- Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Query re. programs in Global Communication
by Nan Kim-Paik 04 Feb '04

04 Feb '04

Dear AoIR members I am facilitating the development of a new curriculum at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the area of global communication, and I would greatly appreciate your insights regarding trends in the field. I would be particularly interested in your thoughts on: --which programs (anywhere in the world) you think are particularly vibrant and provide curricular leadership; --and what you think would be important to include in an undergraduate curriculum in global communication, whether or not such courses are currently included in program with which you are familiar. What we mean by "global communication" is still under negotiation, but we hope that the program will combine the study of communication, information, media and culture. Several people have already suggested that I look into the programs at Goldsmiths and LSE, but if you have other leads, I would be most grateful. Nan Kim-Paik Global Studies Coordinator Center for International Education University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee P.O. Box 413 Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413 nkim-paik(a)cie.uwm.edu Tel: (414) 229-2976

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February on -empyre-: Geert Lovink and Trebor Scholz discuss networks, art and collaboration
by Michael Arnold-Mages 04 Feb '04

04 Feb '04

February on -empyre-: networks, art & collaboration With Geert Lovink and Trebor Scholz collaboration 1. United labour, co-operation; especially in literary, artistic, or scientific work. 2. specifically Traitorous cooperation with the enemy. --Oxford English Dictionary, Online Edition Rarely does a word contain within it such positive and negative connotations. The history of collaboration reflects this duality. Wordsworth and Coleridge, Fluxus, Wiki, Blogging, the organization of the WTO protests, the rise of Nazism in pre-WWII Germany and surrounding states, and the actions of the recent US-led "coalition" in Iraq demonstrate positive and negative aspects of collaborative effort. -empyre-, in cooperation with the conference on networks, art, & collaboration (http://www.freecooperation.org) welcomes Geert Lovink and Trebor Scholz, as they discuss the complexity, challenges and rewards of collaboration both off and on-line. Subscribe at: http://www.subtle.net/empyre ------------ Lovink and Scholz are both part of a collaborative team that created the collaborative weblog Discordia on arts, politics, and techno cultures. (http://discordia.us) ------------ Geert Lovink Geert Lovink is an Amsterdam-born media theorist and activist who co-founded the on-line group for media arts producers, nettime, and the Australian-based forum fibreculture.org. Lovink has lectured widely on media theory, and is a member and co-founder of Adilkno (Foundation for the Advancement of Illegal Knowledge). http://www.laudanum.net/geert ------------ Trebor Scholz Born in East Berlin, Trebor Scholz is a media artist who, involved in ventures both collaborative and individual, addresses issues on the intersection of art, politics and the Internet. Dividing his time between Brooklyn and Buffalo he is professor at the Department of Media Study, SUNY at Buffalo. http://molodiez.org ------------ Subscribe at: http://www.subtle.net/empyre

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RE: [Air-l] Re: first post (An Internet without Space)
by Kevin Tharp 04 Feb '04

04 Feb '04

Regarding the place - space conversation, a question comes to my mind. When we invest of ourselves in cyberspaces or cyberplaces, are we investing in the space/place, or are we investing in the people that occupy that space/place. As a researcher/practitioner in the development of cyber**aces that can encourage and support the interaction between the people of a geographic locality, it seems to me that an understanding of such things lies in the perceptions of the people that appropriate them as part of their lives. Similar to the concept of community (dare I use such word in educated company), it is not the infrastructure that makes the community, it is the people that make the community. The community is then supported by the infrastructure. Using the term place in the vein of "third places", I prefer to focus my lens on the people that make up space to see if it is a place. But more importantly I like to examine how and why people are willing to turn a cyberspace into a cyberplace. To put it in more layman's terms, space is the final frontier, a place is somewhere you go. ;-) BTW, this is my first post to this list. But with recent conversation on this list, I am prepared and my flame proof suit is now on, so fire at will. That's Will --> 8-) Regards, Kevin W. Tharp

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Re: first post (An Internet without Space)
by Michele White 04 Feb '04

04 Feb '04

Thanks to Ben and other colleagues for the developing citations. I have read Harrison and Dourishs Re-Place-ing Space: The Roles of Place and Space in Collaborative Systems as well as other works. I believe that place is not a better term than space. As Dourish suggests, places largely exist within spaces. There may also be reasons to be concerned about the idea that: Physically, a place is a space which is invested with understandings of behavioural appropriateness, cultural expectations, and so forth. I would be concerned that to theorize the Internet or particular technologically mediated settings as places is to suggest that they are geographically situated and to relate a variety of practices, conflicting desires, and diverse users to a singular culture or experience. All my best, Michele

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Re: [Air-l] Re: first post (An Internet without Space)
by Jonna Ahti 04 Feb '04

04 Feb '04

Greetings from Helsinki! The big piles of snow have begun to melt down and the city seems to be floating on water... I would like to add my humble opinion to the discussion of spaces and places on the Internet. I don't see any problem in using these terms when we discuss Internet. More problematic from my point of view are those people who only look at the Internet as a form of technical invention and as a technical environment. For me it is primarily a social environment that is regulated by technical properties. I also find it problematic in the academic world that there is a constant need for terms that sound fine but are lightyears away from the terms that "normal" people use. The users have created a whole bunch of terms that are good and widely spread and I think that "cyberspace" is one of those terms. I think it is one of peoples basic psychological needs to "be at home"; to be a part of something that one can in some way get a hold of. Chat rooms are imagined to be real rooms because we deal with real people there. If someone starts to cry in a chat room other users offer her/him a handkerchief - acts are in other words regarded as real acts. "Space" is a great term because it let's us imagine things spatially but it also tells us that Internet users are aware of the non-spatiality of the net. They know that it is not a real world in a same sense as our physical world but a limitless space(!). I think my role as a researcher is to be a link between academia and Internet users and to try to get these two worlds closer to each other, not to separate them with terms that nobody understands or with theoretical junk that has nothing to do with reality. I am young, naive and unexperienced and not very good in expressing myself in English but I wonder if I am alone with these thoughts on this list... Jonna Ahti -- Ms. Jonna Ahti PhD student NORDICA - Department for Scandinavian Languages and Scandinavian Literature P.O.Box 24 00014 University of Helsinki Finland jonna.ahti(a)helsinki.fi tel. +358-40-5625497

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Re: [Air-l] first post
by Jonathan Marshall 04 Feb '04

04 Feb '04

Good series of questions. I guess the interesting thing to me is why the hell people need to construct using the Internet as a spatial thing in the first place? We don't talk of 'phone space' or 'TV space'. So if I can cheat here, I'd say Cyber'space' is affected by the intersection of at least four factors. Firstly, by the use of offline space Secondly, by the use of the 'locale' for the reduction of communicative ambiguity. Thirdly, by the structures of communication employed online and Fourthly, by the use of space metaphors as a topos for persuasion, Offline space effects online space in that it gives the routes for wires, and the relevant social boundaries which affect the composition of the different types of offline groups (ethnic, class, politcal or subcultural, etc) which influences the composition of online groups, and the ways that people interpret each others messages. These offline space factors determine ease of access, delay, time of day people are online etc and therefore also affects the population composition of online groups which in turn gives the sense of the group's space through the emails or message they emit. (ie this is a way of saying onine groups develop cultures, and these cultures are not independent of the offline world) Offline the 'locale' often gives indications of expected behaviour, (ie bank, public park, person's home etc) which allows interpretation of communication, and a similar idea becomes important in the construction of Cyberspace, as is the distinction made between locales of public and private action - and the behaviour allowed and expected there. The ambiguities which arise are part of the dynamics of onlilne life. Online 'space' is also created by the structures of communication (ie whether the online forum is a Mailing List, MOO, Newsgroup etc) and the patterns of naming and exchange which eventuate. For example, people on a List define list locale by the volume and style of their posts and this might be quite different from other lists - giving it a sense of place and hence (to us) a sense of space. The involvement of communicative organization in the construction of space means that List space differs from MOO space and from Web space and has consequences for the kinds of social action and conflict which can easily eventuate. Online social space in many ways revitalizes the metaphorical similarity between topic and place which features in the rhetoric of Aristotle (ok :). Topos determines the method of persuasion, or poetic figuration which determines the nature of place which in turn determines topos. Topos (topic) is a tool of persuasion in rhetoric theory. People making political arguments about the Internet, or commercial organisations trying to exploit the Internet, often try to define it as a particular type of place to mobilize the persuasive topos associated with that locale. ie whether it should be free or controlled, or how people should behave. For example I was on a list once where people were arguing whether the list was like a lounge room or a pub, in order to say what kind of behaviour was appropriate or allowable. to self promote. I wrote about this at length in: "Cyber-space or Cyber-topos: the Creation of Online Space", Social Analysis, Special Issue on the Cultures of Cyberspace, No. 45(1), pp81-102. which may be completely irrelevant :) jon UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F DISCLAIMER ======================================================================== This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views the University of Technology Sydney. Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects. ========================================================================

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my second post
by Eero Tarik 03 Feb '04

03 Feb '04

thanks to those who replied to my first post both on list and off it, I enjoyed reading your responses. I suppose deep down I must be a Lord Kelvin man - for those who don't remember the 1890's, he wrote... "When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science. " So with this in mind, I put to you the following numbers and observations... a Google search reveals that the term "cyberspace" appears 2.4million times in the online world. Identity appears 14 million times, gender 15 million times, politics 26 million and race 32 million. God appears 64 million times and love gets 119 million mentions - far more important to "cyberspacers" than food, which is only mentioned 86 million times. Interestingly, the internet produces 244 million results, but lags behind good old "sex" with 269 million and business with 266 million.. And at the top of my little list is the search term, "help" which comes in with 301 million results. When I look at the kind of subject matter that appears to be the focus of internet researchers I am dismayed that so much of the intellectual effort seems to be directed at the small end of town. There appears to be an over emphasis upon cyberspace and cyberism, along with identity, gender, race and politics. A search of the titles of the papers presented to last years conference shows that 11 contained the term cyberspace, 32 contained the term identity, 12 contained gender, and 2 contained race - none contained the term "help". The online world, it seems, is screaming out for help - 301million times, yet academia appears to want to talk about minority issues. The online world wants help, sex and business - academia gives it cyberspace and discussion of race, gender and politics. Am I missing something??? Dont you just love numbers :-) see ya Eero Tarik Adelaide, South Australia

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Re: [Air-l] AoIR list and professional courtesy
by Art McGee 03 Feb '04

03 Feb '04

OK, I'll tone down the dripping sarcasm. My apologies. Please try to understand where I'm coming from. As a Black American who has been online longer than most of the people doing scholarly cyberspace research today (when I was growing up, my research heroes were folks like Murray Turoff, Star Roxanne-Hiltz, Tracey Laquey-Parker, John S. Quarterman, and Laurence Landweber), I have a somewhat weird relationship to the study of cyberculture. The so-called Digital Divide has never applied to me and my numerous Black colleagues, and therefore I can tend to be somewhat hostile when confronted with the paternalistic framing which undergirds so much academic research and commercial propaganda regarding technoculture. You're studying it, but I've been living it for 25 years. OK, back to your regularly scheduled programming. :-) Art

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Re: [Air-l] first post
by Art McGee 03 Feb '04

03 Feb '04

> People making political arguments about the Internet, or > commercial organisations trying to exploit the Internet, > often try to define it as a particular type of place to > mobilize the persuasive topos associated with that locale. > ie whether it should be free or controlled, or how people > should behave. Hey, this Jonathan person is really smart. He gets to the crux of the matter, which is that the attempt to define cyberspace in particular ways is not benign philosophizing, but rather, there are specific materialist (Capitalist) and other interests which drive those persepctives. Hot damn! ;-) Art

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Re: [Air-l] first post
by Art McGee 03 Feb '04

03 Feb '04

> I suspect that there are a group of people who entered > this field in the preWeb era who, generally, saw the > internet as some kind of saviour that would create a > benevolent global community and cure humankind of all its > ills, and in this text only dawn they got a little carried > away. I've been online since approximately 1978, and although I have always been optimistic about the potential of cyberspace, I've never gotten carried away and thought it would solve all of society's ills. I suspect the pragmatism of being a Black American had something to do with that. Art

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