May 2002 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Change of Domain Name - Please update Bookmarks & Web Pages
by Allan-John.Mawdsley＠cec.eu.int 28 May '02

28 May '02

Hello. As a result of a domain-name change, the URL: http://www.ispo.cec.be will shortly no longer be reachable. You are requested to change the URL in your Bookmarks or Web Pages to: http://europa.eu.int/information_society/index_en.htm Thank You, Allan Mawdsley on behalf of the Web Publishing Team, Unit R5, Information Society DG European Commission, Brussels

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the original comparative research posting
by Sandra Braman 28 May '02

28 May '02

Because a number of individuals responding to my update on the comparative internet research project appear to have not seen the original posting, I'm reposting the original call. Please note that the emphasis is on comparison across national settings. >While the internet is global, it is always experienced in ways >that are locally specific. Critiques of existing internet research >often point to their failure to sufficiently specify the conditions >under which the effects described are found. Comparative >research -- research that addresses the same question >across circumstances that vary -- is one valuable way of >enhancing the value of specific studies by making it >possible to relate what is learned in one setting to what >is learned in another. Over time, comparative work can >bring to light factors that have differential impact across >settings in ways that should be of design and policy >interest. > >The Association of Internet Researchers provides an >opportunity for individuals involved in comparative research >that examines the same research question across multiple >settings in different nation-states to develop collaborative >projects. The variety of research interests of members >suggests the possibility of multiple collaborative comparative >projects. > >Because I believe such research would be invaluable in >moving the field forward, I'd be happy to help such projects >get off the ground by serving a coordinating role, in three >stages: > >(1) Any individual interested in participating in a >collaborative comparative research project on the >internet should write me at braman(a)ua.edu and let >me know: >- area of research interest >- whether or not you have already done any work >in this area (with citations as appropriate) >- preferred research methodology (ies) > >I'll group together folks of like interest and put them >in touch with each other so that they can begin >coordinating efforts among themselves. > >(2) The Maastricht conference will be an ideal >setting for attendees from those research teams already >beginning to form to meet with each other. Sign-up sheets >at the conference will enable additional individuals who >become interested at that point to join such groups. >Presumably list discussions internal to each group >will make it possible for those who cannot attend >the Maastricht conference to participate in the >collaborative research work. > >(3) If folks already involved in collaborative >comparative research projects can let me know >about them -- what questions they're pursuing, >and how, and contact person with contact >information -- I'll compile the information and make >it available to all. > >The field is by now well enough developed that >such collaborations should be possible, and the >Maastricht conference would be an ideal venue >within which to get them off the ground. Communication >ahead of time among team members would enable >those individuals to make the best use of their face >to face time. > >Again, please respond to me at braman(a)ua.edu, >rather than to the list, if you're interested in >participating in a collaborative team to undertake >comparative research projects across national >boundaries. > >Sandra Braman > >

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iCS Reviewers
by Loader, Brian 28 May '02

28 May '02

Dear list members, The international journal Information, Communication & Society (iCS) is always looking for people interested in refeering papers or acting as book reviewers. The high quality of our published articles is due to the calibre and commitment from our referees from around the world and drawn from a wide range of subject disciplines. I'm sure you all know that as members of a(o)ir you can recieve over 50% discount on subscription to the journal (see www.infosoc.co.uk) As a referee you are also entitled to a 30% discount on all Taylor & Francis/Routledge books. If you are interested in joining the iCS reviewers and/or referees list please email the journal secretary Wendy Bland at w.k.bland(a)tees.ac.uk for further information. Brian D. Loader William H. Dutton Editors, iCS

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info flow basements and ceilings
by Ronald E. Rice 27 May '02

27 May '02

> Message: 3 > From: "Ben Davidson" <bendavidson(a)totalise.co.uk> > To: <air-l(a)aoir.org> > Subject: Re: [Air-l] feedback, overload, and equilibrium in online nets > Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 18:02:09 +0100 > Reply-To: air-l(a)aoir.org > > Ronald, > > Is there some rule of thumb that emerged from your work regarding basement and ceiling levels? I didn't parameterize the basement and ceiling levels, but did parameterize the inflows, outflows, within group flows, and a four-fold typology derived from that: isolates, receivers, transmitters, and carriers. Isolate groups received and sent less than average (determined by the parameters of a log-linear model requiring reciprocity between groups), receives received more but sent less, transmitters sent more but received less, and carriers sent and received more than average. It turned out that in order to sustain a "carrier" mode, you have to continue sending, even early on when you don't get reciprocal messages. Only if you start out a transmitter, of the other three categories, do you have any chance of becoming a carrier. Essentially, I found that, as with material settings, the system is entropic: you have to contribute, on the hopes you will get sufficient returns, if you want to become a central actor (carrier). Remaining a receiver quickly leads to becoming an isolate. In the information environment, you really need to be a "pay it forward", or "collective benefit" kind of participant to maintain a central role. There are other articles about online critical mass, and collective benefits, such as Markus, and Rafaeli and LaRose (who show what factors influence the longevity of bulletin boards, which require altruistic contributions but can suffer from tragedy of the commons), whose references I can provide. I can send you a print version of the article if you (or anyone else) wants.

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Re: Road Warrior: Cultural History and Theory
by Wendy Robinson 27 May '02

27 May '02

As is so often the case, e-roads and railroads typically lead back to the anomie and distributed communication enabled by the telegraph. Many of the "road warrior" issues have been theoretically considered within cultural studies by those influenced by Innis, McLuhan, Beniger and Carey for many years. Nothing new in that for most on this list. Or to take the high(brow in the PBS sense) road and cite communication in the ancient distributed empires of Alexander and later Rome, before and after Catholicism, the "road warrior" metaphor can be pushed to its somewhat natural and far-fetched origination point. It seems to not be "new" to live a life on the road, to conquer and to convert or "civilize" in various ways, with dispatches sent to a central or regional office within a bureaucratic infrastructure. The expansion and movement of capital requires such travel. Electricity is not required, much less airplanes or the Internet or virtuality. In the past, wheels and inns may have been essential however. But to open up rather than curtail theory, I find Raymond Williams's "mobile privatization" from his slender book _Television_ (1974) to be quite useful. Williams seeks to account for the slow adoption of television and the myriad technocultural influences that perhaps only accidentally contributed to what was thought of as the relatively stable construction of network television pre-cable. Williams traces the growth of broadcast communication and its devices within the framework of rapid industrialization and an increasingly fluid, mobile existence for the Anglo middle-class in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. I've only glossed _Television_ here and may not have done Williams's pathfinding justice, but I find this conceptualization useful in various ways as I write on post-Web and wearable communication -- on the road, across the globe, at different nodes on campuses and in town, or within the same room but communicating other than or in addition to face to face, online plus offline. We're often connected now 24/7 and it no longer necessarily means picking up voice mail or waiting for faxes and logging in and out. Whether we're frequent fliers or not, or typically "phone in," at the societal level (yes, including the Taliban of Afghanistan, the Amish of Pennsylvania and Indiana, groups in India and South America -- see Sadie Plant's "On the Mobile" [2001]), many of us are getting geared-up and becoming "road warriors" of sorts. We don't stay put and that requires wires and GPS and various kinds of personal and infrastructural telecom paraphernalia. Barry Wellman's initial post is rich in its implications.

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road warriors and teleworkers
by Barry Wellman 26 May '02

26 May '02

Ulla's post to the list made many useful comments, but there are only some equivalences between teleworkers and road warriors. (I speak as someone studying teleworking.) Road warriors have no fixed work address for much of the week. Therefore, their communication and community situations are different. Barry ___________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman(a)chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 ___________________________________________________________________

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update on comparative research
by Sandra Braman 26 May '02

26 May '02

Folks -- A number of aoir members have responded to the call for individuals interested in participating in collaborative comparative research on internet-related issues, from a pleasingly wide array of countries. To help move thought about this forward -- and hopefully to stimulate the interest of you more of you -- wanted to report on the clusters of interest appearing. As context for these comments, the goal as I personally imagine it is developing a team or teams engaged in research on a carefully defined common research problem with a methodology also carefully worked out collaboratively among members of the team to meet the highest standards for comparative research. The particular problems of comparative research methodology are addressed in courses at very few universities. Much that flies under the name of comparative research is in fact simply compilations of studies from different places that do not offer genuinely comparative data or insights. These teams will hopefully not fall into that category but, rather -- as is the case with other aoir efforts involving standards for internet-based research methods and the ethics of internet research -- provide a model for rigorous comparative internet research. Individuals who have so far responded have expressed interest in a very wide range of potential research topics, most defined in the most abstract of terms, and with a preference for positions along the entire spectrum of methodological possibilities. Out of all that has been mentioned, however, there do appear to be a few clusters of interest appearing, each of which would require different methodological approaches. For those of you with whom I've been in communication, please read these as what may be translations of the ideas you've expressed into terms that I felt were common across the many individuals involved. And remember that this is just a very tentative first step to defining a common ground, with the expectation of many additional steps in full mutual conversation to determine where we might actually wind up. (1) The internet and community development. (2) The internet and social movements. (3) The rhetoric of internet policy. It could be imagined that the first two of these might be addressed through a combination of survey research, focus groups, and ethnographic work, and would require individuals able to carry out such work on the ground in different countries around the world. The third would rely upon some variety of discourse/content/rhetorical analysis of government documents, and could be carried out by individuals working from anywhere in the world. A number of additional ideas came forward but none has so far yet been mentioned by more than one person, and several are already receiving a fair amount of attention in the economics literature and elsewhere. It is my own bias that aoir members may want to devote their energies to addressing lacunae in the literature as their "highest use," but of course this also is up to the members of the group and I mention this only to stimulate further discussion. If any additional aoir members find these topics and this prospect intriguing, please let me know at my personal e-address: braman(a)ua.edu. If any aoir member, whether or not personally interested in participating in a collaborative comparative project, has thoughts about how to make such work as valuable as possible, you may want to direct those comments to the entire list. Sandra Braman Reese Phifer Professor Dept. of Telecommunication & Film University of Alabama PO Box 870152 Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0152 205-348-8657 * fax 205-348-5162 braman(a)ua.edu * www.tcf.ua.edu/braman

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ANCIENT WRITING SYSTEM GETS INTERNET UPDATE
by George(s) Lessard 26 May '02

26 May '02

ANCIENT WRITING SYSTEM GETS INTERNET UPDATE A number of universities have begun to transfer hundreds of examples of the 5,200-year-old cuneiform writing system to the World Wide Web. Cuneiform was used from 3200 B.C. to A.D. 75 to record everything from tax receipts to the legends, science and religion of the ancient world. Hundreds of thousands of tablets written in cuneiform are in museums around the world. Project leads believe that bringing these tablets online in dictionary, photographic, and 3D forms will be of tremendous value to researchers. The Birmingham University Digital Forensic Project is creating a Web-based cuneiform catalog covering signs made from 3000 B.C. to 323 B.C. In the Digital Hammurabi Project at Johns Hopkins University they are collecting three-dimensional images of tablets from 2000 B.C. onward. Johns Hopkins Assyriologist Jerrold Cooper said, "The beauty of this is that with fast and cheap 3-D scanning, we can practically put the tablet in your hands on your desktop." Other online projects are based at UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania. [SOURCE: USA Today, AUTHOR: Dan Vergano] (http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/2002/05/21/cuneiform.htm) *** Via / From / Thanks to the following : (c) Benton Foundation 2002. Redistribution of this email publication - both internally and externally -- is encouraged if it includes this message. Communications-Related Headlines are compiled and summarized by Rachel Anderson (rachel(a)benton.org) Andy Carvin (andy(a)benton.org) Shenaz Malik (shenaz(a)benton.org) and Diana Schneider (diana(a)benton.org) of the Benton Foundation -- we welcome your feedback. Based in Washington DC, the Benton Foundation's mission is to articulate a public interest vision for the digital age and demonstrate the value of communications for solving social problems. Other projects at Benton include: Digital Divide Network (www.digitaldividenetwork.org) Connect for Kids (www.connectforkids.org) OneWorld US (www.oneworld.net/us/) Sound Partners for Community Health (www.soundpartners.org) Digital Opportunity Channel (www.digitalopportunity.org) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- -- :-) Message Ends; George(s) Lessard's Keywords Begin (-: Freelance Media Arts, Management, Training, Mentoring & Consulting On line: Internet / Workshops / Research / Presence / Content / On location: TV / Radio / Production / ENG / EFP / Editing Interests: Access / Activism / Communities / Cultures / Arts Resume and more @ http://members.tripod.com/~media002 Queries / Offers / Patronage / Commissions should be sent to media(a)_no_spam_web.net Rostered Volunteer UNV# 120983 & CESO/SACO VA# 11799 -Caveat Lector- Disclaimers, NOTES TO EDITORS & (c) information may be found @ http://members.tripod.com/~media002/disclaimer.htm Because of the nature of email & the WWW, please check ALL sources & subjects. - 30 -

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Grants from the DANIEL LANGLOIS FOUNDATION
by George(s) Lessard 26 May '02

26 May '02

------- Forwarded message follows ------- To: Rare_Info(a)rhizome.org Date sent: Thu, 2 May 2002 15:05:04 -0400 From: Dominique Fontaine <dfontaine(a)fondation-langlois.org> Subject: RHIZOME_RARE The Program of Grants for Researcher in Residence: 2002 Call for Send reply to: Dominique Fontaine <dfontaine(a)fondation-langlois.org> Pour la version française : http://www.fondation-langlois.org/f/informations/nouvelles/index.html [ Veuillez excuser les envois multiples / apologies for cross-posting ] _____________________________________________________________________ **Press Release** THE DANIEL LANGLOIS FOUNDATION LAUNCHES A CALL FOR RESEARCH PROPOSALS IN THE PROGRAM OF GRANTS FOR RESEARCHER IN RESIDENCE Montreal, May 2, 2002 - The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology is launching a call for research proposals in the program of grants for researcher in residence. This program being in its second year, the Foundation hopes to foster critical thinking about how technologies affect people and their natural and cultural environments. Following an international competition open to historians, curators, critics, independent researchers, artists and scientists, the Foundation will enable two researchers to work in the collections and archives of the Centre for Research and Documentation (CR+D). The research project must focus on one of the Foundation's collections; a profile of the Foundation's collections is available at the following URL: http://www.fondation-langlois.org/e/CRD/index.html. Twice a year, the CR+D will welcome a researcher for three to six months. The researchers will be given access to computer and audiovisual equipment, the Foundation's database and its documentary collections. Their research findings will be published on the Foundation's Web site. For more details on this initiative, consult the program of grants for researcher in residence in the Funding Programs section of the Foundation's Web site: http://www.fondation-langlois.org/e/programmes/bourses.html. The deadline for applying is *August 31, 2002*. If you don't have Internet access, or if you have any questions about how to submit a project to the Foundation, please contact the program officer Jacques Perron. - 30 - SOURCE: Jacques Perron, jperron(a)fondation-langlois.org Program Officer for individual artists or scientists T: (514) 987-7177 F: (514) 987-7492 E: info(a)fondation-langlois.org W: www.fondation-langlois.org _____________________________________________________________________ We've sent you this press release to keep you abreast of activities at the Daniel Langlois Foundation. If you wish to be taken off our mailing list, simply reply to this message with the words REMOVE from mailing list in the subject line. Thank you. _____________________________________________________________________ + ...i think i know / his house is in the village though -> Rhizome.org -> post: list(a)rhizome.org -> questions: info(a)rhizome.org -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/subscribe.rhiz -> give: http://rhizome.org/support + Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php3 ------- End of forwarded message --------- :-) Message ends, Signature begins (-: George Lessard, living @ 61.10N 94.05W Comments should be sent to media(a)_no_spam_web.net [Remove _no_spam_ from addresses to e-mail] "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." T.S. Eliot... "If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito..." African Proverb **************************************** ICQ # 8501081 MediaMentor Weblog http://www.eGroups.com/list/mediamentor Homepages http://media002.tripod.com Caveat Lector, Disclaimers & (c) info http://members.tripod.com/~media002/disclaimer.htm Semi-random signature quotes follow: Mark Toscani You're idea of art is the fruit in the slot machine! --Ms. Crawford in TORCH SONG (1953)

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CFP: American Communication Association's 8th Annual Convention
by Frobish, Todd 25 May '02

25 May '02

ACA 2002 Convention: Call for Papers The American Communication Association invites you to its Eighth Annual Convention in Washington DC, September 26-29, 2002. Conference Theme: Resurrecting the Generalist: Interdisciplinarianism and the Return of the Classical Scholar Description: New communication technologies facilitate relationships across disciplinary boundaries. Interdisciplinary studies have been given a new voice as communication scholars everywhere are beginning to open doors to areas once thought beyond the scope of what we do. ACA 2002 invites us to reflect upon the relevance of disciplinary boundaries and to consider how the expanding breadth of the communication field can present new opportunities for research. Submissions: Special attention will be given to papers/proposals that address the convention theme, but work in any topic area is invited. In addition to completed papers, we welcome proposals for salons. In salons, two to four scholars present a question or concept for group discussion. For salons, topics should be submitted for consideration in the form of an abstract from each participant. ACA welcomes a diversity of perspectives and methodologies, and encourages graduate student submissions. Papers and salon proposals are due to the convention planner by June 15th, 2002. Only submissions sent through e-mail attachment to tfrobish(a)iona.edu will be accepted. Complete e-mail addresses of all participants and any technology requests must accompany submissions. Convention Format and Activities: Located at the Georgetown University Conference Center in Washington DC, and centered within the heart and spirit of our democracy, our 2002 conference is sure to be invigorating. A hallmark of ACA conventions is considerable collegial discussion. We're looking for short presentations on provocative topics--ones where the presenter(s) provides an overview and the audience participates. Information about the conference will be posted to the American Communication Association website as planning continues. Please visit us at Http://www.americancomm.org. See you in DC! Todd S. Frobish, PhD Assistant Professor Speech Communication Studies Iona College 715 North Avenue New Rochelle, NY 10801 (914) 633-2053 (o) (914) 633-2025 (f) "For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert." -Arthur C. Clarke, 1998

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