HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE NEWS RELEASE Office of College Relations, Claremont, California 91711-5990 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Randy Ringen FEB. 27, 2002 (909) 607-7924 WHAT IS AN INTERNET COMMUNITY? HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE TO ADDRESS THIS QUESTION AT SYMPOSIUM Scholars will examine the role of the "virtual community" in the Internet age CLAREMONT, Calif.-Community in the Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice, an interdisciplinary symposium on virtual communities, will be held on the Harvey Mudd College campus in Galileo Hall, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., on March 9. The symposium's aim is to discuss the impact of the Internet on the philosophy and practices of community. The event is free and open to the public. "This event gathers several of North America's leading thinkers on the social implications of technology to debate an issue of concern to all of us-the shape of public life in the digital age," said Darin Barney, Hixon-Riggs Visiting Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Harvey Mudd College and one of the conference organizers. "It is rare to have such a high-caliber group of scholars together in the same room for an entire day. It should be very exciting." Among the questions to be addressed at the symposium are the following: Do digital technologies threaten community, or do they enable and enrich it? How, and to what ends, are existing communities using these new technologies? Are new forms of community emerging on the Internet? What is the meaning of "virtual community"? Among those who will speak at the conference are Andrew Feenberg, also a Hixon-Riggs Visiting Professor at HMC and professor of philosophy at San Diego State University; Albert Borgmann, Regents Professor of Philosophy at the University of Montana; Doug Kellner, George F. Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education at UCLA; Hubert Dreyfus, professor of philosophy in the graduate school at UC Berkeley; and Steve Jones, professor and head of communications, University of Illinois, Chicago. The conference is sponsored by the Hixon Forum for Responsible Science and Technology and the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences of Harvey Mudd College. The conference organizers are Barney and Feenberg, and professors Dick Olson and Tad Beckman of Harvey Mudd College co-directors of the Hixon Forum. Harvey Mudd College is a coeducational institution of engineering, science and mathematics that also places strong emphasis on humanities and the social sciences. The college's aim is to graduate engineers and scientists sensitive to the impact of their work on society. HMC ranks among the nation's leading schools in percentage of graduates who earn Ph.D. degrees. It is the pioneer of the internationally known Clinic Program, established in 1963. Harvey Mudd College is a member of The Claremont Colleges Consortium, the first consortium of colleges in the United States, which offers students the expansive physical facilities and wide selection of courses, faculty, student services and extracurricular activities of a university, and the small classes and personalized education of a small private college. The Consortium includes Pomona College (established in 1887), Claremont Graduate University (1925), Scripps College (1926), Claremont McKenna College (1946), Harvey Mudd College (1955), Pitzer College (1963), and the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Science (1997).