Calm down, calm down. Offensive academic inquiry? What a novel idea. Stepping over the 'line'? Since when has academic inquiry been required to remain within known bounds? Address the questions! [perhaps I should have edited the 'lonely-heart seeks similar' section from my CV...it is better to give love than to constantly seek it] The Air-L already has a set of protocols: academic and IT related. I can assure you that the bounds of permitted discourse are very highly policed. I have already skirmished a number of times with the forces of moderation. It is significant that these forces pretend not to exist in this capacity. I have already received one hint of litigation. Great stuff. A hint that, invoking the discourse of the legal profession if I may briefly digress, has no grounds and on the contrary leaves he who hinted open to similar. I think the question to be addressed regarding the range of permissible questions and the acceptability of approach is whether this policing is to be derived from an academic discourse, or whether a 'set of rules' developed contingent to the emergence of online communication aided by a technology of distributed computing within highly specialized conditions and communities is to prevail over this discussion and inquiry. The point is not a minor one. This, it appears, is a list representing the state of academic inquiry into Internet. The state of academic inquiry has been questioned. By me. Regardless of method, regardless of offence, regardless of reaction, notwithstanding any breach to good sense and sound reason, and certainly without deference of 'polite society'. People in industry, government, and in the general public look to this Association to provide meaningful information to help to inform them in their respective fields and duties. The production of wealth, governance, the sharing in our common well-being. I would prefer that an academic discourse which here it seems, going by the mandate of AoIR, is the discourse of the study of culture, is privileged over an IT related 'discourse' dependant upon a 'nettiquette'. The reason is this: there are significant gaps, oversights and repressions in research into Internet. The responsibility of an academic research community, of which this list is a part, is to consider a range of modes of approach and lines of enquiry so that questions that may have been overlooked may be identified, so that resources may be allocated and applied to their research and study. An academic community, of which this list is part, has a responsibility to broader society to inform and to educate. It is in a dialogue with this broader culture, it is in a contractual relationship with the society formed of this dialogue, the social contract. I am all for rules. Believe me I am far from Anarchy on the question of intellectual inquiry. However, I believe the list already has a sets of rules, rules laid down during centuries of academic and scholarly inquiry and rules set out to promote inquiry where there is none. Ignore these rules at your very, very great peril. The Association of Internet Researchers has, it seems, chosen a cultural studies mandate. This mandate promotes inter-disciplinarity, that is it requires of us, whatever our specialism, and whatever our ideological position on the question of whether qualitative or quantitive methods of analysis provide greatest purchase in the age-long quest for knowledge [for the grail, no less], to be open to the ideas, opinions and to research approaches. Again, this inter-disciplinarity is to a purpose. With regard to the rules of academic inquiry: I propose that the discourse, the modes of approach and the means of critical analysis of cultural studies prevail here. The reason is that this inter-disciplinarity of cultural studies, far from being an innovative approach as it is often assumed to be, speaks to broader society. This speaking to, or dialogue with, broader society, church, state, commerce is not particularly a new idea. It first appeared in its familiar form in a directive of the Fourth Lateran Council: an instruction that the 'leered teeche the lewd', in their own language, all methods and means considered, without undue deference to the authority of Latin, or the authority of the Church at that time, or to put it plainly: the educated have a responsibility to inform the uneducated in all matters. The european adaptation of the Islamic model of the University, and much beside, was an outcome of this welcome innovation in culture. The College of the Sorbonne was I think the first University an idea that spread. Are we now to embark upon a great forgetting of the work that brought us to this place? For the sake of nettiquette whatever that is? Simply to make things easier for the world of 'information technology', information and knowledge management and administration, and computing? I think not. I am considered provocative in my approach. This is a curious word and it is true that I did once say to Nikolas Rose, a Professor at Goldsmiths College that my web publication 'difference engine' was provocative, but this was in the context of the very early days of WWW (Jan 1996) and the purpose was to discover the points where the host server and the host institution correlated, and where they did not. By provoking, one found out where boundaries lay, and one found out where there were none. I do not think my research approach is provocative at all. Now, where's my stipend, bursary, budget? Lachlan Brown -- _______________________________________________ Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup Travelocity.com is giving away two million travel miles. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;3969773;6991039;g?http://svc.travelocity.com/p...