For understanding life with the internet.
Jak k cílům ii?
Think
tank
What is the ii?
The Internet institute is here for anything where the internet and our society intersect. It is an independent and stable umbrella institution serving as a platform to develop proactive relations between academic sphere, private sphere and government bodies. It serves as an accelerator for research, relevant debates and effective progress in questions concerning digital initiatives in Czech digital agenda and helps to set up a progressive way of internet governance to ensure a sustainable national development in the future within the european environment.
At the same time it is very important for the institute to establish a large pool of resources for education and research and make it available not only for aforementioned institutions, but also for the public. One of our goals is also to raise awareness about this field.
Why is ii needed?
We live in an age of information. Our worlds are interconnected and our everyday lives are saturated with technology. Therefore it is vital for our future to understand what influence they and the internet have on us, on our thinking, our behaviour and our societies.
These changes are happening in every aspect and every field in our lives. In order to spot, describe and possibly regulate these we need multi-disciplinary cooperation. Because of the extremely dynamic environment they are emerging from we need to approach these with granular precision and analytical eye on one hand and philosophical and open mind on the other.
Longterm observations, including independent research and mappings like AMO Digital new deal report proved and showed evidence of existing need for inter-disciplinary cooperation and cooperation between all bodies that are implementing these changes hands-on.
What more, fragmented political space in Czech republic is naturally complicating all of these processes. That is why we aim to be a non-partial stable institution setting and following a longterm strategy to develop digital skills and literacy which are becoming critical not only for a sustainable labour market but also for the future of our national identity and civil society as a whole.
Our aims
We want to give public the chance to familiarise themselves with the issues of digital agenda and life with the internet.
We want to conduct high quality research based on real data and introduce and support evidence based policy making.
We want to connect private, academic and public sphere, governmental and non-governmental organisations in order to support possible cooperation, knowledge transfer and definition of problems we are facing to facilitate relevant debates with graspable results we can further research and elaborate on.
We want to establish a pool of resources not only for our research, but available to use for anyone interested in this agenda and to make general education in this area possible (data bank, online and offline resources, international cooperation between similar institutions and more.)
We want to demystify the impact internet has on our lives and raise awareness about the phenomena it brings.
How do we want to achieve our vision?
Our aims are ambitious, but we believe that connecting our will with the cooperation with our partners it is possible to make them a reality.
Since our goals are complex, connected, but still very broad, there are three pillars planned in our internet institute:
Think
tank
This pillar symbolises a platform for regular debates and our effort to ensure a relevant follow up on their outcomes available to all stakeholders.
We will map current challenges, future threats and opportunities within the digital agenda and support researchers in these fields, maximising the impact of their work in practical application.
We intend to launch a fellowship program as soon as possible and begin our own original research helping us towards our goals and dealing with what is needed in Czech republic.
Knowledge
tank
The pillar of knowledge.
Here we want to support knowledge sharing by experts, researchers and people from diverse fields not only between themselves but also externally, to the public.
This pillar will invest its effort into raising awareness amongst the general public, but also actively educating those interested.
In cooperation with our think tank we are going to organise lectures, talks and cooperate with already existing initiatives and educating the public, with emphasis on students and pupils in these issues.
Our aspiration is also to actively support students, who would like to study within any connected fields abroad and enable them to do so (financially and mentoring-wise as this chance is lacking completely in CZE).
Fact
tank
One of our biggest goals is to give everyone in need of or just interested in resources about these phenomena resources they can work with.
We are seeing a metaphorical wall between studies of computer science and social science and we think this pillar is essential in beginning to successfully tearing it down.
We want to found a library with up to date academic articles, books and journals and we will set up a data bank gathering data and encouraging data donations from our partners. We also plan to map the public opinion regularly to have a possible base for future benchmarking.
It would be our pleasure to read what's on your mind on cesky@internetovyinstitut.cz
On behalf of the ii team, Tereza Bartoníčková.