Posts from — October 2003

AoIR 4.4.1. ON QUALITATIVE RESEARCH What follows is an extensive set of notes on this morning's discussion, entitled “Broadening Options and Raising Standards for Qualitative Internet Research: A Dialogue Among Scholars.” The panel was convened by Annette Markham (UIC), and included Nancy Baym (Kansas), Susan Herring (IU Bloomington), Shani Orgad (London School… [Planned Obsolescence]

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this looks like it was an interesting panel, i missed it though.

for those who have not yet heard, the next Association of Internet Researchers conference, Internet Research 5.0 will be held at the university of sussex in the u.k. it should be excellent. i have no further information though at this time.

VeriSign CEO calls for commercial control of the Internet. As if the SiteFinder controversy was not hot enough, VeriSign's CEO Stratton Sclavos is now calling for commercial control of the Internet's root DNS servers and for ICANN to be reorganized as a trade association. Excerpts from an interview with… [InternetPolicy.net]

dumb, very dumb, possibly even a stupid suggestion, extremely stupid.

went out in toronto to the cn tower 360 restaurant for dinner, wow. i'm not really afraid of heights, as much as extremely judgemental toward experiences where the obvious connections to the ground are removed for the sake of a thrill.

There were 11 of us from aoir and we went up the elevator which has a slight vibration as it flies up the tower, air pressure on the crossbars or something, anyway my legs were rubber for a few minutes. anyway, we approached the table and there was suddenly a huge pause about who sat by the window, so i went and sat down, monica across from me, knowing that in the end, i wouldn't like the proximity of a 1500 feet drop, but would survive, so i sidled in next to the window and sat down.

i talked to monica a bit, and to niels, niels is trying to get his book on virilio published in the u.s. it sounds very interesting and i suggested a press or two that he wasn't thinking about.

on the walk over to the tower, i talked with gitte about maybe giving a talk to her mobile gaming class when i am in copenhagen. i'll be arranging my trip a bit more probably next week.

anyway, i sat next to bev, leslie's mom at dinner and had a nice conversation there once i managed to get my adrenaline under control from coping with the 500 meter drop less than a foot from my chair. for a few minutes it was 'watch jeremy use monosyllables' time but that passed and it was a wonderful dinner.

I put the cover for our book, the aoir annual vol. 1 out d on the assumption that everyone was now near fast home connections. the cover looks good.

the sunday part of the conference was fun, we had two sessions and brunch. I talked to andrew at the brunch a bit while i was breaking up conversations here and there, i also talked to sal a bit about qut and brisbane. I popped my head into the Rob Kling rememberance panel, that was nice, the paper seemed good. I also watched a bit of the trust panel and popped my head in on the guys talking about discourse of trust in open source communities. i then proceeded to wander around the common area, talking to colleagues, etc.

later i talked with matt about my trip to australia in the spring, looks like i might get to fly across to perth and cause some trouble, that'll be fun;)

now what i really have to do is knock out my dissertation, no doubt about it, and no screwing around, just plugging until it is finished. I have to hang out in Cath a bit more anyway, for various reasons, so that's what i'll do.

let's see here, after the gala dinner I went out with jenn and mia and friends, that was fun, we went to the elephant and something bar around the corner from the hotel. jakob from aarhus and ildiko from hungary(i think, apology if i mess it up ildiko). in any event we stayed until closing

currently, i'm sitting in the toronto airport at b7, i finished a bad cup of coffee, now i'm waiting for my flight, at 9:40

Gala Dinner. I actually went to my first conference Gala dinner… and enjoyed it. I know it was the general crowd, and… [Just differently intelligent.]

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This is what makes it a great conference other than the papers and scholarly discussions.

pleix. “pleix is a virtual community of digital artists based in paris. some of us are 3d artists, some others are musicians or graphic designers. this website is the perfect place to share our latest creations.” [note: quicktime] [MetaFilter]

This morning before the 802.11 panel, we had a journal editors roundtable arranged by the incomprable Ulla Bunz. The Editors were asked questions about publication an tenure, about new publication opportunities, online publication and issues surrounding online archives and getting your paper published. I think panels like this are extremely important to have at conferences because they get people to think about new publishing paradigms. This is so important because there should be concerned with the possibility of the professoriate both new and old being caught between technologies. I fully support the transformation toward open access peer reviewed archives, and I've worked hard to produce some technologies that were excellent demonstration platforms for that, but still I know that traditions are hard to break and there is a paper fetish still. But what happens when someone is caught between the new opportunity and the requirements of tenure…. who knows? prudence is required, but as we know prudence is a virtue, a practice, and as such it transforms you through its consideration. So the direction that people must use 'tempers' them; changes them, and perhaps makes them less participative in new forms of publishing.

Adrian did a nice paper on the the 802.11 standard is kludge, but Christian is actually making an argument about the 'over the back yard' internet. two years ago i sketched the system necessary to use wireless, microwave, or laser enabled long distance internet connections to overcome local problems such as censorship, etc. It was a 'napkin' sketch of technics, interfaces, and connections. Now i hear that similar things are being institutionalized, somewhat unsuccessfully, but it is always fun to find that other people have the same sort of ideas and implementations.

Craig is talking about his Connective Project at Syracuse that works with broadband infrastructure and such. they did a community technology assessment for rural regions.

AOIR 4.2.3. THE TRIANGLE IS THE BINARY OPPOSITION OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Why is it that scholars are suddenly so drawn to the triangular graphic model, as though three-ness eliminates all of the shortcomings of binary logics? Don't get me wrong; I don't intend to be (wholly) snarky here, as I find… [Planned Obsolescence]

WSIS 'in turmoil'.

The latest edition of the GILC bulletin has a report on continued controversy around the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

[funferal]

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wish this was new