On Saturday, August 17, 2002, at 06:18 PM, david silver wrote:

Folks,

Perhaps as a complement to the interesting abstracts of papers coming through air-l, I'd like to share some interesting readings I've been mulling over throughout the summer. Am I imagining things or has the summer pipeline of publications been particularly interesting this summer?

Well it isn't just publications that have been interesting, there have been some interesting movements and changes in the groups that govern the net. There are 3 major events that I've witnessed this summer which could have great effect in the near future, and there are other things occurring now, which also could have interesting effects. Many of you are aware of what occurred with ICANN and the death of the At large membership, but along the same lines the Auerbach suit seems to have one at a certain level, now the directors will be able to see the ICANN operational records. There is quite a bit more going on with ICANN, i'd suggest frequenting http://icannwatch.org In parallel moves, though clearly not orchestrated, ISOC, which is the holding organization for the IETF, and IAB amongst other things (The IETF is the Internet Engineering Task Force, and the IAB is the Internet Architecture board, they are the groups that develop and approve standards for the internet) has changed its governance from a fairly open structure with some democratic principles to a fairly closed bureaucratic structure. You can find details at http://open-isoc.org Finally, the third major change underway that is somewhat interesting and possibly suspect is the movement of the .org TLD which is due to be given now to ISOC(and partners) from NSI according to teh recent ICANN report. For those that do not know ISOC and ICANN have significantly overlapping senior people involved in interesting ways. So, while it is not improper that this occur according to ICANN rules, it is something that I intend to watch and keep track of for a while. This is good for ISOC because it guarentees a funding stream, but will it be good for the Internet and the growth of .org? I am not sure, but for me the recent moves away from democratic oriented, or at least transparent and thus answerable, governance of ICANN and ISOC sort of insure that the governance of the internet will continue along a direction of more institutional control based on corporate and fiduciary interests. ---- while that occurred, there is also a working group in the IETF recently founded to look at the question of intellectual property rights in ieft. This as most of you are aware is an area that has seen significant moves toward privatization and ownership in the last few years, including last year where there was an attempt to include proprietary standards into W3C open standards, thus requiring people to possibly have to pay licensing fees to even surf the web. Given the recent history of this, several activists organizations are actively watching and possibly interacting with that working group to try to prevent future problems in these lines. ----- Ok, so other than that, going on, I agree with David that it has been a fruitful summer for publishing and activities. There were the materials he mentioned, in which several of our members have been participating, but there was also the CATAC conference which i am sorry i had to miss because i ended up going to a Biotechnology, New Media, and Citizenship conference in Australia. But Charles and Fay recently posted a way to get the materials from CATAC which is great. On some related sides of internet studies I've only read a few books this summer(mainly because i've been reading for prelims and teaching so I can't read everything I want, darn 24 hour days), nonetheless, I'll give my non-critical, mostly constructive 2 sentence reviews below Scott Lash's Critique of Information is an interesting read in many respects. Parts are similar to his earlier works, dealing with the ontological foundations of critique, etc. But he has has some insights into the sociology of the net mixed in, along with some of his political economic analysis of the transformational aspects of information in our culture. Fascinating read overall, though it has some editing errors which gets irritating. Pierre Levy's Cyberculture which is part of Mark Poster and Kate Hayle's series, i think, is an excellent overview of cyberculture that i think would make a good part of any class onthe subject. It is introductory in part's, activist in others, and theoretical in others. Yet overall, it is an easy read with some areas that are contestable, but overall it is well thought out. Media Manifesto's by Regis Debray is interesting in several ways. It seems to be Debray's defense of a new program of study which he called mediology, which is significantly different from media studies in the U.S. as I understand it(which is as sophisticated as many of you). In it Debray is analyzing the relationship between technology and ideation, the formation of cultures and the changes that occur in them. I've only read it once, it was a fairly easy run through, but it is something that I want to return to in order to reread because some of the concepts in this work seem to be fairly significant if we were to apply them toward the internet. Feenberg's Transforming Technology: A Critical Theory Revised is a collection of some of his journal articles with some additions that help to extend and clarify his Critical Theory of Technology. While mainly a work in the Frankfurt School tradition looking at technology in broad terms. I think that if one follows this tradition of analysis and does not have the papers in your files yet, that this book can add a fair amount to ones understanding of the philosophy and social theory surrounding technology. and finally Andrew Barry's Political Machines, which I am not finished with, but I was reading while in Australia, is turning into a fascinating look at the relationship between governance and technology and the interrelations between the two including some insightful chapters on european technology policy. It is in general, so far, a book in the foucauldian school of political analysis with several interesting additions and applications. I think it is definitively going to be a book that I'd use in teaching a graduate level class on technology policy, however, given the divergent traditions in that arena, significant groups probably will not find the book as valuable as others. --- plus i taught my class on the political economy of the internet again, that was fun, if anyone else is teaching in this area, let me know, i'd love to share notes.

jeremy hunsinger jhuns@vt.edu on the ibook www.cddc.vt.edu www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy www.dromocracy.com () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments