W5uper.net was an international artist group based in Austria that focused on artistic research at the intersection of media, arts, technology, and society. The group was established in 2003 by Markus Hafner, Ile Cvetkoski, Matthias Tarasiewicz, Karina Lackner, and Michal Wlodkowski and was responsible for developing the Coded Cultures festival series, as well as diverse projects and exhibitions on the intersection of arts and technology.
WThe Algorithmic Justice League (AJL) is a digital advocacy organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded by computer scientist Joy Buolamwini in 2016, AJL aims to raise awareness of the social implications of artificial intelligence through art and research. It was featured in the 2020 documentary Coded Bias.
WAlphagov was the project name of the experimental prototype website built by the Government Digital Service and launched on 11 May 2011 by the UK Cabinet Office that was open for public comment for two months in order to judge the feasibility of a single domain for British Government web services.
WArs Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in the city of Linz. Ars Electronica's activities focus on the interlinkages between art, technology and society. It runs an annual festival, and manages a multidisciplinary media arts R&D facility known as the Futurelab. It also confers the Prix Ars Electronica awards.
WChange.org is a petition website operated by San Francisco-based Change.org, which has over 400 million users and offers the public the ability to promote the petitions they care about to potential signers.
WCode for America is a non-partisan, non-political 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2009 to address the widening gap between the public and private sectors in their effective use of technology and design. According to its website, the organization works to improve government services for all, starting with those who need them most. The organization began by enlisting technology and design professionals to work with city governments in the United States in order to build open-source applications and promote openness, participation, and efficiency in government, and now works with state, county, and federal government to spread the principles and practices of "delivery-driven government." It has grown into a cross-sector network of public sector change agents and a platform for "civic hacking". Code for America is also a member of the international civic technology organizations included in the Code for All organization.
WCollaborative e-democracy is a democratic conception that combines key features of direct democracy, representative democracy, and e-democracy. The concept was first published at two international academic conferences in 2009.
WCritical Art Ensemble (CAE) is a collective of five tactical media practitioners of various specializations including computer graphics and web design, film/video, photography, text art, book art, and performance. For CAE, tactical media is situational, ephemeral, and self-terminating. It encourages the use of any media that will engage a particular socio-political context in order to create molecular interventions and semiotic shocks that collectively could diminish the rising intensity of authoritarian culture.
WDigitale Gesellschaft is a German registered association founded in 2010, that is committed to civil rights and consumer protection in terms of internet policy.
WRicardo Dominguez is an American artist and associate professor of visual arts at UC San Diego. He has been the subject of controversy over a number of acts of electronic civil disobedience on his own and with the Electronic Disturbance Theater, which he co-founded.
WE-democracy, also known as digital democracy or Internet democracy, is the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in political and governance processes. The term is believed to have been coined by digital activist Steven Clift. E-democracy incorporates 21st-century information and communications technology to promote democracy; such technologies include civic technology and government technology. It is a form of government in which all adult citizens are presumed to be eligible to participate equally in the proposal, development and creation of laws.
WElectronic Frontier Finland (Effi) is a Finnish on-line civil rights organization founded in 2001 by Herkko Hietanen, Ville Oksanen and Mikko Välimäki. It had about 1 600 members at the end of 2014. While not formally affiliated with the U.S.-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, the two organizations share many of their goals. Effi is a member of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign and a founding member of European Digital Rights (EDRi).
WThe European Pirates (PIRATES) or European Pirate Party (PPEU) is an association of parties aspiring to be recognised as a European political party by the European Union. It was founded on 21 March 2014 at the European Parliament in Brussels in the context of a conference on "European Internet Governance and Beyond", and consists of pirate parties of European countries. The parties cooperate to run a joint campaign for the 2014 European Parliament elections.
WTo be extremely online means to be closely engaged with Internet culture. People said to be extremely online often believe that online posts are very important. Events and phenomena can themselves be extremely online; while often used as a descriptive term, the phenomenon of extreme onlineness has been described as "both a reformation of the delivery of ideas – shared through words and videos and memes and GIFs and copypasta – and the ideas themselves". It has been said that "'online' can be thought of as a way of doing things, not the place they are done".
WA flash mob is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform for a brief time, then quickly disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and artistic expression. Flash mobs may be organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails.
WJane E. Fountain is an American political scientist and technology theorist. She is Distinguished University Professor of political science and public policy, the founder and director of the National Center for Digital Government at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and formerly faculty at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She is known for her work on institutional change and on the use of technology in governance.
WGetUp! is an independent, progressive Australian political activist group. It was launched in August 2005 to encourage Internet activism in Australia, though it has increasingly engaged in offline community organising.
WThe Global Network Initiative (GNI) is a non-governmental organization with the dual goals of preventing Internet censorship by authoritarian governments and protecting the Internet privacy rights of individuals. It is sponsored by a coalition of multinational corporations, non-profit organizations, and universities.
WThe Good Roads Movement occurred in the United States between the late 1870s and the 1920s. Advocates for improved roads turned local agitation into a national political movement. It started as a coalition between farmers’ organizations groups and bicyclists’ organizations, such as the League of American Wheelmen. The goal was state and federal spending to improve rural roads. By 1910, automobile lobbies such as the American Automobile Association joined the campaign, coordinated by the National Good Roads Association.
WAl Gore is a former US Senator who served as the Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. In the 1980s and 1990s, he promoted legislation that funded an expansion of the ARPANET, allowing greater public access, and helping to develop the Internet.
WThe Grey Album is a mashup album by Danger Mouse, released in 2004. It mixes an a cappella version of rapper Jay-Z's The Black Album with samples from the Beatles' self-titled ninth album, commonly known as "The White Album". The Grey Album gained notoriety when EMI attempted to halt its distribution despite approval of the project from Jay-Z and the two surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
WIn Internet activism, hacktivism, or hactivism, is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. With roots in hacker culture and hacker ethics, its ends are often related to free speech, human rights, or freedom of information movements.
WThe Internet Party was a registered political party in New Zealand that promoted Internet freedom and privacy. The party was founded in January 2014 with the financial support and promotion of internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, and was first led by former Alliance MP Laila Harré, then by citizen journalist Suzie Dawson.
WThe Internet Party is a political party founded in November 22, 2009 in Spain that tries to develop a liquid democracy system within the current legal system. The Internet Party has no ideology. They support an open list system where the elected members act representing the decisions taken by citizens in the Internet platform.
WThe IT-Political Association is a Danish non-profit NGO, which works to collect information on IT and convey this to politicians and the society to get the best possible grounds for legislation. The association is independent of political parties and communicates with politicians from all political parties. Membership is open to anyone.
Wmonochrom is an international art-technology-philosophy group, publishing house and film production company. monochrom was founded in 1993, and defines itself as "an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science and political activism". Its main office is located at Museumsquartier/Vienna.
WMove Your Domain Day is an annual observance encouraging owners of domain names to transfer their domain registration away from registrars that supported the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). It was first held on 29 December 2011, the idea coming from a post on Reddit as a protest against prominent registrar GoDaddy's support for SOPA. In 2012, rival registrar Namecheap began an initiative to make Move Your Domain Day an annual event. Subsequent events were held on 22 January 2013, 5 February 2014, and 27 January 2015. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reddit, and domain registrars Name.com and Hover have also participated. Namecheap has defined the initiative as "an annual protest and a commemoration of sorts that will continue to shine a light on the issue of a free and open internet."
WmySociety is a UK-based registered charity, previously named UK Citizens Online Democracy. It began as a UK-focused organisation with the aim of making online democracy tools for UK citizens. However, those tools were open source, so that the code could be – and soon was – redeployed in other countries.
WThe Open Rights Group (ORG) is a UK-based organisation that works to preserve digital rights and freedoms by campaigning on digital rights issues and by fostering a community of grassroots activists. It campaigns on numerous issues including mass surveillance, internet filtering and censorship, and intellectual property rights.
WThe Open Technology Fund (OTF) is an American nonprofit corporation that aims to support global Internet freedom technologies. Its mission is to "support open technologies and communities that increase free expression, circumvent censorship, and obstruct repressive surveillance as a way to promote human rights and open societies." As of November 2019, the Open Technology Fund became an independent nonprofit corporation and a grantee of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Until its formation as an independent entity, it had operated as a program of Radio Free Asia.
WThe Participatory Politics Foundation (PPF) is a United States non-profit organization which jointly operates the OpenCongress.org website. Intended to connect citizens to lawmakers to increase public participation with the government, the non-partisan foundation hopes to modernize the political system through technological advancements to increase civic engagement in government. The non-profit opened in February 2007 and operates OpenCongress together with the Sunlight Foundation.
WNathaniel Goss Pearlman is an American political technology and information graphics entrepreneur aligned with the Democratic Party. In 1997, he founded NGP Software, Inc., a company which provides political software to a majority of federal and state level Democrats including most Democratic candidates for President in 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016. He was chief technology officer for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign and an early practitioner in the area of computers and politics. In 2010, NGP Software merged with the Voter Activation Network to become NGP VAN. Pearlman subsequently founded companies in the information graphics and data visualization space, Timeplots and Graphicacy. He now hosts a podcast called The Great Battlefield about progressive political entrepreneurs and the resistance to Trump.
WThe Pirate Party UK was a political party in the United Kingdom. The Pirate Party's core policies were to bring about reform to copyright and patent laws, support privacy, reduce surveillance from government and businesses, and support freedom of speech and freedom of expression.
WOn January 18, 2012, a series of coordinated protests occurred against two proposed laws in the United States Congress—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). These followed smaller protests in late 2011. Protests were based on concerns that the bills, intended to provide more robust responses to copyright infringement arising outside the United States, contained measures that could possibly infringe online freedom of speech, websites, and Internet communities. Protesters also argued that there were insufficient safeguards in place to protect sites based upon user-generated content.
WPublic Netbase was a cultural media initiative, open access internet platform, and advocate for the development of electronic art. The project increasingly came into conflict with the Austrian political establishment during the 1990s. It received awards and recognition by UNESCO.
WPutt's Law and the Successful Technocrat is a book, credited to the pseudonym Archibald Putt, published in 1981. An updated edition, subtitled How to Win in the Information Age, was published by Wiley-IEEE Press in 2006. The book is based upon a series of articles published in Research/Development Magazine in 1976 and 1977.
WThe regulation of genetic engineering varies widely by country. Countries such as the United States, Canada, Lebanon and Egypt use substantial equivalence as the starting point when assessing safety, while many countries such as those in the European Union, Brazil and China authorize GMO cultivation on a case-by-case basis. Many countries allow the import of GM food with authorization, but either do not allow its cultivation or have provisions for cultivation, but no GM products are yet produced. Most countries that do not allow for GMO cultivation do permit research. Most (85%) of the world's GMO crops are grown in the Americas. One of the key issues concerning regulators is whether GM products should be labeled. Labeling of GMO products in the marketplace is required in 64 countries. Labeling can be mandatory up to a threshold GM content level or voluntary. A study investigating voluntary labeling in South Africa found that 31% of products labeled as GMO-free had a GM content above 1.0%. In Canada and the USA labeling of GM food is voluntary, while in Europe all food or feed which contains greater than 0.9% of approved GMOs must be labelled.
WThe Right2Know Campaign is a South African non-profit advocacy organisation established in 2010 to reduce state secrecy in the drafting of laws, increase access to information, and protect freedom of expression especially on the internet. As part of this, the campaign monitors and challenges potential legislation that it believes would infringe on personal liberties and transparent government. It is the first such organisation of its kind in post-Apartheid South Africa.
WSpiked is a British Internet magazine focusing on politics, culture and society. The magazine was founded in 2000 with the same editor and many of the same contributors as Living Marxism, which had closed in 2000 after losing a case for libel brought by ITN.
WSteal This Film is a film series documenting the movement against intellectual property directed by Jamie King, produced by The League of Noble Peers and released via the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol.
WStop Tony Meow is a browser extension which replaces photos of former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott with images of cats and kittens on websites. Initially created for Google Chrome, the extension was expanded to Safari and Firefox later in 2014. The extension was created by developers and designers Dan Nolan, Ben Taylor and Matt Kelsh.
WSunshine Review was an American nonprofit organization that advocated for increased government transparency.
WTranshumanist politics constitutes a group of political ideologies that generally express the belief in improving human individuals through science and technology.
Wtransmediale is an annual festival for art and digital culture in Berlin, usually held over five days at the end of January and the beginning of February. The 2017 edition marked its 30-year anniversary.
WUnity08 was an American political reform movement that sought to offer all voters an opportunity to directly engage in politics by ranking the most crucial issues facing the country, discussing them with the candidates and engaging in an online, secure vote to nominate a bipartisan alternative to the Democratic Party and Republican Party presidential tickets for the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Founded in 2006, the group gained attention from various media outlets, with Newsweek's Jonathan Alter dubbing the group's efforts a kind of open source politics.
WVote Compass is an interactive, online voting advice application developed by political scientists and run during election campaigns. It surveys users about their political views and, based on their responses, calculates the individual alignment of each user with the parties or candidates running in a given election contest.
WWorld-Information Institute (WII) is an independent cultural institution located in Vienna, Austria linking research and public discourse in the realms of innovation, digital culture technologies, and society. Its vast documentation and processing of digital media technologies sheds light on the future perspectives of global developments and involves complex and heterogeneous information resources.