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Commander Laurel's Excellent Adventure
by thom 20 Oct '01

20 Oct '01

This is an interview I did recently with Brenda Laurel, author of the Utopian Entrepreneur very recently published by MIT Press. Brenda Laurel is a very long time culture worker in the area of computer game design and human interface design. Utopian Entrepreneur is about her experiences 'in the industry' of interaction and what is mis-named 'newMedia' design. The Utopian Entrepreneur is published as part of MIT's new Mediawork pamphlets series which means it is short (90+ pages) and totally to the point. I'm using it in my 'Art, Entertainment and Information' grad class at IU this term and the students like it a lot. All of it is interesting but her discussion of why she wants to be viewed as a 'culture worker' as opposed to an artist is definitely worth the price of admission, particularly in light of September 11th. The review is at: http://www.technos.net/journal/volume10/3gillespie.htm --Thom \\\\//// tHoM gIllEsPiE /ww ww\ Indiana University, Telecommunications Dept 6 (*][*) ? 1229 E 7th St Radio & TV Bldg \ .7 / Bloomington, IN 47405-5501 USA ( --') thom(a)indiana.edu 812-855-3254 (v) WWWW THE MIME PROGRAM: www.mime.indiana.edu / WW \ www.indiana.edu/~slizzard/resume/page.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ What is the use of a book, thought Alice, without pictures or conversation. -Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventure in Wonderland

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internet cafes in airports
by Randy Kluver 20 Oct '01

20 Oct '01

In reference to Ulla Bunz's query about internet cafes in airports, on my way home from Minneapolis, I found internet cafes both in Tokyo's Narita airport as well as Singapore's airport. I am not sure about other Asian cities, but there are at least two airports with internet cafes. Singapore's Changi airport also has wireless ports available in the airport for use by travellers. Randy Kluver Information and Communication Management FASS 3, #04-16 National University of Singapore Singapore, 117570 (65) 874-8755, fax (65) 779-4911 -- Message: 10 From: "Bunz, Ulla K" <ulla(a)ukans.edu> To: "'air-l(a)aoir.org' '" <air-l(a)aoir.org> Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 19:42:05 -0500 Subject: [Air-l] internet cafes Reply-To: air-l(a)aoir.org In the last three months, I've traveled a bit. I've been at the following airports: Kansas City, Minneapolis, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Seattle, Newark, Frankfurt (Germany), Cologne (Germany), Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Stavanger (Norway). I'm also familiar with airports in major cities such as Munich, Brussels, London, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Sydney, and Auckland. And yet, at all these airports, one thing is missing. How come I can't remember seeing any Internet Cafes in any of these airports? Traveling across the globe I have become quite proficient at computer-spotting. And sure, there are ads one one dot something or other plastered all over the place. But what if I should feel the urgent desire to act upon one of these ads (don't they wish)?! Has no one thought about this before? Is this an unexplored business niche that some Jeff Bezos has to act upon? Are there laws restricting web use in airports? Doesn't anyone else care? Or am I just blind? Certainly I can't be the only person who'd like to check their email on a two or three hour lay-over? I'm wondering: Can anyone think of an airport that HAS an Internet cafe? If so, do you know who runs it? If not, does anyone know why this lack exists? I've always wanted to do an ethnography on relationship formation and maintenance among long-term backpackers (there's five main types of people, and two main types of relationships, which are maintained mainly through email). Maybe we need a study on information acquisition of frequent flyers/travelers? There's all this time to spend while waiting, and yet, we arrive at our destination trying to catch up. In this time and age, there's something wrong with that, don't you think? ulla the vagabond

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RE: [Air-l] Internet Cafes in Airports
by Jennifer Stromer-Galley 19 Oct '01

19 Oct '01

I have noticed few Internet Cafes per se, but as Brian Newberry points out, rooms or places where people can take their laptop and connect up. Indeed, when I was passing time in the MSP airport before flying home on Monday, I noticed that in the food court I was eating at, there was a telephone jack, that if I had a modem attached to my laptop, I could dial into my ISP. It was fairly innocuous, and if I hadn't been sitting right in front of the jack, I would not have noticed it. A friend of mine worked for a company developing Internet kiosks at airports, where with the swipe of a credit card, a person could access the Web for 10 minutes at a time. His company went out of business after rolling out Kiosks in 3 cities' airports. The cost of the Kiosks themselves, the red tape at the airports, the cost of installing the fiber optics in the terminals, led to their demise (along with the drying up of venture capital . . . .). It does seem to me that in this new age of air travel (with longer stays in the airports themselves before boarding) that Internet Cafes (where the Cafe offers jacks for those with laptops and computers for those who do not) would be quite popular. ~Jenny Stromer-Galley Annenberg School for Communication University of Pennsylvania jstromer(a)asc.upenn.edu > -----Original Message----- > From: Newberry, Brian Wayne [mailto:bnewberry@ku.edu] > Sent: Friday, October 19, 2001 12:20 PM > To: 'air-l(a)aoir.org' > Subject: [Air-l] Internet Cafes in Airports > > > I too have done a fair bit of traveling in the past year or > two and have > noticed a lack of Internet Access in airports. I have never > seen an Internet > Cafe in an airport but several I have been to have had some > sort of Internet > access. > > Specifically, Salt Lake City Utah has little rooms you can rent with > computers and Internet access. Several airports I have been > in have had > Internet kiosks. I think Chicago is one airport with this system. > > All of these require a credit card to use which can be a > drawback. I would > also think that the coffee shop atmosphere of a cafe would be > a welcome > addition to the process of communicating. > > Ulla, can I invest? > > Brian Newberry > University of Kansas > > <snip> > Message: 10 > From: "Bunz, Ulla K" <ulla(a)ukans.edu> > To: "'air-l(a)aoir.org' '" <air-l(a)aoir.org> > Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 19:42:05 -0500 > Subject: [Air-l] internet cafes > > > > In the last three months, I've traveled a bit. I've been at > the following > airports: Kansas City, Minneapolis, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Seattle, Newark, > Frankfurt (Germany), Cologne (Germany), Amsterdam (Netherlands), and > Stavanger (Norway). I'm also familiar with airports in major > cities such as > Munich, Brussels, London, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Sydney, and > Auckland. > > And yet, at all these airports, one thing is missing. > > How come I can't remember seeing any Internet Cafes in any of these > airports? > > _______________________________________________ > Air-l mailing list > Air-l(a)aoir.org > http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l >

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Re: [Air-l] List of Mailing Lists
by Zunt＠aol.com 19 Oct '01

19 Oct '01

In a message dated 10/18/2001 2:18:31 PM Eastern Daylight Time, John.White(a)wku.edu writes: > I would be interested in identifying resources for 'lists' of mailing lists. The only one I know about is Catalist: http://www.lsoft.com/catalist.html It is incomplete, insofar as it is limited to public lists that use L-Soft software (LISTSERV). I'd be interested to hear about similar resources. Cheers, Bob Briggs Westport, MA

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Panel written up in Newsbites
by Josephine Ferrigno-Stack 19 Oct '01

19 Oct '01

Hi - just wanted to let you all know that one panel (with Naomi Baron and John Logie) at the conference was written up by Newsbites - a tech newsletter. Here's the link: http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171297.html Best josephine *********************** Josephine Ferrigno-Stack PhD Student Annenberg School for Communcation University of Pennsylvania 3620 Walnut St. Philadelphia, PA 19104

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Internet Cafes in Airports
by Newberry, Brian Wayne 19 Oct '01

19 Oct '01

I too have done a fair bit of traveling in the past year or two and have noticed a lack of Internet Access in airports. I have never seen an Internet Cafe in an airport but several I have been to have had some sort of Internet access. Specifically, Salt Lake City Utah has little rooms you can rent with computers and Internet access. Several airports I have been in have had Internet kiosks. I think Chicago is one airport with this system. All of these require a credit card to use which can be a drawback. I would also think that the coffee shop atmosphere of a cafe would be a welcome addition to the process of communicating. Ulla, can I invest? Brian Newberry University of Kansas <snip> Message: 10 From: "Bunz, Ulla K" <ulla(a)ukans.edu> To: "'air-l(a)aoir.org' '" <air-l(a)aoir.org> Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 19:42:05 -0500 Subject: [Air-l] internet cafes In the last three months, I've traveled a bit. I've been at the following airports: Kansas City, Minneapolis, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Seattle, Newark, Frankfurt (Germany), Cologne (Germany), Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Stavanger (Norway). I'm also familiar with airports in major cities such as Munich, Brussels, London, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Sydney, and Auckland. And yet, at all these airports, one thing is missing. How come I can't remember seeing any Internet Cafes in any of these airports?

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internet cafes
by Bunz, Ulla K 19 Oct '01

19 Oct '01

In the last three months, I've traveled a bit. I've been at the following airports: Kansas City, Minneapolis, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Seattle, Newark, Frankfurt (Germany), Cologne (Germany), Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Stavanger (Norway). I'm also familiar with airports in major cities such as Munich, Brussels, London, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Sydney, and Auckland. And yet, at all these airports, one thing is missing. How come I can't remember seeing any Internet Cafes in any of these airports? Traveling across the globe I have become quite proficient at computer-spotting. And sure, there are ads one one dot something or other plastered all over the place. But what if I should feel the urgent desire to act upon one of these ads (don't they wish)?! Has no one thought about this before? Is this an unexplored business niche that some Jeff Bezos has to act upon? Are there laws restricting web use in airports? Doesn't anyone else care? Or am I just blind? Certainly I can't be the only person who'd like to check their email on a two or three hour lay-over? I'm wondering: Can anyone think of an airport that HAS an Internet cafe? If so, do you know who runs it? If not, does anyone know why this lack exists? I've always wanted to do an ethnography on relationship formation and maintenance among long-term backpackers (there's five main types of people, and two main types of relationships, which are maintained mainly through email). Maybe we need a study on information acquisition of frequent flyers/travelers? There's all this time to spend while waiting, and yet, we arrive at our destination trying to catch up. In this time and age, there's something wrong with that, don't you think? ulla the vagabond

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Re:Finding email survey samples
by Monika Merkes 19 Oct '01

19 Oct '01

Danyel You could try PC User Groups. APCUG (The Association of Personal Computer User Groups) has a list of groups on their website at http://www.apcug.org/index.shtm. I'm a member of the Melbourne PC User Group, the second largest PC User Group, and I'm happy to let our newsgroup know about your survey. Email me off-list if you want me to do so. Cheers Monika http://hs053287.health.latrobe.edu.au/bbww/ > > Message: 5 > From: Danyel Fisher <danyelf(a)cs.berkeley.edu> > To: air-l(a)aoir.org > Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 18:37:50 -0700 > Subject: [Air-l] Fw: Finding email survey samples > Reply-To: air-l(a)aoir.org > > First, thanks to all for a great conference. I had a marvelous time meeting > a lot of people, and look forward to future conferences. > > I'm currently working on a survey of email accounts. I've spent some time > writing a series of questions that ask users how many accounts they > maintain, and for what purposes. It's a brief survey, under ten minutes. > > But now (as always), I need to find a sample population. The first > temptation is to spam some mailing list somewhere: after all, mailing list > users are likely to maintain multiple accounts, and so the sample would be > broad. > > But I wouldn't want to get spammed myself, and I don't think anyone else > does, either. So I'm looking for other good sources of subject pools. Where > do you find sets of internet users? > > Danyel > > --__--__-- >

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(no subject)
by bromseth 18 Oct '01

18 Oct '01

Hi - inspired by Nancys thoughts on the conference in Minneapolis, I thought I'd "chime in"... knowing that nobody saw me nodding my way through her e-mail when reading(oh, this text-based reader-invisible medium...): I share so many of the thoughts and impressions you are describing! Doing research on CMC, usually situated in Norway - and far from what I experience as the north-american predominant research community, I have only had the opportunity to read litterature and follow the discussions on Aoir-l (and this list has really made a big difference in being able to get a feeling of what is going on). I had been looking intensly forward to this conference - putting faces to names, hoping to get to discuss with people with similar research interests as me, getting new input and feel the brain work and change from it, especially since I missed last years' conference. And I must say I got so much out of it that I could have been satisfied with half! Like Nancy is writing, I had a similar feeling of "community" - even if I hadn't met most of the people at the conference before. I actually felt like "coming home" (I know it sounds a little halleluja, but that's what I felt!) - in some conferences/seminars you feel that you share certain perspectives , theoretical and methodological issues with the other participants/presenters, to a smaller or bigger degree, which in turn give you a feeling of belonging or not. I have been thinking of why I have this feeling- and to me I think it is not only sharing the "object of study", but also similarities in methodological approaches, focus on use and users - not the technology itself, many using critical theory as a basis, more focus on gender and/or race in a bigger degree than in other fields I relate to (and also more integrated as perspectives I think). Usually not more than two of my three "fields" or "research feet" that I'm leaning on are focused at the same time (communication/culture studies, gender studies and social scientific technology studies) - I felt that this conference gave input on all three areas - and to a large extent integrated with eachother. Maybe because the reserach field is so young (and small?), we all sort of relate to a lot of the same litterature to a greater extent - and because its relatively new have more discussions on a metalevel concerning theoretical consepts and/or the terminology on the concepts we study? It also felt satisfying that 2 (at least?) of the keynote speakers adressed gender and ethnicity issues in their speeches (I think the keynoters where really good on a whole too) Anyway - even if it *is* a research field, an interdisciplinary network or whatever (depends also on the effort put into developing it further I would say?) I am deeply grateful to all organisers of the conference and the aoir- board for making an arena for meeting and developing issues and knowledge in Internet studies. What I particularly learned and liked about the many presentations was the focus on not only what goes on on the internet as a medium (and its users and non-users) - but also; what discourses that are created *about* the Internet (in the media/society in general) as a social phenomena - and how they interrelate. I also think Lisa Nakamura made a really good point in the panel adressing Internet studies as critical studies, when pointing at why we should consider both these levels in a critical research approach of the Internet (if I understood her correctly..) - so that we also can participate and influence the discussions and negotiations on the development of the Internet and its content in the future. Another panel engaging me deeply was the one on ethical issues related to doing Internet studies, that unfortunately was on Sunday and with very few attendants. These discussions will hopefully continue on the separate discussion list made by Amy Bruckman. Anyway, I won't go into more detail about my own reflections, or this will be a very long e-mail.. But it is really nice to share a lot of common points of reference with all participants as a point of departure in future discussions (even if we probably attended quite different conferences dependent on which panels we went to). Just a few comments on the practical part as an input for next years conference in Maastricht: - Pre-conference workshops: I hope it is possible to arrange pre-conference work-shops before the conference, that will have enough seats for all who'd like to participate. It's a good way of "getting started", to be able to relate issues to own work and to get to know other participants (especially if there are no common lunch breaks) - It would be very handy if there was a list of all participants at the conference, and their e-mail adresses. In that way it would be easier to contact all the people you wanted to speak to/get paper from, but never had time to approach at the conference.. - informal evening reception and dinner was great- lots of opportunities to meet people and discuss. I'd rather have that then evening sessions with paper presentations - at least I need time to consume and reflect on all the input!(and getting in touch with others is equally important I think!) Thanks a million again, to all those people who worked so hard to arrange the conference. I can't wait to go to Maastricht! (and probably we will also be more than 2 from my country when it is in Europe!) Best regards, Janne Bromseth, PhD-student at Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (at the moment situated at Department of Communication, UiC)

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Internet samples
by Leo Simonetta 18 Oct '01

18 Oct '01

> From: Danyel Fisher <danyelf(a)cs.berkeley.edu> > > But I wouldn't want to get spammed myself, and I don't think > anyone else > does, either. So I'm looking for other good sources of > subject pools. Where > do you find sets of internet users? I don't know if this is at all the kind of sample you are looking for but Survey Sampling, Inc. has Internet samples. While I myself have not used them I understand that they are recruited for willingness to participate in email surveys. I use Survey Sampling all the time for Random Digit Dialing and listed sample telephone surveys and have been quite pleased with their products.

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