Ivan Pechischev

Born in Perm. Graduated from the Faculty of Philology of the Perm State National Research University, Department of Journalism, in 2004. Ph.D., member of the Russian Union of Journalists, Associate Professor of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications. Coordinator of «Greenhouse of social technologies» in Perm. Specialist in media journalism, new media, and educational technologies.

Quotes

• The greatest risk in the world of the future is the privacy loss.
• The monopoly on knowledge and technology is over.
• You need to be a little fascinated by technologies, put yourself through them. And this vaccine will help to resist their power.
• Eventually we shall completely dissolve in the information world.
• My grandfather is a school teacher, my mother is a teacher, my aunt is now working as a headteacher at school. So, I'm a third generation teacher.

My story

When I enrolled in the Faculty of Philology, I was interested in writing studies. In my second year, the Internet appeared at the university. I was fascinated by technologies and dived into them headlong: it seemed that they could change everything and influence everything. Nowadays I understand that content is essential first and foremost, and technology is just a tool.

I have always been interested in civic initiatives. In youth, it morphed into naive stories like a procession in white kaffiyehs against the American invasion of Iraq or participation in protests of anarcho-ecologists. I can even remember myself in a gas mask with the slogan «The warrior of capitalism stifles us at the cradle of globalism» or something like that. Gradually, my interest became more constructive, and once, in 2014, I learned that there was a vacant coordinator position in the Greenhouse of Social Technologies. I remember, there was a Skype call, I was talking on the phone in some yard because I did not have time to get home. In general, I passed the interview for the position sitting on the playground.

My aim in the Greenhouse is to help participants of social projects, share with them new knowledge and information about technologies. We speak about a variety of topics: how to create a website or a public for NPOs, how to work with volunteers, how to fundraise and much more. I have already met with a lot of civil society activists and non-profit organizations in Perm and to be honest, I like such activity in the city. I studied the image of Perm from the press of the 2000s, and thereat journalists wrote about the city as one of the liberal capitals of Russia. Here is a particular mood of people, which one can quickly feel. It seems to me that Perm has a kind of mental connection with another liberal city of Russia — St. Petersburg. This was evident during the «cultural revolution»; we notice this now when we organize our projects. In 2015, we conducted the hackathon «What Perm Wants,» where more than 25 projects took part. Perm stood out, it was a record of the Greenhouses for Russia in the whole. In general, the «cultural revolution» of the mid-2010s should not be underestimated: Perm saw that it might be interesting here too.

For people far from the media, this environment can turn out to be completely acidic. For those not understanding its features, the media can cause serious problems, including depression and neurosis. This definitely can be the other way around, if we learn how to use the advantages the media sphere gives us. But the most basic is not even critical thinking, digital and media literacy, but awareness. Any Internet user should have clear, transparent answers to the questions: what am I doing now, why do I watch or read this, why do I like it? You need your own filters: without them, you do not use the Internet, but the Internet decides everything for you.