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Re: [Air-l] India Rejects One Laptop Per Child
by Jean Burgess 01 Aug '06

01 Aug '06

See also the Guardian just now: "Poverty-stricken Rwanda puts its faith and future into the wide wired world: A mobile in every pocket is motto of tiny country aiming to be hub of technology" http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1834623,00.html And for the political economists, this bit further down the page: "Meanwhile, the government is offering incentives to attract private investment. The home of the senate, a modern seven-storey building, is being turned into an "ICT park" for hi-tech companies that will receive free rent and utilities." ---- Original message ---- >Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 11:14:09 +0100 >From: David Brake <d.r.brake(a)lse.ac.uk> >Subject: Re: [Air-l] India Rejects One Laptop Per Child >To: AoIR mailing list <air-l-aoir.org(a)listserv.aoir.org> > >I was just listening to Negroponte talking about the OLPC at the TED >Talks back in February and he said to my astonishment, "When you see >that kind of thing [referring to favourable reports of trials of >conventional laptops after 3.5 years in Maine], this is not something >you have to test - the days of pilot projects are over. When people >say 'well we'd like to do three or four thousand in our country to >see how it works' - screw you. Go to the back of the line - someone >else will do it and then when you figure out that this works you can >join as well." > >I know that he has now resigned as chair of the Media Lab to run the >OLPC project and he is understandably passionate about it but to say >that because of a few small-scale pilots of different kinds in >different developed and developing world countries, there can be no >doubt his radically different design of laptop will work in any given >country is just irresponsible. > >I only hope this is merely hyperbole on his part and not typical of >the attitude of the whole organization. It seems that Nigeria has >decided to gamble that Negroponte is right (http://allafrica.com/ >stories/200607120369.html). > >(See http://groupblog.workasone.net/archives/2006/06/the-100-laptop- >debate/ for more on the OLPC project). > >Incidentally, I find I am listening to more and more academic >podcasts and I am not sure how to cite them. At the moment I guess >that this one should be treated as a conference proceeding - >something like this: > >Negroponte, N. (2006) "Ted Talk: Nicholas Negroponte". in New York, >February, 2006, http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/ > >But that doesn't tell you it is a podcast and crucially it doesnt >tell you that the part I cited is 5 minutes, 42 seconds in. This >useful guide to Harvard citation http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/library/ >using/harvard_system.html says BS:5605:1990 http://www.mamc.ac.in/ >British.pdf doesnt include recommendations for electronic sources. Is >there an advanced Harvard Style Lab somewhere coming up with >standards for this stuff? What would you do? Should I just make up my >own style? > >--- >David Brake, Doctoral Student in Media and Communications, London >School of Economics & Political Science ><http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/ >mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm> >Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page), http://blog.org/ >(personal weblog) and http://get.to/lseblog (academic groupblog) >Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/ >dealingwithemail/> >callto://DavidBrake (Skype.com's Instant Messenger and net phone) > >_______________________________________________ >The air-l(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/

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Re: [Air-l] India Rejects One Laptop Per Child
by David Brake 01 Aug '06

01 Aug '06

I was just listening to Negroponte talking about the OLPC at the TED Talks back in February and he said to my astonishment, "When you see that kind of thing [referring to favourable reports of trials of conventional laptops after 3.5 years in Maine], this is not something you have to test - the days of pilot projects are over. When people say 'well we'd like to do three or four thousand in our country to see how it works' - screw you. Go to the back of the line - someone else will do it and then when you figure out that this works you can join as well." I know that he has now resigned as chair of the Media Lab to run the OLPC project and he is understandably passionate about it but to say that because of a few small-scale pilots of different kinds in different developed and developing world countries, there can be no doubt his radically different design of laptop will work in any given country is just irresponsible. I only hope this is merely hyperbole on his part and not typical of the attitude of the whole organization. It seems that Nigeria has decided to gamble that Negroponte is right (http://allafrica.com/ stories/200607120369.html). (See http://groupblog.workasone.net/archives/2006/06/the-100-laptop- debate/ for more on the OLPC project). Incidentally, I find I am listening to more and more academic podcasts and I am not sure how to cite them. At the moment I guess that this one should be treated as a conference proceeding - something like this: Negroponte, N. (2006) "Ted Talk: Nicholas Negroponte". in New York, February, 2006, http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/ But that doesn't tell you it is a podcast and crucially it doesnt tell you that the part I cited is 5 minutes, 42 seconds in. This useful guide to Harvard citation http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/library/ using/harvard_system.html says BS:5605:1990 http://www.mamc.ac.in/ British.pdf doesnt include recommendations for electronic sources. Is there an advanced Harvard Style Lab somewhere coming up with standards for this stuff? What would you do? Should I just make up my own style? --- David Brake, Doctoral Student in Media and Communications, London School of Economics & Political Science <http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/ mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm> Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page), http://blog.org/ (personal weblog) and http://get.to/lseblog (academic groupblog) Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/ dealingwithemail/> callto://DavidBrake (Skype.com's Instant Messenger and net phone)

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drugging oz
by Barry Wellman 01 Aug '06

01 Aug '06

One other caution for going to Australia. I travel with blood pressue, diabetes and headache meds. A junior officer of Australian immigration at the Sydney airport was the only perso/place (out of 40ish countries) that wanted to see my doctors' prescription letters. Which I didn't have. Fortunately, a supervisor told her to forget about it, or otherwise, I might have blown a gasket in Oz. (This in 2002.) Barry _____________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman at 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 You're invited to visit & contribute to the new version of "Updating Cybertimes: It's Time to Bring Our Culture into Cyberspace" http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _____________________________________________________________________

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Re: [Air-l] drugging oz
by Sarah Stewart 01 Aug '06

01 Aug '06

the other thing is: your duty free allowance is shockingly stingy! We;re much more generous in New Zealand Sarah Sarah Stewart PhD Candidate Senior Lecturer School of Midwifery Otago Polytechnic Forth St Private Bag 1910 Dunedin New Zealand Tel: 0800 762786 sarahs(a)tekotago.ac.nz >>> M.Allen(a)exchange.curtin.edu.au 08/01/06 12:00 PM >>> Ah Barry, it's all about protecting our community *grin* I will also add to the list of nasty horrible things that Aussies do at the airport... we xray ALL incoming luggage for banned imports - ie fruit, flowers etc - that pose biohazard. If you are coming from a farm, get all the mud off your shoes. That said, we are an incredibly friendly bunch in Australia...... ;) M Dr Matthew Allen Associate Professor Internet Studies Curtin University of Technology, CRICOS 00301J Australia m.allen(a)curtin.edu.au http://smi.curtin.edu.au/netstudies/allen.htm <https://email.curtin.edu.au/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://smi.curtin.edu…> +61 8 92663511 (v) +61 8 9266 3166 (f) President, Association of Internet Researchers http://www.aoir.org <https://email.curtin.edu.au/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.aoir.org/>

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community
by Barry Wellman 31 Jul '06

31 Jul '06

I daresay that most of people think of "community" -- however defined -- as a positively valued term. As Sr Postill notes, in some places it ain't. I'll give you 2 additional examples. Edward Banfield wrote a (in)famous book in the early 1960s, _The Moral Basis of a Backward Society_ that claimed that southern Italians had no community-mindedness, but related only to their households. (A key informant was a guy named Antonio Soprano;-) In 1996, I lectured on community at the Indian Statistical Institute. When I was done, a perplexed scholar wondered why I was so happy about within-caste preferences, communalism, a particularism which enlightened Indians were arguing again. BTW, the American Sociological Association has a large section, "Community and Urban Sociology" (N > 600), including a nice journal, _City & Community_. At its annual meeting this year, my wife's favorite sociologist is getting their Lifetime Achievement Award. And my career isn't even half over ! Barry _____________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman at 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 You're invited to visit & contribute to the new version of "Updating Cybertimes: It's Time to Bring Our Culture into Cyberspace" http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _____________________________________________________________________

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Re: [Air-l] conceptual lexicon
by John Postill 31 Jul '06

31 Jul '06

Thank you to those of you who have responded to my email in which I suggest (on the basis of a thorough literature review, I should add) that the terms community and network are at present the paradigmatic sociation notions in the study of Internet appropriations, and that it is high time that we broaden our Internet sociation lexicon. It wasn't my intention to start a discussion on the relative merits or demerits of the notions of community and network. This, I think, would only reassert their centrality. What I think is more urgent for us as a field of research and theorisation is to explore other Internet sociality concepts, other analytical tools off the beaten community/network track, e.g. social field, action-set, sodality, arena, etc, and see where they may take us. Are other Internet social scientists working outside the community/network paradigm? If they are, what concepts are they using, and why? That said, and at the risk of undoing what I've just tied together, I can't resist responding briefly to Denise Carter's posting on the notion of community: > surely community is not obsolete - but merely changing - it remains, as ever, 'a > slippery concept' [...] (Amit and Rapport, 2002: 14), they suggest on the one hand that the notion of > community is too vague and too variable to be of much use as an analytical > tool, and on the other that the appeal of community is dependant on tensions > between what they call experiences of sociality and platitudes of collective > belonging (Amit and Rapport, 2002: 14)" This is precisely the trouble with community *as an analytical tool* when we try to use it to understand social actualities, that it is 'too vague and too variable'. On the other hand, community *as a folk term*, i.e. as a term used by non-social scientists (including many politicians, cyberactivists and self-taught researchers), it remains an important notion in that it does indeed resonate with people's actual experiences and/or wishes of 'collective belonging' -- at least in Anglophone countries, but not necessarily so in other societies, eg in my experience, urban Spain or rural Sarawak (Malaysia). So yes, by all means, let us integrate into our Internet analyses, where appropriate, the uses people make of 'community' and similar terms in other languages (if they are locally salient, that is), but always bearing in mind that this term is too imprecise to be of much use to social theorists trying to identify and understand social formations. John Postill Sheffield Hallam University, UK http://www.media-anthropology.net/

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Re: [Air-l] air-l Digest, Vol 24, Issue 28
by Stephanie Jo Kent 31 Jul '06

31 Jul '06

Hi Irina, Here is my first attempt at using a wiki with a writing course: http://www.umasswiki.com/wiki/Class:COM375 I think it worked quite well, actually. :-) Am happy to discuss it with you if you'd like to email me offlist: steph Stephanie Jo Kent, M.Ed, CI Doctoral Student, Communication, UMass-Amherst 1852 Sunset Lake Road Brattleboro, VT 05301-9310 kentcon(a)sover.net steph(a)comm.umass.edu http://www.reflexivity.us On Jul 30, 2006, at 3:58 PM, air-l-request(a)listserv.aoir.org wrote: > Hello there, > > I am looking for some examples of innovative ways that "digital > technologies" such as blogs, facebook/myspace, wikis, flickr sites, > cell phones, clickers, etc. have been used in teaching college > classes. These can be success or disaster stories, revelations, or > suggestions of any articles about the topic. > > Thank you! > > irina > > Irina Gendelman > PhD Candidate > CIDR Consultant > Box 352310 > University of Washington > Seattle, WA 98195-2310 > www.urbanarchives.org

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Re 7. Re: Reference on impact of resources going online
by Milliken, Mary C. 31 Jul '06

31 Jul '06

Hi Caroline. You may find the report of the Community Intermediaries Research Project of interest: http://www.unb.ca/cirp/ The research team looked at the impact of online Canadian federal government services on community-based organizations and their clients. All the best, Mary C. Milliken PhD Candidate UNBF Sociology *************** On 7/28/06, Caroline Haythornthwaite <haythorn(a)uiuc.edu> wrote: I'm looking for papers and/or discussion of the impact of governments putting information online, and who can then access that information. Can anyone help with reference(s) or author(s) on this topic? It may be with other discussions of the digital divide, or with e-government. I'd like something with data on who is and is not able to get this kind of informaton if possible, but also any discussion of the issue. Thanks. 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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Re: [Air-l] Community and our Conceptual Lexicon
by John Postill 31 Jul '06

31 Jul '06

Ian Goodwin wrote: >...I think it would be a > large mistake to discount community altogether as a theoretically > unproductive term. > > [...] the most > important point about community is that it pervades everyday life. I'd > go so far as to say it seems to be indispensable to social discourse. I agree that community as an ideal appears to pervade everyday life, and particularly the discourse of policy-makers, politicians, activists and journalists **in Britain and other Anglophone countries **, but not so in my own country of origin, Spain, or, for instance, among Iban people in rural Sarawak where I conducted anthropological research in 1996-98 in longhouses (rumah panjai). These buildings look like ´villages under one roof´, to use an English phrase. People spoke of their ´rumah´ (house), not their ´community´ for which there is no vernacular term. As a folk notion, rumah panjai is indispendable to Iban scholars, just like community would be to scholars doing research on local authorities in Derbyshire, UK, or in Vancouver, British Columbia. So we have to be aware of the particular histories of community as part of certain social discourses (tied to powerful interests) in the English-speaking world. > > It is for this reason we should be careful about discounting community. I am not discounting community as part of social discourse in certain countries and on the internet. As I said in a previous email, it is still a very important folk, non-technical notion in those countries. But as a technical, social scientific term it is far too vague and it is preventing us from exploring *actual social formations* such as working committees, neighbourhood watch patrols, peer groups, web forums, etc.

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Re: [Air-l] teaching with technology (take 2)
by Stephanie Jo Kent 31 Jul '06

31 Jul '06

Hi Irina, Here is my first attempt at using a wiki with a writing course: http://www.umasswiki.com/wiki/Class:COM375 I think it worked quite well, actually. :-) Am happy to discuss it with you if you'd like to email me offlist: steph Stephanie Jo Kent, M.Ed, CI Doctoral Student, Communication, UMass-Amherst 1852 Sunset Lake Road Brattleboro, VT 05301-9310 kentcon(a)sover.net steph(a)comm.umass.edu http://www.reflexivity.us On Jul 30, 2006, at 3:58 PM, air-l-request(a)listserv.aoir.org wrote: > Hello there, > > I am looking for some examples of innovative ways that "digital > technologies" such as blogs, facebook/myspace, wikis, flickr sites, > cell phones, clickers, etc. have been used in teaching college > classes. These can be success or disaster stories, revelations, or > suggestions of any articles about the topic. > > Thank you! > > irina > > Irina Gendelman > PhD Candidate > CIDR Consultant > Box 352310 > University of Washington > Seattle, WA 98195-2310 > www.urbanarchives.org

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