corporation because their papers were being
folded into the Turnitin database without explicit consent or compensation. The
irony is that the students lost that case. Student term papers fed into the program are
automatically appropriated and become the “intellectual property” of the corporation.
Thus, the company that seeks to protect scholars from theft has become the
spitting image of educational larceny! 4
I do not want to place too great an emphasis upon Turnitin itself. It is just one
among many institutions embodied in software and on the Internet nowadays that
offer perverse varieties of civic education. Students are expected to internalize habits
of mind that involve an obsession with avoiding borrowing. They learn excessive
caution that borders on dread. This is horrible training for any society that assumes
free inquiry, freedom of thought, and free democratic citizenship as bases of political
life. Contrary to best impulses of young people, any people for that matter, what
is emphasized is anxiety, compliance and passivity. In effect, students are taught to
fear the digital commons. They learn that the world of knowledge and invention is
not really your place, but a space governed by powerful forces and that, if you cross
the line, you will be severely punished. Unless this belief is challenged and replaced
with better practices, institutions and conditions online, it is an understanding that
young people will carry with them about the real relationship between information
and public life.
My second illustration of contemporary practices and institutions that include
the digital realm is a positive one. It involves a recent experiment in global citizenship
using the resources of the World Wide Web to coordinate deliberation, discussion,
debate, and voting on a range of issues that are among the most important
ones facing humanity today.
Beginning in 2008 and continuing through September 2009, a group of political
activists based in Copenhagen organized an event called “Word Wide Views on
Global Warming” 5 . The goal was to assemble groups of ordinary people in different
countries around the globe who would meet on one particular day to discuss and
4. A good overview of the Turnitin case can be found in Michael G. Bennett, “The Edge of Ethics in
iParadigms”.
5. http://www.wwviews.org.
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