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a question
by jespert 12 Feb '04

12 Feb '04

Dear list, Who was the first to say that the computer can simulate all former kinds of media? Best Regards Jesper -- Jesper Tække - MA. Ph.D.-Student - IT University of Copenhagen - Dept. of Digital Aesthetics & Communication - Glentevej 67 - DK-2400 NV Copenhagen NW - Phone +45 3816 8888 - Direct +45 3816 8881 - Fax +45 3816 8899 - http://home16.inet.tele.dk/jesper_t/ - e-mail: jespert(a)it-c.dk

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Re: [Air-l] Job announcement: HCI & Usability in Salzburg
by Laurent Straskraba 12 Feb '04

12 Feb '04

Liebe Frau Maier-Rabler, bitte lassen Sie mich wissen, ab wann die Stelle zu besetzen ist. Ich waere an einem weiteren Gespraech darueber interessiert. Mit freundlichen Gruessen Laurent Straskraba ---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- >2. Doctoral Positions / Assistantships in Human Computer Interaction >and Usability > >The contract is based on the Austrian Angestelltengesetz and can be >compared with a Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter on VBG-basis. > > Field of duty: Research in Human Computer Interaction & Usability, >own scientific work (Ph. D. thesis), technical supervision of the >Usability/User Experience Lab, administration work, helping at the >supervision of students and application for funds, contributions to >organisational work (e.g. conferences). > Requirements: Master in computer science, psychology, sociology, >communication science, design or a comparable discipline. > Other qualifications: good methodological knowledge, experiences in >project work, experiences in applications for EU-programs and/or other >scientific funding programs, international conference and >international experiences, leadership qualifications, interest in >interdisciplinary work. > Knowledge in the German language would be advantageous but no >precondition. > > -- --- Mag. Laurent Straskraba Information Society Researcher Ontlstr. 3 A - 4040 Linz mobile: +43.650.7711861 (GMT +1) e-mail: laurent(a)straskraba.net web: http://www.straskraba.net ICQ: 175115055 -- ____________________________________________________________ Free 20 MB Bannerless Domain Hosting, 1000 MB Data Transfer 10 Personalized POP and Web E-mail Accounts, and more. Get It Now At www.doteasy.com

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Re: [Air-l] Dissertation on camgirls online for AoIR folks.
by andrew.herman＠comcast.net 12 Feb '04

12 Feb '04

where or where, Terry? -- Visiting Professor and Research Fellow in Digital Communications and Cultural Policy Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture York University 4700 Keele St.TEL 3007 Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 (416)736-2100 x 30157

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virtual reception theory (or still dense!)
by Denise N. Rall 12 Feb '04

12 Feb '04

> Dear AIR-ers - > Okay, I have refined my question. I think I am looking for literature that defines how reception theory differs when reception is mediated through a virtual audience. I have read a bit of Manovich, L. (200x). "Post media aesthetics: Medium in crisis [online]." Also quite a bit of Michael Heim, virtual realism. To me, he was talking about the differences in social identity when we present ourselves online (also Turkle). I am looking for the reception side of this equation rather than the presentation side and I don't know the CMC comm. theory too well. I have read _Secondary Orality_ and I don't think Ong is the answer, either. Thanks for any pointers in this direction! Denise [Maybe I'm still dense in which case ignore this email as well ;-)] ===== "Stupidity is not just a lack of content; it's also a process" Denise N. Rall, Sustainable Forestry Mentoring Coordinator & PhD student, School of EnvironSciMgmt, Southern Cross University, PO Box 157, Lismore, NSW, 2480 Australia Phone +61-2-6624-8627 Fax +61-2-6624-8637 Office (Tuesdays) (02) 6620 3577 Mob 0438 233 344 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/edu/research/deniserall/index.html __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com

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Re: [Air-l] Re: first post (An Internet Without Space)
by Irene Berkowitz 11 Feb '04

11 Feb '04

Hi guys, I think this debate has been going on for a while -- quantitative v. qualitative methods. I have it specifically documented back to the 13th century. However, the humanist in the specific debate I refer to was claiming that in 30 years the debate would be resolved. (By the way, I am bimethodological). Maybe there is room for both types of exploration dependent on the issue? ---- Original message ---- >Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 16:20:57 -0000 >From: "Luiz Carlos Baptista" <lucabaptista(a)sapo.pt> >Subject: Re: [Air-l] Re: first post (An Internet Without Space) >To: <air-l(a)aoir.org> > >> And I suspect that in order to be >> relevant, and I do believe in the need to be relevant in scholastic >> endeavour (even though others dont agree), this field of study will turn >> more towards real number crunching, rather than worrying about >"cyberspace" and "cyber communities". > >Hi, > >I'm afraid you are 50 years late. >For "real number crunching", computers do a much better job than people - no >need to worry about that. >But for thinking about (and analyzing and discussing) concepts, there is no >match for human beings, at least for now. > >Rgrds, > >Luiz Carlos Baptista >lucabaptista(a)sapo.pt >lucabaptista(a)hotmail.com > > > >_______________________________________________ >Air-l mailing list >Air-l(a)aoir.org >http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l Irene Berkowitz Temple University Office of the Vice Provost 215-204-7596 Please note my new email address below and update your address records accordingly. irene.berkowitz(a)temple.edu

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CFP for book on cell phone use
by Ulla Bunz 11 Feb '04

11 Feb '04

I'm simply forwarding this call, but have no other information on it. Ulla Bunz CALL FOR PAPERS FOR EDITED BOOK THE CELL PHONE: HISTORY, TECHNOLOGY, CULTURE Edited by Anandam P. Kavoori and Noah Arceneaux Dept of Telecommunications Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication The University of Georgia, Athens, Ga 30602 The Cell phone presents itself at the periphery of contemporary discourse about media and culture. TV cops use it as they rush to crime scenes, teenagers use it to connect with their peers, terrorists are traced through calls made on their cell phones, extra-marital affairs draw sustenance from them. Such images, however, do not do justice to the central role that cell phones have begun to play in contemporary society. Cell phones lack the hype of the Internet but are fast approaching the cultural impact of a mass medium. They have begun to shape how we communicate; their use has created new forms of media-centered relations; and in the marketplace they have begun to influence patterns of media ownership and acquisition. In the developing worldthe cell phone is often the first phone for the urban poor. In their intersection with other technologiestext messaging, the World Wide Web and digital photography/videoCell phones have changed how we look at an omnipresent cultural technologythe telephone. This edited book seeks papers that examines three overarching issuesHistory, Technology and Culture-- as they relate to the Cell Phone. Papers from all theoretical (social scientific, cultural, critical, ethnographic, historical) perspectives are welcome. Of special interest are papers dealing with the impact of the Cell Phone in the developing world and with issues of identity politicsrace, gender, ethnicity and sexuality. Papers may address one or more of these questions. These are suggested research questions, not a complete template. You may wish to add to these. History: When did Cell Phones develop into a mass medium? What are the economic, political and institutional factors that have had a major impact on the Cell phone industry? What has been the relation between the history of the Internet and the Cell Phone? What is the future of the Cell Phone as compared to the history of other media technologies? What has been the trajectory of Cell Phone use in the developing world as compared to the West? Technology: What is the technology of the Cell Phone? How did it evolve and intersect with other media technologies (Internet, Phone, Web, Texting)? How have the design and architecture of Cell phones (size, texture, features, color) influenced their growth? What are the current technological limits and possibilities of the Cell Phone? How might Cell Phone technologies grow and change in the next decade? How has it impacted minority cultures and the developing world? Culture: What are the shifts in cultural sensibility that the Cell phone represents? What kinds of normative and interactive models for communication does the Cell phone represent? What forms of mass mediated relationships and Identity politics does the Cell Phone configure? How do the aesthetics of Cell phones impact behavior--especially youth and business culture? How have Cell phones changed the structuring of daily life? How do cell phones intersect with issues with issues of identity-politics, especially those of race, gender and sexuality. What future impact can the Cell phone have as it merges with web and other technologies? What is the impact of the cell phone in developing countries? With changing Geo-politics? The deadline for paper abstracts is September 1, 2004. Please send your queries via email to the corresponding editor, Noah Arceneaux at noahax(a)uga.edu or via mail to Dr. Anandam P. Kavoori, Associate Professor, Dept of Telecommunications, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602.

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a call to activisim from Robert McChesney
by Ed Lamoureux 11 Feb '04

11 Feb '04

a note from McChesney. I'm using his book in a 400-level multimedia course I'm teaching; he's doing a guest teleconference with us. I don't consider the message spam . . . though as a call to specific action over a specific cause, it might be taken as boarderline by some of the kind folks on this list. I hope that you don't find the intrusion . . . well ... intrusive. thanks Begin forwarded message: > From: Robert McChesney <info(a)mediareform.net> > Date: February 11, 2004 11:44:18 AM CST > To: info(a)mediareform.net > Subject: Tell Congress to stop what's really indecent about the media: > consolidation. > Reply-To: rmcchesney(a)mediareform.net > > Congress is having high-profile hearings to debate the crisis in > American media. > > Media concentration? Nope -- indecency. > > Spurred on by Janet Jackson's Super Bowl antics, Congress has decided > to try to address the issue of television's 'race to the bottom.' > Their answer? Increasing token fines on broadcasters that push the > envelope with explicit content. > > We need your help to get Congress to focus on what's truly obscene: > Big Media getting any bigger. > > The Super Bowl half-time show is just the latest example of synergy > gone wild -- CBS (which aired the game) and MTV (which produced the > half-time show) are corporate cousins in the Viacom media empire. And > last summer, the FCC passed rules that will allow media giants like > Viacom to get even bigger, narrowing the range of debate and stifling > minority and independent voices. It has to stop. Members of Congress > are focused on the media today--we've got to tell them what really > matters to us. > > We need you to call your representative in Congress. Urge him or her > to co-sponsor House Joint Resolution 72, the resolution of disapproval > that would roll back the new FCC rules. We need you to tell them that > the real solution to the problems of our media has to address the root > cause: the growing concentration of media ownership. > > Click here for your representative's information and detailed > instructions: http://www.mediareform.net/callcongress.php > > Forward this to everyone you know who cares about fostering a truly > democratic media. > > ---------------- > Last summer, the Federal Communications Commission passed rules that > would allow media giants like Viacom to get even bigger, not only > speeding along the 'race to the bottom' but narrowing the range of > debate, focusing on celebrity over policy, reducing elections to horse > races, stifling minority viewpoints, and barraging us with > advertising. > > Millions of Americans last year told Congress and the FCC that we're > asking for more trouble if we allow the FCC's relaxation of media > ownership limits to stand. That decision allows a single company to > buy multiple TV stations, eight radio stations, the biggest newspaper, > and the cable system in a given community. Media concentration has led > to less children's programming, cuts in newsroom staff, a decline in > minority-owned media, and the stifling of independent voices. > > Congress tried and failed to solve this problem in 2003. We cannot > allow them to ignore the issue in 2004. It's up to us to get our > representatives to commit to truly democratic policies--like reversing > the FCC's media ownership decision. > > Right now is a critical moment. Take 3 minutes and make a difference. > > Sincerely, > > The Free Press Team > > P.S.: While most of the action today seems to be taking place in > Washington, the real story is actually unfolding in Philadelphia. > There, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit will hear oral > arguments today regarding the new FCC rules. For the most recent > information regarding this groundbreaking case, visit > http://www.mediareform.net/media/philadelphia.php . > > P.P.S.: Stay up to date on news relating to media reform with our free > daily headline service. Sign up at > http://www.mediareform.net/news/deliveries.php . Give it a try; both > subscribing and unsubscribing are easy. > > ------------- > To discontinue receiving these messages, go to > http://www.mediareform.net/remove.php . > > > Edward Lee Lamoureux, Ph. D. Director, Multimedia Program and New Media Center Associate Professor, Speech Communication 1501 W. Bradley Bradley University Peoria IL 61625 309-677-2378

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weblog papers
by Thomas N. Burg 11 Feb '04

11 Feb '04

Dear AOIR members and bloggers, Lisbeth Klastrup collected some academic papers and articles on weblogs (http://www.klastrup.dk/archive/2004_02_01_archive.html#107634409840894819) I thought it would be helpful to set up a wikipage where everybody could add relevant papers. So please add you papers and/or those you know of here http://wiki.randgaenge.net/pmwiki.php/Weblog/HomePage Please go to Papers and edit there. Thanks Thomas ----------------------------------------- Thomas N. Burg Center for New Media Danube University Krems http://randgaenge.net http://wiki.randgaenge.net/ http://blogtalk.net http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/znm

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RE: [Air-l] Re: first post (An Internet Without Space)
by Kendall, Lori 11 Feb '04

11 Feb '04

Woo! I greatly enjoyed Don Slater's post on this issue and particularly the rant about ethnography. (No big surprise to anyone who knows me, I'm sure!) Lori ________________________________________ Lori Kendall Assistant Professor of Sociology Purchase College-SUNY lori.kendall(a)purchase.edu

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RE: [Air-l] Re: first post (An Internet Without Space)
by Slater,D 11 Feb '04

11 Feb '04

Hello thread - This discussion seems to be getting increasingly bizarre (am I the only one?). It started with the issue of internet as a 'space' and then entered into 'numbers' (=real data??!!) versus qualitative waffle, and even Arts/Humanities versus SCIENCE - can we really be debating, in 2004, whether social science should be a positive science based on physics (more '??!!'s) For what its worth, you could argue that the second - science - issue was contained in the strange way the first one was posed: someone actually talked about whether we 'believe' in 'cyberspace', in the sense of - 'do we believe that cyberspace exists?' Well, as a completely inumerate, waffly ethnographer I feel it is my responsibility as a 'scientist' not to *believe* in anything whatsoever, in this sense. I want to find out what people actually think, do and say. And I've found it very interesting over the past few years of doing ICT ethnographies in the Caribbean, South Asia and now Ghana to discover that people use very diverse spatial metaphors to understand and structure their use of new comms technologies. Sometimes it ends up looking a bit like 'cyberspace' as we normally define it; sometimes they treat internet facilities as a space but describe it in very different ways (or not spatially at all); sometimes both spatiality and cyberspace seem utterly irrelevant to understand what is going on, or in the users' udnerstandings. They also use incredibly different spatial metaphors and scales (eg, in Trinidad, radio is incredibly local, relates to what people are doing at this moment, on that street corner; whereas much internet use is conceptualised at a global level, but then again is not always used to be part of a global space - more often to be in the same space as one's daughter or mother who lives away; in Ghana, most of the internet use we are observing is split between somewhat cyberspacey online chat with unknown others; but almost all the rest seems to be one amongst many means of maintinaing extended family relations and operations, such as managing flows of remittances from the North, or being an agent for a Northern manufacturer - its simply a quicker way of doing what they always did, within social networks that owe very little to 'cyberspace'. All I'm saying is that I don't even want to ask the question, 'is there a cyberspace?' although spatiality is a crucial and fascinating issue. It's just the wrong way of approaching it. I'd also say that asking about spatiality and geo-positiongings does lead one directly to epistemological, ontological, historical, etc, etc questions - the big stuff. But it's very different if you start from people's diverse experiences or from generic and global concepts of 'cyberspace' (which completely ignore spatiality actually in that they claim a new kind of space as a technological property fo the medium itself - question closed). If you start from experiences - personal and historical - then, like any good anthropologist, you are asking about local concepts and practices of things like space, identity, family, network, community, body, etc and seeing how they and new technologies co-configure each other. And you find it's different everywhere, in important ways (and you can then, for one thing, really see if there are any convergences which might have something to do with global media technologies). On the other hand, if you start from a 'belief' (or a polemical refutation) of 'cyberspace', the degenerate offspring of 1990s cyberbabble!, then you are starting from an abstract set of premises and ensuing issues/agenda that derives from the millenial obsessions of a few northern strands of avante garde theory and practice, such as poststructuralism, postmodernism, cyberpunk literature, and afew net activists, etc, etc, This is hardly a good way to understand what is going on in different places, and what different things ICTs can be for different people. And frankly it seems another kind of imperialism, a projection of northern issues and understandings onto the technology and via that onto everyone else. You have only to see some of the hoops that this makes southern academics and intellectuals jump through if they have to keep up with a completely alien northern obsession with disembodied selves and loss of identity. The only valid answer I can find to the question of 'cyberspace' (and it is unabashedly empiricist) is 'go and take a bloody look'. Of course, 'taking a look' does not mean looking through the spectacles of a quantitative survey, or tracking traffic. I do actually find numbers quite useful, but I've never found that they make any sense at all outside of an ethnographic context - ie, having a framework in which both to generate numbers meaningfully and to interpret them meaningfully. I'm in Ghana as part of a four country comparative study (the others are Jamaica, India and South Africa). My colleagues and I have found that in order to standardize a few lines of questioning for meaningful comparison between countries we have to ask quite *different* questions in each place, and we can only see this because of the ethnographjic base we already have. Eg, relating internet use to poverty is very different in Ghanaian formally extended kinship networks and lineage decents than in Jamaican single parent families with multiple baby fathers - it's only by knowing the different familial patterns of resources and obligations that you can even begin to think how to ask about 'monthly household income'. So what point would there be in asking a standardized survey question aboiut 'household income'. Same goes for Internet or mobile phone use, which is structured differently in all four places. Similarly, with interpretation of numbers: the stats tell me that there are about 700,000 mobile phone accounts in Ghana, yet everyone - and I mean everyone - uses mobiles in one way or another. I can only square this circle by understanding patterns of shared use, the structure of communications kiosks and so on. Similar I'm told by the World Bank that there are about 10,000 ISP accounts in Ghana, but even the poorest areas have numerous cafes, which are filled to overflowing, and everyone I've met so far can tell me their email address. And don't tell me we just need better numbers - this is an interpretative issue about what you are looking for and at, and whether you are senstivite and open to local uses and understandings of technology. What about the Accra parents (similar to cases in Trinidad) who have never seen a computer in their lives, are illiterate and impoverished, but send and receive emails several times a week from their elder son in London, the conduit being their second son who visits cybercafes on an almost daily basis. I don't think that EITHER 'cyberspace' or 'number-crunching' offer anything at all in this (vitally important) instance. I'll let you know how general this is as we continue carrying out more interviews, long term family ethnographies and hanging around cafes. Knowing the exact number of these instances, even if any survey known to science could get at it, is not very interesting to me; knowing whether email has entered into people's communications repertoires in thjese kinds of ways is. If you start with the northern, universalist, techno determinist so-90s presumption of cyberspace as the basis for a research agenda, then either you keep on waffling and asking the wrong questions, questions that don't emerge from engagement with actual practices and experiences; or I suppose you start demanding numbers that will prove things one way or another. If you start with numbers and surveys you just impose another set of universal assumptions across sites, rather than framing or interpreting your questions in location-specific ways. It might get boring to people to keep banging on about ethnography, but it seems to me the only way of subsuming both concepts and numbers within a meaningful engagement with the concrete diversity of social constructions of technology and people. Sorry for the rant, and for this plague on both houses conclusion, but this thread really got to me. Don Slater _______________________________________________ Don Slater Reader in Sociology, London School of Economics Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE Tel: +44 (020) 7849 4653 Fax: +44 (020) 7955 7405 http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/slater ______________________________________________ -----Original Message----- From: elijah wright [mailto:elw@stderr.org] Sent: 09 February 2004 13:36 To: air-l(a)aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] Re: first post (An Internet Without Space) Eero, i know you're an aussie, and that your discourse conventions are a bit different than they are stateside, but you're coming across in this message as pretty rude. > study will turn more towards real number crunching, rather than > worrying about "cyberspace" and "cyber communities". rebellions that do not work through an understanding of what their precursors were inevitably seem to fail. several people appear to be engaged in this discussion with you, currently. and, by the way, there are plenty of people here who crunch the numbers through one set of methods or another. > I think the new generation of students will force change as people who > are less tolerant of "cyberisms" graduate and influence academia. I > also think this new wave of Internet Studies scholars will drive the > area into a more commercially focussed future as they understand the > opportunities to be gained by excelling in the research of real data. be aware that your 'new generation of students' is a loose agglomeration that doesn't even share common research methods, much less opinions about abstract concepts. second: 'scholarship' and 'commercially focused' have traditionally been diametrically opposed. with reason. and could you define real data, please - either you're making a 'slap' at the rest of the community, or you've gotten your head stuck somewhere unmentionable... > However...the internet as we know it may not last more than another > decade, it will be replaced by something else, but I imagine that > whatever replaces it will still be a communications tool. this is a bluesky argument. people have been arguing that the 'net is a passing fad since sometime in the mid-1980s. (!!!) > So perhaps rather than concentrating on the "internet" part of this > equation, all the little bits that are floating around in the academic > world in related areas should pull themselves into one universal > school of communications study so that they not only allow for greater > diversity of study but also protect their own academic industry from > the inevitable technological change. AoIR is sort of a public face for the 'invisible college' of people interested in internet-related research. > division and I would see this evolving in a more global sense through > an online Division rather than being an individual battle for status > at every single university. How this would be put together in flesh > and blood terms I leave to the geniuses of organisation. ... in other words, "i don't really understand how universities around the world work, so i will put out this grand idea and let someone else figure out how to implement it"? jesus. > Thus, when the internet dies and is replaced by something else there > is still a home for those who want to study the new emerging > technology. there are list-folk who're on their third and fourth 'careers' - people always find something useful to do with themselves as their interests change or evolve. :) elijah _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l(a)aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l

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