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 _______________________________________________________________________ S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman For fun -- updating songs, movies and history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php Elvis wouldn't be singing Return to Sender these days _______________________________________________________________________
Barry, If I put my computer scientist hat on, ICT is to the point, understandable and sufficiently descriptive but at the same time vague enough to cover a large area of computer science, it's a catch all, that really does not work well in the world of the social scientist. As a social scientist I don't like Information and Communication Technology because each of these three is a huge area in its own right, and I would also argue that ICT has always been about supporting economic activities which always involves exchange. So I would agree that a dis-aggregation is required, but I have no clue how to go about it (sorry not much help). On 7/10/07, Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:
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 _______________________________________________________________________
S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman For fun -- updating songs, movies and history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php Elvis wouldn't be singing Return to Sender these days _______________________________________________________________________
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-- Martin Garthwaite PhD candidate, London Knowledge Lab www.lkl.ac.uk +447957 764819 Skype id mgarthwaite1330 MS IM marting@gmail.com
Dear Barry - Yes, not enthusiastic. Mattthew Allen came up with NICT (network/networked ICT) and I think he got the same reaction. ICT is good enough, CMC is still available but seems to be losing steam. E-commerce is the term I would use to single out mechanisms of exchange where they need to be appropriately differentiated. While writing my thesis, I actually dug down and did a genres of computing, because they do stem from different programming algorithms. High level: collecting & processing (from tabulation, US census) conveying scheduling (Sabre) analyzing second level: collecting >indexing and reporting (COBOL; Fortran) conveying >analyzing> [scientific applications]predicting & modeling third level, takes off from second level: conveying > performing predicting & modeling > performing performing & conveying> 1) virtual identity performing & modeling> 2)virtual community Ah this doesn't make any sense written up like this. Barry, check website in another week and I will stick the table up there. My point is, these genres are derived from computer operations that then branch out discretely into common applications that can be shown to have a shared root algorithm. CMC, ICT, ICE-T is just a way to classify a set of activities without necessarily capturing the root activity shared thoughout the system. I'm sure this doesn't help but I still think it's important to consider deeper levels than the surface activity - and see what's driving the formation of said activities and how they transpire over the network. Cheers, Denise Denise N. Rall, PhD Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA Tues: Room T2.17, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 Mobile 0438 233 344 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/rsm/staff/pages/drall/ Virtual member, Cybermetrics Group, University of Wolverhampton, UK http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/index.html ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss an email again! Yahoo! Toolbar alerts you the instant new Mail arrives. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/
Yes, CMC is losing steam to "online communication." It seems to me that ICT is itself losing steam to "digital technologies" or "digital media." What do you all think? mark
Yes, not enthusiastic. Mattthew Allen came up with NICT (network/networked ICT) and I think he got the same reaction. ICT is good enough, CMC is still available but seems to be losing steam.
-- Mark Warschauer Professor of Education and Informatics University of California, Irvine 2001 Berkeley Place Irvine, CA 92697-5500 tel: (949) 824-2526, fax: (949) 824-2965 markw@uci.edu; http://www.gse.uci.edu/faculty/markw
Mark Warschauer schrieb:
Yes, CMC is losing steam to "online communication."
It seems to me that ICT is itself losing steam to "digital technologies" or "digital media." What do you all think? mark
Yes, not enthusiastic. Mattthew Allen came up with NICT (network/networked ICT) and I think he got the same reaction. ICT is good enough, CMC is still available but seems to be losing steam.
i think that ICT is a well-established term and hence shall and will be further used, but it is a vague term because also a letter or a conversation is an ICT, but not a digital ICT. hence i think digital technologies grasps an important aspect, but is not suited. for me it is important that ICTs are not just a medium of co-operation, but digital networked systems that enable cognition (information), communication, and (importantly) co-operation. hence i would speak of digital networked CCC-T, but i don't think inventing such new terms makes any sense - let's just stick to ICTs because it is well-established. christian -- -- _____________________________ Univ.Ass. Dr. Christian Fuchs Assistant Professor for Internet and Society ICT&S Center - Advanced Studies and Research in Information and Communication Technologies & Society http://www.icts.uni-salzburg.at University of Salzburg Sigmund Haffner Gasse 18 5020 Salzburg Austria christian.fuchs@sbg.ac.at Phone +43 662 8044 4823 Fax +43 662 6389 4800 Information-Society-Technology: http://fuchs.icts.sbg.ac.at http://www.icts.uni-salzburg.at/fuchs/ Managing Editor of tripleC - peer reviewed open access online journal for the foundations of information science: http://triplec.uti.at Forthcoming BOOK: Fuchs, Christian (2008) Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age. New York: Routledge.
While writing my thesis, I actually dug down and did a genres of computing, because they do stem from different programming algorithms.
tentatively... I'm a little puzzled by the way that you're using the word "algorithms" here, because I don't really see anything that I would call an algorithm popping up in the lists below. ['analysis' or 'modeling' might be natural places for algorithmic activity to take place, however...] Might it not be simpler to call these "computing paradigms" and to assert that they are evolutionary stages in popular conceptualizations of how computing 'works' and is used.. or maybe that's where you're headed? :) Hopefully the chart that you're going to put up will clarify some of this a bit. I also wonder if maybe this would make more sense as a tree-structure, rather than in the form that it currently is... it does seem a little bit taxonomic. best, --elijah
High level: collecting & processing (from tabulation, US census) conveying scheduling (Sabre) analyzing
second level: collecting >indexing and reporting (COBOL; Fortran) conveying >analyzing> [scientific applications]predicting & modeling
third level, takes off from second level: conveying > performing predicting & modeling > performing performing & conveying> 1) virtual identity performing & modeling> 2)virtual community Ah this doesn't make any sense written up like this. Barry, check website in another week and I will stick the table up there.
My point is, these genres are derived from computer operations that then branch out discretely into common applications that can be shown to have a shared root algorithm. CMC, ICT, ICE-T is just a way to classify a set of activities without necessarily capturing the root activity shared thoughout the system.
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
After making some very interesting points, Dr. Kuskis asks "Can anyone name a communication technology that has not been used for commercial purposes." What a great question! What do "communication technology" and "commercial" mean? Does altruism exist? Perhaps communication is the oldest profession. I do not communicate unless I get some value from the communication. Value can be measured in a number of ways -- nothing is going into my bank account as result of my response to this question but I'm paying for the privilege to be able to respond and value the thoughts of other members of this list. Would Ham radio which explicitly does not allow commercial use qualify? I know that various organizations make some profit in materials useful in training for the ham license which has become a lot easier to get now that morse code is not required. Other companies earn money selling ham radio equipment. What about various open source software projects such as FileZilla and VLC? I suppose they have also been used for commercial purposes too but the authors have not profited from such use. I don't recall seeing advertisements on Wikipedia either but I have seen some requests for donations. Hmmm. Even the AOIR list server has been used to distribute information about books and conferences. Does that make this list commercial? Charles Balch MEd, MBA, Ph.D. Professor of CIS Arizona Western College -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Alexander Kuskis Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 5:59 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] ICE-T again 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
I guess commercial is another one of those concepts that can blanket the whole world if a determined weaver puts her/his mind to it. Just like Information, communication and technology, not to mention society, culture. politics/power, and I've even heard literacy used this way, which sounded like a stretch to me. In some ways pulling a concept out to its fullest reaches is very rewarding and exciting - who hasn't been enthralled by thinking "circumstance x really is about [insert master concept here]" But I can't help but think that a lot of this comes down to something more like branding than understanding. Ericka Menchen Trevino On 7/12/07, Charlie Balch <charlie@balch.org> wrote:
After making some very interesting points, Dr. Kuskis asks "Can anyone name a communication technology that has not been used for commercial purposes."
What a great question! What do "communication technology" and "commercial" mean? Does altruism exist? Perhaps communication is the oldest profession. I do not communicate unless I get some value from the communication. Value can be measured in a number of ways -- nothing is going into my bank account as result of my response to this question but I'm paying for the privilege to be able to respond and value the thoughts of other members of this list.
Would Ham radio which explicitly does not allow commercial use qualify? I know that various organizations make some profit in materials useful in training for the ham license which has become a lot easier to get now that morse code is not required. Other companies earn money selling ham radio equipment.
What about various open source software projects such as FileZilla and VLC? I suppose they have also been used for commercial purposes too but the authors have not profited from such use. I don't recall seeing advertisements on Wikipedia either but I have seen some requests for donations.
Hmmm. Even the AOIR list server has been used to distribute information about books and conferences. Does that make this list commercial?
Charles Balch MEd, MBA, Ph.D. Professor of CIS Arizona Western College
-----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Alexander Kuskis Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 5:59 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] ICE-T again
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
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As a matter of clarification, I was not expanding the concept of commerce "to its fullest reaches", but simply pointing to the fact that since writing itself derives from a transactional impulse, the need to maintain records of commercial exchanges using markings on clay tokens, that the connection between communication and commerce has been a close one, at least since classical times. The words "commerce" and "communication" share the same Latin root word "com", meaning "together" and our word "communication" derives from the Latin, "communicare", meaning "to impart, share" or "make common" ( http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=c&p=20 ). And to reply to Charlie Balch, my point was that every major communication technology, from the printing press to the Internet has been adopted by business, usually sooner rather than later, both for transactional and marketing purposes. And yes, maybe that does make commerce "the oldest profession", since the purveyors of what is usually taken to be the oldest profession did engage in an exchange transaction for gain. That does not mean there are not pockets of activity within every communication medium that are antithetical to commerce, such as ham radio, open sourse software, or the discussions on an academic list like this one. On the medium level, business exploits radio, computer software, as well as most Internet genres from discussion boards to blogs. All of this is in support of my contention that we do not need a new terminology such as the proposed ICE-T, because the word "communication" subsumes all commercial exchange, whether it be transactional or informational......Alex Kuskis -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Ericka Menchen Trevino Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2007 5:09 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] Is all Communication Commercial? I guess commercial is another one of those concepts that can blanket the whole world if a determined weaver puts her/his mind to it. Just like Information, communication and technology, not to mention society, culture. politics/power, and I've even heard literacy used this way, which sounded like a stretch to me. In some ways pulling a concept out to its fullest reaches is very rewarding and exciting - who hasn't been enthralled by thinking "circumstance x really is about [insert master concept here]" But I can't help but think that a lot of this comes down to something more like branding than understanding. Ericka Menchen Trevino On 7/12/07, Charlie Balch <charlie@balch.org> wrote:
After making some very interesting points, Dr. Kuskis asks "Can anyone name a communication technology that has not been used for commercial purposes."
What a great question! What do "communication technology" and "commercial" mean? Does altruism exist? Perhaps communication is the oldest profession. I do not communicate unless I get some value from the communication. Value can be measured in a number of ways -- nothing is going into my bank account as result of my response to this question but I'm paying for the privilege to be able to respond and value the thoughts of other members of this list.
Would Ham radio which explicitly does not allow commercial use qualify? I know that various organizations make some profit in materials useful in training for the ham license which has become a lot easier to get now that morse code is not required. Other companies earn money selling ham radio equipment.
What about various open source software projects such as FileZilla and VLC? I suppose they have also been used for commercial purposes too but the authors have not profited from such use. I don't recall seeing advertisements on Wikipedia either but I have seen some requests for donations.
Hmmm. Even the AOIR list server has been used to distribute information about books and conferences. Does that make this list commercial?
Charles Balch MEd, MBA, Ph.D. Professor of CIS Arizona Western College
-----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Alexander Kuskis Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 5:59 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] ICE-T again
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
participants (9)
-
Alexander Kuskis -
Barry Wellman -
Charlie Balch -
Christian Fuchs -
Denise N. Rall -
elw＠stderr.org -
Ericka Menchen Trevino -
Mark Warschauer -
Martin Garthwaite