Class Acts

This week, I will be teaching a Master’s level course in “Human Rights and Information Technology” at the University of Siena.  The first challenge is of course determining the level of technical understanding of the students.  Given the number of internet cafes that dot Florence, largely populated by student-aged population, and reflecting the increasingly multi-cultural nature of the city, I am optimistic.  My experience in traveling back and forth to Italy is that the rate of diffusion of technology from the US to Italy has been steadily increasing over the last ten years.  The extent to which they use and are fluent in social networking tech–ubiquitious in the form of LinkedIn, Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook, will be the most critical item.