Am I the only one who saw this last week and thought, "Oh my goodness, they're *still* working on interactive TV???!!!" After the "We are going to make the web into TV" hype from clueless media co's in the mid-1990s.... After QUBE.... After videotex.... Going by... I think it's Fidler... new techs take 30 years to succeed, if indeed they are going to, it only needs about 10 more years (unless there is earlier iTV work, which there may be -- oh, wait, there is. Well, 30 years is here...) iTV is not exactly one of my research areas, but it is all about control, power, capitalism, democracy, and hegemony, and those are cool things. iTV is, in some ways, a battle either for or against the Internet: either assumption of control over it (turning it into TV), or hoping to make it irrelevant. Like books, the Internet isn't going to go away overnight, but it might end up with a different name and different functionality (in fact this has happened several times since 1969). One annoying and amusing aspect is that it is the same thing all over again, again. The videotex story, the iTV (interactive) story, the still-unfolding Internet story (well Lessig might say it's all over already), they're all the same. Probably others as well. Oh, radio! Even what we in the US call "public television." Maybe even public-access cable stations... always a sidelining of non-corporate interests (this is all totally US-centric, btw). (You could even throw the original Divx story in there: it's all about control, overreaching, and failure.) (I call it "the control devolution", punning on the Beniger and the Shapiro books.) Perhaps I am too idealistic... (And now, I will make a reference section for my email. Amazing.) Fidler, R. (1997). Mediamorphosis : Understanding New Media. Pine Forge. Kim, P. (2001). New Media, Old Ideas: The Organizing Ideology of Interactive TV. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 25(1), 72-88. Kyrish, S. (2001). Lessons from a predictive history: What videotex told us about the World Wide Web. Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 7(4). On Dec 19, 2005, at 5:40 AM, A.C.Roibas@bton.ac.uk wrote:

(apologies for cross-posting) -------------------------------------------------------- Workshop CHI2006 - Call For Papers

Investigating new user experience challenges in iTV: mobility & sociability --------------------------------------------------------

*Extended deadline: 9 January 2006*

http://soc.kuleuven.be/com/mediac/chi2006workshop/

Position papers are invited on the design of future interactive television (iTV) scenarios characterized by pervasive communications in contexts of entertainment, work and government, with special attention to the social character of these applications and the implications for interface design.

The workshop will include thematically organized moderated group discussions.

Submissions are invited on the following topics:

* unfolding experimental research methodologies to understand user- experience in future pervasive communication scenarios; * sharing a roadmap of feasible scenarios and representative applications for ubi-iTV; * exploring the potential of novel interfaces within pervasive communication scenarios for entertainment, work and government; * accounts of the particular challenges of studying and designing for sociability in social electronic media * understanding and supporting sociability in social electronic media * evaluating sociability

This one-day workshop wants to address these issues by bringing together practitioners and researchers from different domains, but with the same concern for social interfaces on pervasive interactive television.

We will select participants with diverse backgrounds based upon the relevance, insightfulness, and originality of their submissions.

Submissions are expected in the form of 2-4 pages position papers, describing the area of research, specific work (empirical or theoretical) on the workshop topic and the innovative character of the research at hand.

Submissions (in Conference Proceedings Publication Format) can be uploaded on the website:

http://soc.kuleuven.be/com/mediac/chi2006workshop/

Timescale:

* Deadline for submissions: 9 January 2006 (extended) * Feedback to authors: 31 January 2006 * Workshop at CHI2006: 22 April 2006

Organizers:

Dr. Anxo Cereijo Roibás (University of Brighton, UK) David Geerts (University of Leuven, Belgium) Prof. Elizabeth Furtado (University of Fortaleza, Brazil) Dr. Licia Calvi (University of Leuven, Belgium)

Disclaimer: http://www.kuleuven.be/cwis/email_disclaimer.htm

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--------------------------------------------- Nathaniel Poor, Ph.D. www.umich.edu/~natpoor Visiting Assistant Professor Communication Studies Dept. Albion College http://www.albion.edu/speech/