Posts from — November 2003
yet one more paper i have to finish.
CALL FOR PAPERS Fourth International Conference on CULTURAL ATTITUDES TOWARDS TECHNOLOGY AND COMMUNICATION (CATaC'04) 27 June-1 July 2004 Karlstad University, Sweden www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/ Conference theme: Off the shelf or from the ground up? ICTs and cultural marginalization, homogenization or hybridization The biennial CATaC conference series provides a continuously expanding international forum for the presentation and discussion of current research on how diverse cultural attitudes shape the implementation and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The conference series brings together scholars from around the globe who provide diverse perspectives, both in terms of the specific culture(s) they highlight in their presentations and discussions, and in terms of the discipline(s) through which they approach the conference theme. The first conference in the series was held in London in 1998, the second in Perth in 2000, and the third in Montreal in 2002. Beginning with our first conference in 1998, the CATaC conferences have highlighted theoretical and praxis-oriented scholarship and research from all parts of the globe, including Asia, Africa, and the Middle-East. The conferences focus especially on people and communities at the developing edges of ICT diffusion, including indigenous peoples and those outside the English-speaking world. Understanding the role of culture in how far minority and/or indigenous cultural groups may succeed - or fail - in taking up ICTs designed for a majority culture is obviously crucial to the moral and political imperative of designing ICTs in ways that will not simply reinforce such groups' marginalization. What is the role of culture in the development of ICTs "from the ground up" - beginning with the local culture and conditions - rather than assuming dominant "off the shelf" technologies are appropriate? Are the empowering potentials of ICTs successfully exploited among minority and indigenous groups, and/or do they rather engender cultural marginalization, cultural homogenization or cultural hybridization? Original full papers (especially those which connect theoretical frameworks with specific examples of cultural values, practices, etc.) and short papers (e.g. describing current research projects and preliminary results) are invited. Topics of particular interest include but are not limited to: - Culture: theory and praxis - Culture and economy - Alternative models for ICT diffusion - Role of governments and activists in culture, technology and communication - ICTs and cultural hybridity - ICTs and intercultural communication - Culture, communication and e-learning Our conference themes provide a range of approaches to the questions raised. KEYNOTE SPEAKER Nina Wakeford, Foundation Fund Lecturer in Sociology and Social Methodology. For her DPhil at Nuffield College, Oxford, Dr Wakeford studied the experiences of mature students using a sociological conception of risk. Before coming to the University of Surrey in September of 1998, she spent three years studying "Women's Experiences of Virtual Communities", funded by an ESRC Post-Doctoral grant. The last two years of this Fellowship she conducted fieldwork in and around Silicon Valley while based at the University of California, Berkeley. CATaC'04 will also feature two particular foci, each chaired by a distinguished colleague who will oversee paper review and development of the final panels. PANEL 1: The Multilingual Internet Panel Chairs: Susan Herring and Brenda Danet Expanding on their collective work, including a special issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (Vol. 9 (1), November, 2003 - see http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/), this thread invites papers with a specific focus on how the Internet impacts language choice and linguistic practices in traditionally non-English speaking cultural contexts. Of particular interest are situations that respond in various ways to the tension between global English dominance and local linguistic diversity, e.g., through use of English as an online lingua franca, the "localization" of global or regional linguistic influences, translation or code-switching between different languages, and strategic uses of the Internet to maintain and invigorate minority languages. Susan Herring is Professor of Information Science and Linguistics, Indiana University Bloomington Brenda Danet is Professor Emerita of Sociology and Communication at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem PANEL 2: Utopian Dreams vs. Real-World Conditions: Under what conditions can ICTs really help worse off communities? Panel Chair: Michel Menou. CATaC'04 will likely feature some examples of "best practices" in using ICTs to aid culturally-appropriate development, especially as pursued through governmental or NGOs' projects, community informatics endeavours, etc. At the same time, however, real-world politics and realities - e.g., violent oppression, political corruption, gender and ethnic discrimination, abuse of dominant economic position, structural disasters, worst practices of all kinds and origins, etc. - can shatter the best-laid plans for using ICTs to supposedly help especially the poorest of the poor. How far can ICTs succeed in supporting culturally-appropriate development - and what appropriate answers to real-world conditions are required in order for our best efforts to realize the liberatory potentials of these technologies not be broken down? Michel Menou, has worked on the development of national information policies and systems in many countries of the Southern hemisphere since 1966. Since 1992 his work focused on the impact of information and ICT in development. He is a member of the Community Informatics Research Network and of the network of Telecentres of Latin America and Caribbean. PAPER SUBMISSIONS All submissions will be peer reviewed by an international panel of scholars and researchers and accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings. Initial submissions are to be uploaded to the CATaC website according to the paper guidelines (available at the conference website). Submission of a paper implies that it has not been submitted or published elsewhere. At least one author of each accepted paper is expected to present the paper at the conference. There will be the opportunity for selected papers from this 2004 conference to appear in special issues of journals and a book. Papers in previous conferences have appeared in journals (Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, Electronic Journal of Communication/La Revue Electronique de Communication, AI and Society, Javnost- The Public, and New Media and Society) and a book (Culture, Technology, Communication: towards an Intercultural Global Village, 2001, edited by Charles Ess with Fay Sudweeks, SUNY Press, New York). You may purchase the conference proceedings from the 2002 conference from www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac. Important Dates Full papers (10-20 pages): 12 January 2004 Short papers (3-5 pages): 26 January 2004 Notification of acceptance: end February 2004 Final formatted papers: 29 March 2004 CONFERENCE CO-CHAIRS Charles Ess, Drury University, USA, catac@it.murdoch.edu.au Fay Sudweeks, Murdoch University, Australia, catac@it.murdoch.edu.au CONFERENCE CO-VICE-CHAIRS Malin Sveningsson, Karlstad University, Sweden, malin.sveningsson@kau.se
November 30, 2003 Comments Off
Sun, 30 Nov 2003 13:40:41 GMT
Sharing and stealing. Jessica Litman, Sharing and Stealing, a preprint posted to SSRN. From the abstract: “The purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation and mass dissemination of a wide variety of works. Until recently, most means of mass dissemination required a significant capital investment. The lion's share of the economic proceeds of copyrights were therefore channeled to publishers and distributors, and the law was designed to facilitate that. Digital distribution invites us to reconsider all of the assumptions underlying that model. We are still in the early history of the networked digital environment, but already we've seen experiments with both direct and consumer-to-consumer distribution of works of authorship. One remarkable example of the difference consumer-to-consumer dissemination can make is seen in the astonishing information space that has grown up on the world wide web….This paper…proposes that we adopt a legal architecture that encourages but does not compel copyright owners to make their works available for widespread sharing over digital networks….” (Thanks to C-FIT.) [Open Access News]
November 30, 2003 No Comments
Sat, 29 Nov 2003 22:53:24 GMT
Radio TrackBack monitor. If you're blogging with Radio and have TrackBack enabled, you'll love this service which provides an RSS feed of TrackBacks to your weblog - I'm kicking myself for missing it when Phil came up with it a few months back. So I now have a TrackBack feed in addition to my comments feed, which means I'll be more aware of feedback on my writing. Thanks Phil!
(…lost in the jargon? Try a glossary)
(found via Al via Google)
[Seb's Open Research]
November 29, 2003 No Comments
Sat, 29 Nov 2003 13:45:22 GMT
history, credit and identity. Like many students of computing, i was inspired by Vannevar Bush from my earliest days. “As We May Think” and follow-up writings on the Memex helped define a century of thought and computational effort. Yet, as Michael Buckland is uncovering,… [misbehaving.net]
my response over there follows:
Vannevar Bush's fame is not singularly tied to 'as we may think'. he was very much a polymath of sorts, and was a significant figure in several fields, this allowed him more popular press access of course, but if you check out his accomplishments on the wikipedia page here, I think you'll see that his fame is a bit broader based and that some of his other works are foundational in other fields. he was even on the cover of Time magazine for his work in physics
a short biblio includes such works as:
modern arms and free men: a discussion of the role of science in preserving democracy
principles of electrical engineering
science is not enough
pieces of action
endless horizons <--- which was on my ph.d. exam reading list
two codicils:
1. bush cetainly falls into the 'great man' problem of history, he is usually individuated and put forth out of his myriad of contexts, so we have to be careful about what his role really was in regards to certain concepts that he put forth, which could in fact be hinting at another problem in science studies, which is that we traditonally put undo emphasis on the people that do something first, usually singling them out in opposition to others, when they very well may have been aware of the others work and thought they were working in a larger framework. so saying 'goldberg or bush' is problematic, when it could have been that bush was seeking to popularize goldberg or something else.
2. memex has nothing to do with hypertext and everyone knows hypertext is dead (said snarkily)
November 29, 2003 No Comments
Sat, 29 Nov 2003 13:12:49 GMT
New issue of Jekyll. The September issue of Jekyll (”International Journal on Science Communication”) is now online. Here are the OA-related articles.
- Pietro Greco, Political censorship of science
- Gerry McKiernan, Invisible Hand(s): Quality Assurance in the Age of Author Self-Archiving
- Stevan Harnad, Self-archive unto others as ye would have them self-archive unto you
November 29, 2003 No Comments
Sat, 29 Nov 2003 13:11:40 GMT
Down my throat no more. Jim McGee: John Seely Brown on Stolen Knowledge.
[....]
Why is it such a
hard step to give up on the notion of control? Or, put another way, why
do organizations and schools insist on forcing certain content down
people's throats? You might want to take a look at Roger Schank's
thoughts about learning in this context. Take a look at Coloring Outside the Lines : Raising a Smarter Kid by Breaking All the Rules or at Designing World-Class E-Learning.
Or if you want things in a real nutshell consider the following bit of wisdom from Calvin and Hobbes:
November 29, 2003 No Comments
Fri, 28 Nov 2003 19:04:01 GMT
The Critical Questions. I did this week's reading for my IR&R 2 course. And according to my prof's last 2 sets of comments, I am not allowed/supposed to write reflection papers which are based on my usual critical questions/misgivings with the readings. So… [Flailing in the Surf]
November 28, 2003 No Comments
Fri, 28 Nov 2003 18:50:38 GMT
U.S. funds study of tech monocultures [InfoWar Monitor]
The National Science Foundation has granted $750,000 to two universities to study how diversifying information systems and software could help fend off future cyberattacks, the agency said Tuesday.
The study, proposed by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of New Mexico almost a year ago, will seek to identify commonalities in software that could be used as the basis for attacks. Such common vulnerabilities would point to a computer “monoculture”–a population so homogeneous that a single threat could destroy it.
November 28, 2003 No Comments
Fri, 28 Nov 2003 13:17:04 GMT
GOP Steal Compter Files – No Film at 11. John Moltz brings to our attention a story from Calpundit. A Republican Senate staffer accesed files on a Democratic staffers computer and then leaked them to the press. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said yesterday that a… [Eat Your Vegetables]
November 28, 2003 No Comments
Fri, 28 Nov 2003 13:15:03 GMT
Patent Poet. Ray Kurzweil has been awarded a patent for his AI-based ” target=”_blank”>cybernetic poetry software. (via NYTimes) Kurzweil, a successful developer of AI-based technologies and author of several books including The Age of Spiritual Machines, has an elaborate website promoting AI… [grandtextauto.org]
November 28, 2003 No Comments