Dear Colleagues I was recently awarded a PhD for my dissertation on the arrival and diffusion of the Internet in Israel. It's online at www.sociothink.com I do not try to identify the variables that predict the speed of the Internet's diffusion in a new country, but rather, using the methodological and theoretical tools of Science and Technology Studies, I ask how the Internet got to Israel in the first place. How was the knowledge transferred? By whom? What micro processes were involved? What political, economic and cultural and regime was prevalent in Israel at the time the technology arrived there? And how did changes in that regime from the mid-80s to mid-90s impact on the way the Internet was institutionalized in a new country? And what does all this teach us about how globalization happens? It's a study about the social meanings of infrastructure and while it doesn't seem to belong in any obvious category of "Internet studies", it most definitely is a study of the Internet. I also ask what bringing the Internet to a new country meant to Israel's Internet pioneers, and compare this with the techno-utopianism that characterized press coverage of the Internet in its early years. And for those of you who sometimes use computers to write in non-Latin languages, there is a chapter on how the evolution of the way we present Hebrew letters on the Internet is not just a story about the technical superiority of Unicode, but actually involves the "browser wars" between Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, the shift from mainframe to personal computers, and the emergence of a relevant social group (computer programmers) that was able to devote resources to dealing with a problem that was becoming increasingly troublesome to it (namely, the customization of software). While the case study involves Hebrew, the findings apply to other non-Latin languages, and have implications for our understanding of the Internet as either a cause for cultural homogenization or a preserver of local languages. My own view is that a global solution (Unicode) might offer a lifeline for the representation of local cultures online. Comments of any kind will be received with interest. Best Dr. Nicholas John Research Fellow The Interdisciplinary Center for Technology Analysis and Forecasting Tel Aviv University http://ictaf.tau.ac.il Personal site: www.sociothink.com nikjohn@gmail.com Tel: +972 3 5781993 Mobile: +972 54 7906073