October 2005 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

IR conference papers
by Caroline Haythornthwaite 17 Oct '05

17 Oct '05

A reminder to all who just happened to be late getting their papers in for the conference that now is the time to send them in. This is an important way of disseminating your work to the AoIR community, and is part of the conference process. Please email your papers (of approximately 5000 words) to papers(a)aoir.org. /Caroline ---------------------------------------- Caroline Haythornthwaite Associate Professor Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 501 East Daniel St., Champaign IL 61820

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information / knowledge - I
by Charles Ess 17 Oct '05

17 Oct '05

It may be too far off the beaten path for folk in informatics, etc. - but the distinctions between information and knowledge are also discussed within the humanities and philosophy. The following is a condensation of the discussion we had on HUMANIST about all of this last February. It would be interesting to know if these observations parallel the ones made in the extensive literature this list has built up? So... begin with T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock (sometime in the early 1930s, I think) The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven, The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit. O perpetual revolution of configured stars, O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons, O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying! The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to God. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust. At the risk of violating all sorts of copyright laws - a sketchy document is available at http://www.drury.edu/ess/notesondreyfus.html Here I do not, unfortunately, make explicit the links between Dreyfus' taxonomy and Eliot's poem. But most of the document is devoted to clarifying for my students what Kierkegaard and Dreyfus mean vis-à-vis knowledge gained through the web and the Net; I then hope that my students will be able to see the implict connections between Kierkegaard and Dreyfus on the one hand, and Eliot on the other. As I hope these notes help clarify - by all means, by drawing on Kierkegaard's taxonomy of knowledge (aesthetic / ethical / religious), Dreyfus' taxonomy indeed heads us in the direction of the metaphysical, though not necessarily religious. Briefly, the religious stage of human wisdom and existence for Kierkegaard involves a level of commitment and risk not found in the aesthetic and ethical stages. As Dreyfus puts it, our most important commitments are neither the ones that I arbitrarily choose nor the ones that I am obliged to keep because of my social role. Rather, these special commitments are experienced as grabbing my whole being. When I respond to such a summons by making an unconditional commitment, this commitment determines who I am and what will be the significant issue for me for the rest of my life. Political and religious movements can grab us in this way as can love relationships and, for certain people, such vocations as the law or music. (19) In my view, this indeed helps to inform discussions concerning what sorts of knowledge - and correlative existential / religious engagements and wisdom - may be needed for full and humane lives. [In order to keep all of this relatively brief and easy to delete, I'll parse out some additional resources and comments into another email or two.] Hope this helps, Charles Ess Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC'06: http://www.catacconference.org Co-chair, ECAP'06: http://www.eu-cap.org Professor II, Globalization and Applied Ethics Programmes Norwegian University of Science and Technology NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway http://www.anvendtetikk.ntnu.no/pres/bridgingcultures.php Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23

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information and knowledge - II
by Charles Ess 17 Oct '05

17 Oct '05

More for the philosophically inclined... For the philosophical community that has emerged in the past 15 years or so around the Computers and Philosophy conferences, originally in North America but now more spread about the planet (the 2nd Asian-Pacific CAP conference was held this month in Bangkok, for example), much of this is discussed in terms of a "computational turn" in philosophy, which in part means a focus on how computation and the new venues / experiences / interactions made possible by computing technologies helps / forces philosophers to re-examine old questions and raise new ones. Broadly speaking, there is some consensus among this group (so far) that "wisdom" would include an Aristotelian sense of _phronesis_ or "practical wisdom" - a sense of wisdom that is apparently fairly cross-cultural, for example, as it at least resonates with notions of wisdom found in Confucian thought, some African traditions, etc. The discussion gets even more interesting in the work of Luciano Floridi (Wolfson College, Oxford), whose information ontology turns traditional philosophical ontology upside down and takes information as the basic building block of reality. 1. See Floridi's chapter in his Blackwell's Guide to the Philosophy of Information, titled, appropriately enough, "Information": http://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~floridi/blackwell/chapters/chapter5.pdf 2. Floridi has more recently argued for a specific view about the relation between data and information in an article titled "Is Information Meaningful Data?", that can be downloaded at http://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~floridi/pdf/iimd.pdf 2.5 Finally, I've put up a modest documentation of a panel on Information Ethics held in August, 2004, as part of the Computers and Philosophy Conference (CAP) at Carnegie Mellon, in which Floridi, Terrell Ward Bynum, Bernd Carsten Stahl, Wallace Kohler, Kay Mathiesen, and May Thorseth represented their perspectives on information ethics and helped collectively develop something of a cognitive map of the relationships between information ethics and other disciplines both within and beyond the boundaries of philosophy. <http://www.drury.edu/ess/CAP04/cap04infoethics.html> This map and overview will grow and change, of course, most immediately as we pursue conversations with colleagues in Asia regarding expectations of privacy and emerging data privacy protection guidelines - but as I note there, participation and dialogue with many other geographical and cultural domains of the globe are needed as well. Nonetheless, I hope this is at least a useful sketch and initial orientation for those interested in especially philosophical approaches to information ethics and allied issues. Charles Ess Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC'06: http://www.catacconference.org Co-chair, ECAP'06: http://www.eu-cap.org Professor II, Globalization and Applied Ethics Programmes Norwegian University of Science and Technology NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway http://www.anvendtetikk.ntnu.no/pres/bridgingcultures.php Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23

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Fwd: DRMTICS Conference
by Jeremy Hunsinger 17 Oct '05

17 Oct '05

> > > > First International Conference on > Digital Rights Management: Technologies, Issues, Challenges and > Systems > Sydney, Australia > 31 October - 2 November 2005 > http://www.titr.uow.edu.au/DRMTICS2005 > > This new conference series (abbreviated: DRMTICS, pronounced: > "dramatics") > seeks submissions from academia and industry describing novel research > results that cover theoretical and practical advancements in all > areas of > DRM systems. The conference will serve as a broad multi- > disciplinary forum > for all DRM related issues. > > DRMTICS 2005 is held in co-operation with IACR (http:// > www.iacr.org) and > the IEEE Computer Society Task Force on Information Assurance > (http://www.ieeeia.org) The conference proceedings will be > published in > Springer-Verlag's Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series > (http://www.springeronline.com/lncs) > > The conference will be held in the North Sydney Harbourview Hotel, > located > just ten minutes from the centre of Sydney and offering views over > Sydney > Harbour and its famous bridge. > > > Conference Programme > > The conference includes twenty-seven submitted papers and three > invited > talks: > > * "A Brief History of Rights Expression Languages" > Renato Iannella, National ICT Australia > > * "Humans, Computers and Cryptography" > Moni Naor, Weizmann Institute, Israel > > * "DRM and Legal Issues" > Gordon Hughes, Blake Dawson and Waldron, Australia > > The full conference programme can be found on the conference home > page at > http://www.titr.uow.edu.au/DRMTICS2005. > > > Registration > > Delegates wishing to attend the conference may obtain a > registration form > from http://www.titr.uow.edu.au/DRMTICS2005/registration. Please > complete > the form and either post or fax it back to us with payment. > > > Programme Co-Chairs > > Rei Safavi-Naini, University of Wollongong, Australia > Moti Yung, RSA Laboratories and Columbia University, USA > > > General Co-Chairs > > Wanqing Li, University of Wollongong, Australia > Nicholas Sheppard, University of Wollongong, Australia > > > Programme Committee > > Feng Bao, Institute for Infocom Research, Singapore > Stefan Bechtold, Max Planck Institute for Collective Goods, Germany > Jong Uk Choi, MarkAny, Korea > Christian S. Collberg, University of Arizona, USA > Ingemar Cox, University of London, England > Ezzy Dabbish, Motorola Labs, USA > Jana Dittmann, University of Magdeburg, Germany > Yevgeniy Dodis, New York University, USA > Brian Fitzgerald, Queensland University of Technology, Australia > Susanne Guth, ODRL Initiative > Greg Heileman, University of New Mexico, USA > HweeHwa Pang, Singapore Management University, Singapore > Hideki Imai, University of Tokyo, Japan > Sushil Jajodia, George Mason University, USA > Ton Kalker, HP Labs, USA > Stefan Katzenbeisser, Technical University of Muenchen, Germany > Aggelos Kiayias, University of Connecticut, USA > Kwangjo Kim, Information and Communication University, Korea > Kaoru Kurosawa, Ibaraki University, Japan > Jeff Lotspiech, IBM Almaden, USA > Stefan Nusser, IBM Almaden, USA > Josef Pieprzyk, Macquarie University, Australia > Bin Zhu, Microsoft Research Asia, China > > > Support > > DRMTICS 2005 is grateful for the support of > > Motorola (http://www.motorola.com) > > DigiSensory Technologies (http://www.digisensory.com) > > The Co-operative Research Centre for Smart Internet Technology > (http://www.smartinternet.com.au) > > The Telecommunications and Information Technology Research > Institute, > University of Wollongong (http://www.titr.uow.edu.au) > > The Research Network for a Secure Australia > (http://www.secureaustralia.org) > > Infosys > (http://www.infosys.com) > > MarkAny > (http://www.markany.com) > > > > Cheers > > Renato Iannella > http://renato.iannella.it > > Jeremy Hunsinger Center for Digital Discourse and Culture () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.aoir.org The Association of Internet Researchers

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Re: [Air-l] air-l Digest, Vol 15, Issue 12
by Stephanie Kent 16 Oct '05

16 Oct '05

Mary, I'm interested! It's a bit of a backburner project though, picking away at it (usually on Sunday evenings). Thanks for the resources you shared; I blogged them: http://www.stephaniejokent.com/blog/archives/001756.html steph http://www.reflexivity.us On Oct 15, 2005, at 3:02 PM, air-l-request(a)listserv.aoir.org wrote: > Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 08:36:48 -0700 > From: "Mary K. Bryson" <mary.bryson(a)ubc.ca> > Subject: Re: [Air-l] Podcasting > To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org > Message-ID: <BF767020.104B9%mary.bryson(a)ubc.ca> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII > > I am also teaching a cyberculture course and posting the Digital > Resource > link to the list in case anyone else is interested. We have a course > wiki, > and the Resource page has a few academic podcast sites as well as > podcast > how-to links. > > http://wiki.elearning.ubc.ca/DigitalResources > > The best academic podcasting site I have found is: > http://i-generation.blogspot.com/ > > Cheers, > > Mary

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information and knowledge - III
by Charles Ess 16 Oct '05

16 Oct '05

Finally, the discussion on HUMANIST focused on whether or not humanities folk's experiences with computing might have changed previous notions (such as those implied by T.S. Eliot) about knowledge, information, etc. I offered the following - I'm tempted to think that computing has changed people's perceptions - in the direction of what O'Leary and Brasher in their 1996 essay have identified as a form of Gnosticism: == One issue raised in computer-mediated communication that we find particularly troubling is the extent to which the new media reduce all discourse to information. This can result in a contemporary analogue of Gnosticism, the mystical quest for the knowledge that saves. Physicist Heinz Pagels puts the problem succinctly: <quote>Some intellectual prophets have declared the end of the age of knowledge and the beginning of the age of information. Information tends to drive out knowledge. Information is just signs and numbers, while knowledge has semantic value. What we want is knowledge, but what we often get is information. It is a sign of the times that many people cannot tell the difference between information and knowledge, not to mention wisdom, which even knowledge tends to drive out. (1988, 49) </quote> If our traditions cannot keep knowledge and wisdom alive, these distinctions will disappear as all is reduced to information. The cyborg's spiritual quest would become an endless search for the information that saves-a quest doomed to failure, an endless and eternally restless manipulation of signs and numbers that, like the search for the philosopher's stone, can never produce the gold or the semantic value that we seek. When the ambitious dream described by Richard Lanham in The Electronic Word is realized, and the whole record of human culture is digitized and available on computer databases connected to each other by a global web, our spiritual crisis will remain and even intensify, for we will be forced to confront the fact that no electronic alchemy can turn information into knowledge, or into the wisdom that will teach us how to live. == Pagels, Heinz. 1988. The Dreams of Reason. New York: Simon and Schuster. Cited in O'Leary and Brasher, The Unknown God of the Internet: Religious Communication from the Ancient Agora to the Virtual Forum, in Ess (ed.) Philosophical Perspectives on Computer-Mediated Communication (Albany, NY: SUNY Press), 262. As a last note - Bill McKibben's _The Age of Missing Information_ (1993) argues much the same point, primarily vis-à-vis TV, drawing on the work of phenomenologist / philosopher (and closet theologian) Albert Borgmann, McLuhan, and others, along with his own experience of watching several thousand hours of TV collected from a day's broadcasting of the nation's first cable system of 90+ channels in Fairfax, VA. Well worth the read, IMHO. cheers, - c. Charles Ess Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC'06: http://www.catacconference.org Co-chair, ECAP'06: http://www.eu-cap.org Professor II, Globalization and Applied Ethics Programmes Norwegian University of Science and Technology NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway http://www.anvendtetikk.ntnu.no/pres/bridgingcultures.php Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23

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Re: [Air-l] New internet conference blog
by Michel J. Menou 16 Oct '05

16 Oct '05

May I remind that there is an International Calendar of Information Science conferences http://icisic.neasist.org that is open to all for listing information about conferences in this area, understood from a most comprehensive perspectiveof which Internet related topics are a natural part. This voluntary service is open to all and offers several output formats including RSS feed. Michel >Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 16:54:11 -0500 >From: Nancy Baym <nbaym(a)ku.edu> >Subject: [Air-l] New internet conference blog >To: air-l(a)aoir.org > > >This new IP and IT conference blog looks handy: > >http://madisonian.net/conferences/ > >Nancy > > > -- ================================================================= Dr. Michel J. Menou Consultant in ICT policies and Knowledge & Information Management Adviser of Somos@Telecentros board http://www.tele-centros.org Member of the founding steering committee of Telecenters of the Americas Partnership http://www.tele-centers.net/ B.P. 15 49350 Les Rosiers sur Loire, France Email: Michel.Menou(a)wanadoo.fr Phone: +33 (0)2 41511043 http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ciber/peoplemenou.php ================================================================== -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.12.1/136 - Release Date: 15/10/2005

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Information/knowledge
by Stephen Coleman 16 Oct '05

16 Oct '05

The most comprehensive and stimulating volume on information/knowledge that I know is Information Space: A Framework for Learning in Organizations, Institutions and Cultures by Max Boisot, London: Routledge, 1995. I would also strongly recommend Looking for information: A survey of research on information seeking, needs, and behavior by Donald Case, New York: Academic Press/Elsevier Science, 2002. Stephen Coleman, Oxford Internet Institute can you -- or anyone else on the list -- point me to references on the distinction between information and knowledge? Clifford Tatum Doctoral Student Dept. of Communication University of Washington clifford(a)u.washington.edu

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Re: [Air-l] air-l Digest, Vol 15, Issue 12
by Stephanie Kent 16 Oct '05

16 Oct '05

I'm also interested as I'm making noises about starting an audioblog (why are they audioblogs sometimes and pods other times? is it purely the equipment or are they substantially different?) You see, I tend to learn by diving in knowing next to nothing... %-) steph http://www.reflexivity.us On Oct 15, 2005, at 3:02 PM, air-l-request(a)listserv.aoir.org wrote: > Message: 3 > Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 08:29:58 -0400 > From: Radhika Gajjala <radhika(a)cyberdiva.org> > Subject: Re: [Air-l] Podcasting > To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org > Message-ID: <a0611040dbf76a65e211c(a)[192.168.1.100]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" > > > Tracy - how did this go? > > (putting together my plans for next semester and would like links and > examples of how it was done- if anyone has anything of interest - do > feel free to submit to my teach blog comments - at > http://cyberdiva.typepad.com/teach) > > r > > >> Hello Folks! >> >> I am teaching a Cyberculture course this spring, and the next topic of >> discussion concerns Blogs - I will also be talking about >> videoblogging, >> mobblogging and postcasting. >> >> I am wondering if anyone can point to research about Podcasting - or >> using >> podcasting in the classroom? >> >> Having said that - is anyone interested in posting a podcast on their >> blog >> (perhaps a commentary about podcasting in the classroom) so that my >> students >> can visit it on Tuesday and listen to it? It would be great if >> someone (or >> more) could do this. It would be a great experience for my students. >> >> Please email me off list tkennedy(a)netwomen.ca >> >> Thanks so much! >> >> ******************************************** >> Tracy L. M. Kennedy >> PhD Candidate - >> Department of Sociology >> >> Graduate Fellow - >> Knowledge Media & Design Institute >> >> Research Associate - >> NetLab - Centre for Urban & Community Studies >> >> University of Toronto >> 725 Spadina Ave. >> Toronto, ON M5S 2J4 >> tkennedy(a)netwomen.ca >> www.netwomen.ca >> www.kmdi.utoronto.ca/collaborative >> ******************************************** >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> The Air-l-aoir.org(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list >> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org >> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: >> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org >> >> Join the Association of Internet Researchers: >> http://www.aoir.org/ > > > -- > Radhika Gajjala > Associate Professor > School of Communication Studies > Bowling Green State University > Bowling Green, OH 43403 > > http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik ; http://cyberdiva.typepad.com/teach/ > > http://www.cyberdiva.org > _________ > > or to glance at multiple blogs > > http://www.cyberdiva.org/cyberdivalive.html >

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Re: [Air-l] podcasting
by Jonathan Sterne 15 Oct '05

15 Oct '05

Have a look at: http://isis.duke.edu/events/podcasting/schedule.html There are streams of the sessions online, apparently. But I haven't tried them for myself. I attended and learned a lot. Best, --J -- Jonathan Sterne Department of Art History and Communication Studies McGill University http://sterneworks.org

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