Cybersalon

Cybersalon is the trading name of Digital Liberties Limited for its UK-based collective and think-tank activities focusing on the process and effect of the digital revolution in industry, society and its emerging digital cultures. Its members and audiences include entrepreneurs, technologists, hackers, activists, government officials, business and community leaders, academics, artists, creatives, and designers. Originally founded in 1997, from 1999 to 2003 Cybersalon ran monthly events at the Institute of Contemporary Art. From 2003 to 2006 Cybersalon was housed at the Dana Centre at the British Science Museum. Cybersalon re-launched in 2013 at the Arts Catalyst in London, and was based at the DigitasLBi agency in Brick Lane, Shoreditch, in the heart of London’s Tech City before moving into its current home at NewSpeak House, Shoreditch. The size of the contributing, senior membership of Cybersalon varies year to year from a core team of a dozen to a management and logistics group of more than twenty. Cybersalon audience membership numbers in the hundreds. In addition to monthly meetings, Cybersalon curates real and virtual spaces for people involved in digital creativity to participate and feedback their knowledge, curiosity, and concern to the wider community through the running of workshops, presentations and special projects in research and education. The recent HyperHabitat series of events, projects, and presentations investigated the changing nature of our living environments. Besides other activities, the series included Cybersalon events, participation in the London Hackney Council’s “Hack-ney-thon: 24 Hours to Hack for Hackney”, and a study of data gathering for the retail industry which in turn led to presentations and workshops at the Hybrid Cities conference in Athens, Greece. In recent years Cybersalon has additionally contributed a Digital Citizenship Bill of Rights for debate in the British Parliament, presented member book launches on workplace surveillance and the results of research into the political use of social media.