I don't think we need to bother with the dismal science in understanding the link between communication and commerce. They have had a close relationship at least since the invention of writing in Mesopotamia during the late 4th century BC. Denise Schmandt-Besserat has traced the origin of writing itself to the symbols and markings made on clay tokens used for accounting purposes in the 4th Century BC Middle East, roughly jn the area where Iraq is today. See http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exschhop.html . Furthermore, business has been quick to adopt every major communication technology, from Gutenberg's printing press up to our own era. The Internet is something of an exception in this regard, because commercial applications were explicitly forbidden during its ARPANET and later NSF days. But business has more than made up for it since. We need not invoke McLuhan's identification of money as a communication medium itself to understand commerce as communication. E-commerce, like e-learning, is simply a major application of ICT. Can anyone name a communication technology that has not been used for commercial purposes?.........Alex Alex Kuskis, PhD Adjunct Professor MA Progam in Communication & Leadership School of Professional Studies Gonzaga University -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Barry Wellman Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 3:25 PM To: aoir list Subject: [Air-l] ICE-T again The last Aoir digest suggests that the response to my ICE-T proposal has run its course. As you may recall, I suggested Exchange be added to Information and Communication. I haven't archived or done heavy analysis, but the response on This List was unenthusiastic. More interesting to me were the reasons. Basically, "everything is communication" (Luhmannites), etc, or "everything is information: I wish the proponents of each would duke it out (we could make a YouTube video), but I won't join either camp. You can expand any definition of information or communciation to include anything. I could as easily as say (as a sociologist) that all is social organization and social relations. Take for example, sex: certainly, it is communication and social relations, and for the unprotected, all that DNA information is exchanged (after phone numbers). But like Carrie Bradshaw, I think more is gained by keeping sexual relations as a separate category. Where I made a mistake, by aiming for cute memorability, was the Exchange part for ICE-T. What I was really after was E-Commerce, especially the sending/selling and receiving/buying of Things. So we might call the E: "E-Commerce Technologies" to preserve the ICE-T. And if you think that such behaviour boils down to info or comm, go have it out with the economists. Which leads me to the larger point: do we need to disaggregate I and C? I work a lot in the C world, and it seems to me that interpersonal communication (on/offline) is different from civic involvement (what social network analysts call 2-mode connectivity -- person:organization). YMMV Barry Wellman