- Air-L - lists.aoir.org

research on internet adoption
by Lee Rainie 08 Mar '07

08 Mar '07

I am looking for help locating research about why people were drawn to the internet in various periods, starting in the early 1990s. There seems to be a decent amount of work focused on why firms large and small embraced the internet, but not nearly as many studies about individual users and their motives for going online in the first place. I am particularly interested in the role that life circumstances played (e.g. Did users embrace the internet first at their workplaces or schools and then in their private lives? Were they coaxed online by friends who already had access?). And I'm interested in research about the online applications that were particularly appealing to newbies (e.g. email, news, health information, e-commerce, adult content, etc.). Finally, I'd appreciate knowing if new users' motives for adoption changed over time. Were those who first hopped online in 1997 drawn online by different factors from those that drew earlier adopters in, say, 1993-1994? Thanks very much, Lee Rainie ********** Director Pew Internet & American Life Project 1615 L Street NW - Suite 700 Washington, D.C. 20036 202-419-4510 http://www.pewinternet.org

4 3

Wikipedia weakness
by Homero Gil de Zuniga 08 Mar '07

08 Mar '07

Once again Wikipedia raises controversy by the weakness of its very structure. Although I guess that it is the same structure that makes it an attractive global encyclopedia. HGZ BBC: Fake professor in Wikipedia storm Internet site Wikipedia has been hit by controversy after the disclosure that a prominent editor had assumed a false identity complete with fake PhD. Complete article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6423659.stm

1 0

Canadian broadcasting report on the internet from '93
by Jeremy Hunsinger 08 Mar '07

08 Mar '07

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n4fDgmrF3o very handy for many classes jeremy hunsinger wiki.tmttlt.com www.tmttlt.com () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.stswiki.org/ sts wiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ Learning Inquiry-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series

1 0

new resource for information literacy
by Jeremy Hunsinger 08 Mar '07

08 Mar '07

http://www.informationliteracy.org.uk/ Jeremy Hunsinger () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.aoir.org The Association of Internet Researchers http://www.stswiki.org/ stswiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ LI-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series

1 0

Re: [Air-l] 988 exabytes of info created in 2010
by Bram Dov Abramson 07 Mar '07

07 Mar '07

>> Perhaps there are domains of activity where it is often true. >> But it's certainly not my experience as both a producer and >> user of non-academic indicators-based research, each in both >> commercial settings and in government. > Sounds like a researchable question, no? Where do 'actual decision > makers' get their information sources from? Why do they turn to it? > What's the role of 'names that you know' and expectations of how > their 'audiences/bosses' will respond to the source? Sure. But it's one thing for Source A to beat Source B. It's another to turn to Source A because there is no Source B. My experience is that most 'audiences/bosses' are pretty free and easy with the range of acceptable Source As, as long as it provides answers to the question that they think is important -- I have seen really any name brand do, which ranges from IDC to eMarketer to just about anything with the word "university" or "college" attached. Now, where data are available from both, say, Research Service Inc. and Local Research University, the issue you are talking about would probably come up. I would offer only two caveats. First, it comes up much more rarely than one would think. Even on questions where multiple attempts at the answer exist, people often stop at the first reasonable one they find, rather than evaluating the range of options -- in other words, "names that you know", but as a search strategy rather than a weighing of alternative findings. That's why things like citation in the media and search engine placement are so important to industry researchers: if you can be the first stop, you may well be the only stop. And, second, even where it does come up, other criteria are more important: depending on who the 'audience/bosses' are, a more recent/conservative/aggressive answer may be preferred. My experience has almost always been that criteria such as these -- i.e. if both Source A and Source B exist, which better fits the story I am trying to tell -- outweigh any reputational issues. But, for sure, researchable: till then, anecdotes are all we've got. ;-) > Certainly there are failings in the review system > for academic research, but that one can point to > them is evidence for the point I was, perhaps clumsily, > trying to make: at least there is some form of public > review of academic (and government) research, some ethic of > open review that one can rest some weight of quality upon. > > There doesn't seem to be any equivalent system for commercial > research, revealing methods seems optional, at best. I think I know what you mean. And, intuitively, it makes sense: academic research has a relatively uniform institutional structure, so there should be less variability in research quality than in research conducted in, for instance, commercial or government settings that are outside the academic world. And, variability-wise, maybe that's true. But my sense has also been that, on the one hand, academic review standards in some journals are very limited because of anything from disciplinary insularity to very lax oversight of journals' own review processes -- the opposite is true in other locations of course, but nonetheless -- and that, on the other hand, the reputational risks facing industry researchers who know that their primary audience may well be the exact industry participants best positioned to review their work, may spur them to be very rigorous indeed. Putting all that together, then, my sense is that the primary harms of lousy non-academic research (and especially industry research which is sold and whose producers are therefore incented to have the media talk about it) derive from their reporting in popular media. I believe that lousy industry research that pertains to the telecom and IT domains just doesn't cut it among its primary consumers, who will know if it is way wrong. On the other hand, the same research may be very widely reported in the news media, who not only have few ways of knowing whether the study is way wrong or not, but rarely consult -- nor really have the time to consult -- potential sober-second-thought providers who might provide a reality check. In fact, there is something similar which occurred with the telecom meltdown of the late 1990s. The 100-day traffic-doubling myth derived not from any industry research, but from a media pick-up and amplification and distortion of something a single spokesperson at an Internet backbone provider claimed. The absorption of that myth into an environment with a proclivity to believe it and without competing evidence to infirm it was one of the more significant bad-"research" consequences around. Except that there was no "research" at all. That's why I would agree: > Now if the commerical firms got together a review system, > that would be a very interesting 'industry self regulation' > development :) A review system which functioned in the form of a certification standard, and which was publicized and adopted widely enough that it caused reporters to regard certified studies differently than non-certified studies, would probably do more good than harm. And, you know, it is probably the sort of thing where an academic-led effort could successfully play the role of neutral arbiter. cheers Bram

1 0

Re: [Air-l] 988 exabytes of info created in 2010
by Bram Dov Abramson 07 Mar '07

07 Mar '07

> The results of commercial research firms are always so nicely > packaged and illustrated---and maybe that's one of the reasons that > actual real world decisions are based on them. (50 Rhode Islands? > That sounds like a lot, I'd better buy more ;) > > Which, of course, makes them 'important' but for reasons other than > their 'truth'. Their importance seems self-reinforcing Oh, I don't know. The latter thesis -- that, faced with different answers to a similar question, "actual real world decision" makers prefer the truthiness of name-brand commercial research -- is no doubt possible. Perhaps there are domains of activity where it is often true. But it's certainly not my experience as both a producer and user of non-academic indicators-based research, each in both commercial settings and in government. Rather, I've found that a less sneering version of the former thesis fits a lot better. But it's not just packaging and illustration: it's choice of topic matter. Any time I have seen non-academic research I produced used "out there", it's been because there were very few alternative sources for answers to the question being asked. For that matter, when there did exist alternative sources, they tended if not to converge, at least to take each other into account. In this instance, the few-alternatives thesis seems to be the case. The EMC-sponsored studies, first at Berkeley and now at IDC, have gotten a lot of press. I have not seen a lot of other comprehensive attempts to answer the "how much information" question -- a rather different proposition, obviously, then what one thinks of that question. For what it's worth, an IDC narrative of how they counted things, as opposed to a third-party nwes story about it, is at: http://www.emc.com/about/destination/digital_universe/pdf/Expanding_Digital… > research huh? Does that qualify as an 'A Journal'? ;) I wouldn't think so. Academic and other forms of research each have their own norms and control mechanisms. They differ from each other, and they differ internally. I would wager that those who place all weight on how they differ from each other, and no weight on how they differ internally, will end up with trust mechanisms that disappoint them in the long run. I have seen very careful and properly-reviewed non-academic research -- even shepherded some through reviewing myself -- and, by the same token, some very inaccurate and poorly-reviewed academic journal articles. So perhaps the journal/not-journal binary is not a good totalising lens through which to view the wide world of doing research and other words for figuring stuff out. > Is anyone aware of research that asks the question, > 'how reliable are the predictions of commercial > research firms?'. ... or that asks that question of any form of institutional research. I wonder how useful such studies would really be. In the telecom and IT sectors there have, from time to time, been scorecards in industry magazines, which would fairly up front about how they did their scoring. I suppose this could get you started. (Parenthetically: one firm, eMarketer, does something like this. More specifically, and at least the last time I checked, their business model was that, rather than undertaking primary research of their own, they bought or borrowed, etc. other primary research and conducted meta-research -- that is, showed what all the other research firms were saying, then sold that as a competing product. I suppose there are issues of shooting one's golden goose here. But that's another story.) More helpful from a moving-things-forward standpoint, I would think, would be to investigate the methodologies being used. The standard by which predictions should be judged is a bit of a moving target -- ensuring that a prediction is based on sound reasoning and data is more do-able, and probably more reasonable. cheers Bram

2 1

baudrillard has finished burning the signs.
by jhuns＠vt.edu 07 Mar '07

07 Mar '07

Jean Baudrillard died, age 77. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/03/06/europe/EU-GEN-France-Obit-Baudril… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard

2 1

Re: [Air-l] Internet Governance research
by Bram Dov Abramson 07 Mar '07

07 Mar '07

> UNTANGLING THE NET - > Bandwidth brokerage, arbitrage and the > creation of a commodity market in packet-based bandwidth led to > financial failures partly as a result of failing to consider the > basic interconnectedness or the internet. Both of these propositions might need a bit more thought. Regarding the first proposition: it's a bit hard to know what you mean by bandwidth brokerage, arbitrage, and commodity market -- they're each descriptors for very broad classes of phenomena. If you mean that there were lots of buyers and sellers and that competition was based mostly on price then sure, that happened. But -- and especially in the domain of "packet-based bandwidth", by which it sounds like you intend "Internet bandwidth" more specifically -- if you mean that there were well-organised institutional or organisational mechanisms like bandwidth trading floors for commodities trading in the form of third-party transactions by people who neither produce nor consume Internet bandwidth, then this might need some more digging. Band-X (that piece is now part of Arbinet) and Invisible Hand Networks represent two pieces of that puzzle. But they hardly represent a very significant part of any Internet bandwidth market. As to the second proposition: commoditisation -- competing on price and not on non-price factors -- in a market with relatively few entry barriers is, indeed, a tough business. That's what has happened to market participants in long-distance. That's what has happened to market participants in Internet transit. Add mechanisms to survive at below-cost prices, like the combination of institutional investors who are nervous about missing the next big thing, underinformed about how big that thing is, and have lots of capital to ensure they don't miss it at one end, and Chapter 11 protection, at the other end, and you have something much more dramatic. I suspect that that has much more to do with financial failures, than an inability to understand the Internet's interconnectedness. Fred Goldstein's and Daniel Reingold's books are two really nice accounts of that story. I understand Om Malik's is, too, but I have not read it and can't say. In any case, there are quite a few. > Internet peering agreements provide international networks the > ability to function. I don't know. Peering has been really important, and is still kind of important. But surely most bilateral BGP relationships are ones of transit, not peering -- particularly at the international level. Quantifying the extent to which this is so would be a valuable contribution, I think. > This research proposes to examine peering agreements over x# > of years and to look at the potential for the development of > transparency in peering agreements. Don't get me wrong, though! This is one of a number of important areas to look at. I question whether it is the most significant or even an extremely significant cost driver, relative to others, in the international context in which you want to operate -- I suspect that other cost drivers, most of them related to state-sponsored chokeholds, tend to be both more determinative, and highly connected, to this issue. But there is lots to be said and lots being said on this topic, with a number of interesting approaches in recent years to try and bring transparency to this domain. Apart from the well-known efforts in the context of antitrust actions in the U.S. and in Europe and, of course, the EuISPA/APEC/ITU meme, see particularly actions at the federal level in Australia. In the Canadian context, the CRTC's Telecom Monitoring reports have addressed this issue to a very limited extent, particularly in years past (the first 3 issues), but some very important efforts in BC (BCNET's Transit Exchange model) and Alberta (via SuperNet) speak directly to this issue, and probably due in a domestic context -- as do multiple U.S. efforts at the state level, I suspect -- something similar to what I understand the World Bank has been trying to put together around the EASSy project. cheers Bram

1 0

InternetGovernance rsrch
by Nancy Paterson 07 Mar '07

07 Mar '07

I'm a media artist based in Toronto Canada conducting PhD rsrch in the area of internet governance. Specifically this work is: UNTANGLING THE NET - Bandwidth brokerage, arbitrage and the creation of a commodity market in packet-based bandwidth led to financial failures partly as a result of failing to consider the basic interconnectedness or the internet. Internet peering agreements provide international networks the ability to function. At this point in time this is one of the most hidden areas of network topology. This research proposes to examine peering agreements over x# of years and to look at the potential for the development of transparency in peering agreements. I've been on the internet since Dec 1982 at utzoo (at Univ of Toronto) and my website is www.vacuumwoman.com Looking forward to any/all discussions! Nancy Paterson York University (Toronto)

1 0

New on ICT Guides for March
by Craig Bellamy 07 Mar '07

07 Mar '07

Dear AOIR, I thought that I would take the opportunity to introduce ICT Guides to you, which is a new service being offered by the Arts and Humanities Data Service at King's College, London. It seeks to promote the use of ICTs in research and learning through cataloging good-practice digital arts and humanities projects, through the tools, methods, and standards they employed. It is still in the early stages, and we would be very interested in your comments. The following new projects have been added to ICT Guides in March. (Projects): http://ahds.ac.uk/ictguides/projects/allProjects.jsp Highlight: "PARADISEC (the Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures) offers a facility for digital conservation and access for endangered materials from the Pacific region, defined broadly to include Oceania and East and Southeast Asia. Our research group has developed models to ensure that the archive can provide access to interested communities, and conforms with emerging international standards for digital archiving" See: http://ahds.ac.uk/ictguides/projects/project.jsp?projectId=708 List of New Projects: * A critical edition of the Acts and Monuments by John Foxe * An Epidoc Corpus of the inscriptions from Aphrodisias in Caria; the more user friendly version is 'The Inscriptions of Aphrodisias project' * Christianization and state-formation in Northern and Central Europe c.900-c.1200 * Electronic corpus of Lute music (ECOLM) II * English Monastic Archives: Access and Analysis * European Critical Heritage : The Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe * Gendering Latin American Independence: Women's Political Culture and the Textual Construction of Gender 1790-1850 * John Ruskin's Teaching Collections * PARADISEC (the Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures) * South Seas Project: Voyaging and Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Pacific (1760-1800) * Race and Labour in the Cane Fields: Documenting Louisiana Sugar, 1844 - 1917 * Text database of narrative poetry of the Italian Renaissance * The Baltic Ceramic Market c. 1200-1600: Hanseatic Trade and Cultural Exchange (Exchange visit from the British Museum, Dr D Gaimster) * The British archaeological expedition to the ancient emporium at Vetren-Pistiros, central Bulgaria * The British Book Trade Index on the Web * The Forgotten Migrants: A Cultural History of Postwar British Migrants Who Returned 'Home' from Australia * The Medieval Palace of Westminster Research Project * The Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence * The Pompey Project: the evolution, structure and legacy of the Theatre of Pompey * The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose * Urban waterfront geoarchaeology in the Netherlands and the UK: a comparison (Exchange visit to Archeologisch en Bouhistorisch Centrum, Gemeente Utrecht, Dr Huib de Groot) * Verbum: the old Latin translation of the gospel of John * Virtual Vellum Suggestions for projects most welcome. Kind Regards, Craig Bellamy -- Dr Craig Bellamy Research Associate ICT Guides, AHDS, King's College, London http://ahds.ac.uk/ictguides/ ----- 26 - 29 Drury Lane 3rd Floor King's College London LONDON, WC2B 5RL Phone: 020 7848 1976 ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________

1 0