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? * INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION, & SOCIETY 5: 1 (Jan 2002) Special issue title "Work, Difference and the New Media Industries" guest edited by Nina Wakeford, this is one of the first focused attempts to examine the workers and work environments of new media. With a diverse set of methodological approaches, the contributors examine new media work and its accompanying rhetoric. A few of the chapters focus on firms based in Silicon Valley and one (by Rosalind Gill) draws from workers from six European countries. It seems to me that the contributors are tapping into a whole new realm of Internet studies. Bravo! Contents: Keeping Up: Web Design Skill and The Reinvented Worker pp. 1 - 26 Nalini P. Kotamraju Hot Jobs in Cool Places. The Material Cultures of New Media Product Spaces: The Case of South of the Market, San Francisco pp. 27 - 50 Andy C. Pratt Occupational Technologists as an Occupational Community: Ethnographic Evidence pp. 51 - 69 Daniel Marschall Cool, Creative and Egalitarian? Exploring Gender in Project-Based New Media Work in Europe pp. 70 - 89 Rosalind Gill Trusting Strangers: Work Relationships in Four High-Tech Communities pp. 90 - 108 J.A. English-Lueck, Charles N. Darrah, Andrea Saveri Playing at work: Understanding the Future of Work Practices at the Institute for the Future pp. 109 - 136 Lonny J Brooks, Geoffrey Bowker * INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SEXUALITY AND GENDER STUDIES 7:2/3 (July 2002) Special issue title "Queer Webs: Representations of LGBT People and Communities on the World Wide Web" guest edited by Jonathan Alexander, this is an excellent compilation and does for studies of sexualities and the Net as Wired Women and Virtual Gender did for Net + gender and Race and Cyberspace did for Net + race/ethnicity. I'm still reading it but so far I've enjoyed and learned a lot from Alexander's "Homo-Pages and Queer Sites: Studying the Construction and Representation of Queer Identities on the World Wide Web" and Donald Snyder's "'I Don't Go By Sean Patrick': On-Line/Off-Line/Out Identity and SeanPatrickLive.com." Diverse and in depth contributions. It's great to see a work like this appear. Perhaps the next step is to put together a volume that explores simultaneously the multiple perspectives of race, gender, class, and sexuality as they relate to the Net and new media. Contents: Introduction to the Special Issue: Queer Webs: Representations of LGBT People and Communities on the World Wide Web pp. 77-84. Jonathan Alexander Homo-Pages and Queer Sites: Studying the Construction and Representation of Queer Identities on the World Wide Web pp. 85-106 Jonathan Alexander Under the Rainbow Flag: Webbing Global Gay Identities pp. 107-124 Bettina Heinz, Li Gu, Ako Inuzuka, Roger Zender Virtually Belonging: Risk, Connectivity, and Coming Out On-Line pp. 125-137 Sally R. Munt, Elizabeth H. Bassett, Kate O'Riordan Cross-Dressers in Cyber-Space: Exploring the Internet as a Tool for Expressing Gendered Identity pp. 139-161 Jane E. Hegland, Nancy J. Nelson The Newhalf Net: Japan's "Intermediate Sex" On-Line pp. 163-175 Mark McLelland "I Don't Go By Sean Patrick": On-Line/Off-Line/Out Identity and SeanPatrickLive.com pp. 177-195 Donald I. Snyder Razorgirls and Cyberdykes: Tracing Cyberfeminism and Thoughts on Its Use in a Legal Context pp. 197-213 Bela Bonita Chatterjee Suicidality and Sexual Orientation in Five Continents: Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America pp. 215-225 Robin M. Mathy "Behind the Mask": An African Gay-Affirmative Website pp. 227-234 Jonathan Alexander * LISA NAKAMURA, CYBERTYPES: RACE, ETHNICITY, AND IDENTITY ON THE INTERNET (Routledge, 2002) For my money, I think this is one of the best books the nascent field has to offer, especially from a humanities approach. A blend of cultural studies, visual analysis, and postcolonial studies, the book approaches the Net broadly and leaves us with a ton of interesting things to think about. I'll be assigning this in my undergrad class in the fall and most likely to my graduate class in spring. Any other reading lists folks want to share? Enjoy the summer while it lasts, david silver http://faculty.washington.edu/dsilver/
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
hah, i was in manic fixit sysadmin mode when i wrote this so it was a bit less than clear, not that i ever try to be clear, but when i'm doing the bit-twiddler role, things obviously seem to be rushed without cause, apologies below are some edits
Auerbach suit seems to have one set of effects at a certain level contrary to the effects of the death of atlarge, now the directors will be able to see the ICANN operational records
In parallel moves, though clearly not orchestrated in the same manner, Isoc
-- Jeremy Hunsinger http://www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy cddc/political science http://www.cddc.vt.edu 526 major williams hall 0130 http://www.dromocracy.com virginia tech -under construction blacksburg, va 24061 540-231-7614 jhuns@vt.edu this email was sent from my office --- () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments
Dear air-ls (the nobility of Internet research ;-): I would like to point you to this year's German Online Research Conference (GOR'02): http://www.gor.de/gor02/index_e.htm It will take place in the beautiful University of Hohenheim's castle near Stuttgart in Germany, October 10-11, just days before AoIR conference. The conference features keynote addresses by Mick Couper (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) on 'Visual Design Effects in Web-Surveys' and by Andy Mueller-Maguhn (Member of ICANN) on 'Battlefields in Global Policy Development and their impact on the Internet', and a symposium on 'Social desirability online', chaired by Adam Joinson (The Open University, UK). Also there will be sessions on 'Ensuring quality in online research', 'Cross media', 'Internet, Globalization, and Society', 'Methodology', 'Online market research & e-commerce', and 'Internet-based experiments', totaling about 60 talks and 30 poster presentations. And, I might add, the traditional Thursday night GOR party (deemed legendary...). The conference schedule, with links to all abstracts, can be viewed at http://www.gor.de/gor02/programm_en.html There is a 20% reduction on GOR conference fees for those who also attend AoIR. Please register online at http://www.gor.de/gor02/join_gor_e.php You are advised to make reservations soon, because accomodation is limited in the Stuttgart area. Best wishes from Zurich, --u -- ********** Dr. Ulf-Dietrich Reips Psychology department, University of Zurich Vice president, German Society for Online Research http://dgof.de/indexe.htm
participants (3)
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david silver -
jeremy hunsinger -
Ulf Reips