On 23 March, Ben Hammersley is giving the British Council Annual Lecture in Northern Ireland on the topic The Internet of People. After the lecture there will be a panel discussion featuring, amongst others, Michelle Gallen, a member of the British Council’s Transatlantic Network 2020, who blogs about the lecture topic for us today.

Follow the lecture and panel on Twitter – #digitalderryculture

Watch this event live and ask questions from now that Ben and the panel will answer on the evening.

I grew up in a border town in rural Country Tyrone from 1975-1993. During this time, the Troubles simmered around me – heavily-armed British soldiers patrolled our fields, our streets. Bombs blew up our shops and homes. People died in shootings and explosions.

But in so many ways, the world in which I lived was a safe one. I knew my family and extended family intimately. But I also knew the postman, breadman and milkman, the shopkeepers in our shops.

When I went to school, I got to know the thirty children in my class, and the 200 in our small primary school. At secondary school, there was an influx of new faces, but with only 400 pupils in the school, our teachers knew all our names.

Every Sunday at chapel we saw the same faces. I didn’t know all the names, but it seemed my parents – who were local teachers – did.

Everyone in my town watched the same TV shows on the same six channels (four British, two Irish). We all listened to the same music in the Irish and British pop charts. We shared a local library (a library so small it was possible for me to read all the books, to run out of reading material).

My childhood was one of a deep shared experience with the other Catholics I grew up with – people, music, education, rituals, land, and nationality. That was my Internet of people. The network I lived with, learned with and loved.

I grew up in a town of 3,000 people, the population equally divided between Catholics and Protestants. We grew up side by side – yet the first time I met and spoke to a Protestant, I was ten years old. We met in the back of a police car, on a government sponsored cross-community initiative.

As we drove through town, I automatically made the sign of the cross passing our chapel graveyard. Afterwards, I saw the puzzled faces of the two Protestants beside me. It was then I realised it wasn’t just that we didn’t share the same religion, passports or loyalties. There were deep differences between us.

To this day, I don’t know if my childhood experiences were the same as the Protestants with whom I shared that police car. I don’t know what their school was like or what books were in their libraries. I don’t know what hymns they sung in their churches or what songs they sung at home. We led separate lives – our networks disconnected.

I left the green fields and small streets of my childhood behind in 1993. Since then, cities have changed, national borders moved and political regimes come and gone.

These days I live in London with my French husband, where the Internet allows me to become a citizen of the world. I zoom down the spacious boulevards of cyberspace with ease, criss-crossing in seconds between different universes. One hour I’m building an enclave where the endangered Irish language can be spoken and taught. The next hour I’m hanging out in a bustling cyber city where geeks and investors are speculating in a fast-moving technological gold rush.

I connect daily with friends and family scattered across the world. I choose what I want to explore, what I want to learn about. I rejoice in the revolutionary world of choice the Internet has brought me, where I can choose not only what I want to learn, but how I am – Irish, British, female or male, a European citizen or a Tyrone girl.

However, when I return ‘home’ for visits, I wonder what the world will be like for my nephews and nieces. They’re growing up in the border area I grew up, going to the same chapels, the same segregated schools, socialising in the same Catholic social networks.

The difference is they have the Internet. They’re connected daily with our family right across the world. They’ll never run out of new books or music. They’ll never have to wait for a stranger to drive into their town to meet someone new. They’re connected in ways we could never imagine growing up. They too can choose to explore their culture and identity online – to be gamers or bloggers, Catholic or Protestant.

I wonder if the lack of borders, the influence of many cultures, and the freedom of the Internet will influence how they act in their day-to-day lives? Will they see that just as they can go anywhere, meet anyone, and be anyone online – that they can make that happen in real life?

Or will they simply continue with the Facebook experience, which uses the Internet as a big safe playground – where everyone hangs out all day with their school friends and mates, only connecting with who and what they already know?

I worship at the altar of technology these days. But I’m afraid I don’t believe that technology unites people or changes things. I believe people unite people. People are the ones with the power to bridge culture, embrace enlightenment, change the world as we know it. Technology doesn’t make that happen – it just makes it easier. Technology brings revolutionary new information to those minds seeking it.

And that’s what’s key for me. To become a global citizen, to overcome those physical, political and mental borders, people’s mind must be open. Children in school need to be taught that what they’re seeing in the curriculum is a tiny fraction of the ‘truth’ that’s out there online. They need to know that the cyber world is bigger, more multicultural and more fascinating than Facebook.

Most importantly, they need to know that just as the Internet was built site by site, just as Wikipedia was put together page by page, that they can choose to build our futures in the real world.

Michelle Gallen was born and raised in Northern Ireland. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, she also holds an MPhil in Publishing Studies. Following an early career in publishing, Michelle has worked in the digital learning sector for 11 years, which has included stints at the BBC and major commercial e-learning providers. Michelle has worked as a freelance e-learning consultant for the past five years, designing, developing and evaluating creative learning content for clients in both the public and private sector.

She founded www.talkirish.com – an award-winning social network for learners, teachers and speakers of the endangered Irish language. She is co-founder of www.shhmooze.com – a smartphone app that helps you discover useful strangers at events and conferences.

Michelle is a member of the British Council’s Transatlantic Network 2020, a network for action which brings together young influencers from business, civil society, the arts, science and media to revitalise transatlantic and global links for the future. Importantly, TN2020 reflects the changing demographics, ideologies and dynamics of Europe and North America.