Berkman Center at Harvard Law School is hosting a conference called Internet + Society 2004: Votes, Bits and Bytes between the 9th and 11th of December (I know I’m a day late posting this – but is the glass half-empty or half-full?) The conference will take a sceptical look at the Internet’s effect on politics and how it might influence society.

Amongst other things, on Friday morning there is a panel discussion on citizenship that looks particularly interesting, and will deal with issues around technologies’ impact on participatory democracy and global citizenship. One of the panellists will be Hossein Derakhshan (aka Hoder), an Iranian blogger.

Other areas that will be discussed in the coming two days are business and – of course – what impact the Internet had on the 2004 US presidential election.

And no, I’m afraid I’m not there either – but I will sure follow the conference on their webcast. …Unless nobody’s got a plane ticket to spare, that is?