From: Rohit Khare (rohit@uci.edu)
Date: Wed May 31 2000 - 09:22:14 PDT
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>
> Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing 2000: Shaping the
> Network Society: The Future of the Public Sphere in Cyberspace
>
> Sponsored by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
> May 20 - 23, 2000, Seattle, Washington, USA
> http://www.scn.org/cpsr/diac-00/
>
>
> Setting E-Commerce Aside: A Conference Review
> By David Silver, University of Maryland
>
>
> As we slouch towards the real millennium, Internet dreams have turned
> quickly into dot.com desires. The worthy yet too often utopian hopes
> of
> cyber-jumpstarted cultural, social, and political revolutions have
> been
> ditched largely for IPOs, untaxed e-commerce, and millionaire teens
> and
> twenty-somethings. Indeed, for many, the dominant mantra of our times
> may
> very well be: start up, pitch fast, sell out.
>
> But not for all, including the several hundred scholars, students,
> activists, artists, community leaders, computer scientists, politicians,
> techies, and freaks who showed up last weekend in Seattle for "Shaping
> the
> Network Society: The Future of the Public Sphere in Cyberspace," sponsored
> by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility and organized
> excellently by Doug Schuler. Informed, perhaps, less by the Nasdaq
> and
> more by the events that went down during the WTO protests in the fall,
> conference attendees were asked what directions and implications does
> cyberspace foretell for community, democracy, education and culture?
> what
> is the public sphere in cyberspace? what should it be? how can people
> use
> it? and what experiments, projects, and policies should we initiate?
>
> To answer such questions, conference organizers threw a wide net,
> attracting folks from within and without academe, folks from across
> the
> disciplines, and folks from around the world, including Argentina,
> Australia, Canada, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United States,
> and
> the former Yugoslavia. Matching the international flavor of the
> conference was organization diversity: on the first day alone, artists,
> activists, and scholars representing Adbusters, the American Library
> Association, the National Telecommunications and Information Agency,
> Paper
> Tiger Television, PovNet (Poverty Network), the San Jose Information
> Technology Planning Board, the Seattle City Council, the Social Science
> Research Council, the Society for Old and New Media, the Vancouver
> Public
> Library, and a few dozen colleges and universities delivered papers
> and
> conducted workshops. For this conference attendee -- still jazzed
> by but
> growing weary of academic conferences; quick to test theoretical
> frameworks and methodological minutia but even quicker to test
> applications -- the diversity was a welcomed bonus.
>
> So what went down? The conference was divided largely into three
> categories: research sessions; workshops; and special events. There
> were
> ten research sessions -- Regional Snapshots; Foundations; Crossing
> Boundaries; Socio-Technical; In the Community; Museums, Libraries,
> and
> Culture; Public Policy Issues; Public/Private Sector Tensions; Looking
> at
> the Community; and New Models -- ranging, as their titles suggest,
> from
> conceptual frameworks and research models to disciplinary and
> inter-organizational convergences to public policy and community
> applications. Unfortunately, the research sessions were held concurrently
> (more on that later), which prevented this conference attendee from
> sitting in on all the sessions.
>
> The ones I did attend, however, were amazing, and provided equal amounts
> of questions and answers, complex dilemmas and partial solutions facing
> progressive- and community-minded cybernauts. For example, in the
> research session title Foundations, an international panel of scholars
> explored and discussed a number of models with which to assess online
> environments. Ian Beeson, Professor of Computer Studies and Mathematics
> at the University of the West of England, presented a number of
> theoretical positions to understand better the ways in which communities
> might use hypermedia to tell their individual and collective
> stories. Jenny Preece, Chair of the Information Systems Department
> at the
> University of Maryland Baltimore County and author of the forthcoming
> book
> Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Sociability,
> addressed the multiplicity of definitions of online communities and
> argued
> for the need for online communities to support well designed usability
> and
> well supported sociability. Celia Romm from Central Queensland University
> in Australia analyzed existing literature on community informatics
> and
> applied her Autonomy/Harmony model to four case studies. Finally,
> Erik
> Stolterman from the Department of Informatics at Umea University in
> Sweden
> argued that creating a public sphere in cyberspace is, in part, a matter
> of design, a process in which members of the community must be involved.
>
> My own research session, Socio-Technical, was comprised of graduate
> students from a number of American universities and, informed by theories
> of human-computer interaction and models of participatory design, explored
> the intersections between interface design and online community
> formations. Kelly Parker, a graduate student in Philosophy from Grand
> Valley State University, examined the potentially dramatic social and
> political implications of the Open Source/Free Software movement.
> Josh
> Berman, a graduate student in Computer Science from Georgia Institute
> of
> Technology, showcased The Turing Game
> <http://www.cc.gatech.edu/elc/turing/>, an online environment he developed
> with Amy Bruckman, to reveal the ways in which identity is expressed
> --
> and tweaked -- within cyberspace. My own presentation, growing out
> of my
> work in American Studies and the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies
> at the University of Maryland, challenged the prevailing and dangerous
> assumption that the Net is a neutral, barren, and settlerless frontier,
> and argued instead for the need for scholars to explore the cultural
> and
> historical construction of online communities. Finally, Warren Sack,
> a
> recent graduate of the MIT Media Lab, wowed the audience with Conversation
> Map <http://www.media.mit.edu/~wsack/CM/>, a piece of software he
> developed to map visually the kinds of threads and interactions that
> take
> place within discussion lists.
>
> Like most conference attendees, I solved the problem of concurrent
> sessions by racing frantically between rooms, hearing a paper here,
> sitting in on a Q and A there. The result was worth the effort. In
>
> this manner, I was able to hear Maja Kuzmanovic, a digital artist par
> excellence from Amsterdam, brainstorm and discuss what a truly
> participatory and interactive cyberspace would/could look like.
> Similarly, Adrian Mihalache, a Fullbright Scholar from Romania
> currently visiting Western Michigan University, offered a review of
> existing discourses of cyberspace and concluded with a spirited call
> for a
> second generational countercultural movement. Eszter Hargittai, a
> graduate student in Sociology at Princeton, explored the discrepancy
> between accessibility and prominence of public interest, not-for-profit
> content on the Web, and offered a list of useful guidelines for such
> organizations to get their word out. Finally, Murali Venkatesh, an
> Associate Professor and Director of the Community and Information
> Technology Institute at Syracuse University, discussed early findings
> from
> a large scale grant to construct a number of community networks for
> New
> York-based economically disadvantaged communities, focusing especially
> on
> the gap between technologists and community organizers.
>
> While the research sessions sought to bridge research and application,
> the
> workshops provided a forum to discuss past, ongoing, and future
> projects. Again, the spectrum was international, and conference attendees
> learned about projects from around the world and brought to life by
> non-profit organizations, public interest institutes, local governments,
> and universities. Although the nature of the projects was diverse,
> a
> common theme among many was an attempt to bridge the so-called Digital
> Divide. Thus, we heard from Susan Kretchmer, Rod Carveth, and Nancy
> Kranich, who presented a workshop titled, "High Tech, Low Tech, No
> Tech: Moving Beyond Economics to Bridge the Digital Divide," and from
> Bruce Takata and David Matteson, who conducted a workshop titled "Bridging
> the Wisdom Divide: Beyond the Knowedge Era Part I & II."
>
> Another common goal was to develop a set of strategies to reimagine
> and
> reinvigorate community networks. Towards this goal, William Belsey
> presented early findings on Igalaaq, Canada's first arctic community
> access center, while Evergreen State College students John B. Adams
> & Matt
> Powell showcased new software which allows online applications of Robert's
> Rules of Order. One of the most rewarding -- not to mention well attended
> -- workshops was an impromptu one convened by Peter Royce, coordinator
> of
> the Vancouver CommunityNet, to discuss the current state of community
> networks. With all the chairs taken and with a few folks standing,
> representatives from Davis Community Network, Eugene Free Community
> Network, Petaluma Community Network, Seattle Community Network, Toledo
> Free Net, and Vancouver CommunityNet shared their experiences,
> frustrations, and plans for the future.
>
> In addition to research sessions and workshops were a number of special
> events, including the plenary sessions. The first plenary, Patterns
> and
> Implications of the Network Society, featured Oliver Boyd-Barrett from
> California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, California, and Craig
> Calhoun, President of the Social Science Research Council in New
> York. Unfortunately, the third panelist, Veran Matic of B92 Radio and
> Internet in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, was unable to attend due to the recent
> seizure of B92 broadcasting equipment. The closing plenary featured
> Gary
> Chapman of the 21st Century Project at the LBJ School of Public Affairs
>
> at the University of Texas, Bill Joy, Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems,
> and Howard Rheingold, author of many books, including The Virtual
> Community and Tools for Thought. The session focused on Joy's recent
> article in Wired, "Why the Future Doesn't Need
> Us" <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html>, with Joy providing
> some background on the article and with commentary from both Chapman
> and
> Rheingold. The audience peppered Joy with agreement and challenges,
> and
> raised questions concerning the role of corporations (like Sun
> Microsystems) in the situation Joy describes, the need for spokespeople
> like Joy to work with existing organizations, and the barriers to healthy
> dialogue on new technologies and society.
>
> The closing plenary was followed by what many conference attendees
> described as the most debaucherous conference-sponsored event in recent
> memory. Held at the hip club iSpy in downtown Seattle, the event was
> organized by local students, artists, and activists and sponsored by
> Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Featuring live bands
> on
> one level and throbbing techno on another, the party also included
> a
> "cyber fashion show" (which apparently means lots of tight black leather
> and lots of exposed flesh) and a fire show seemingly organized by a
> local
> chapter of the Burning Man movement. Fun and confusion abounded.
>
> Like all conferences, Shaping the Network Society was not without a
> few
> flaws. Most notably, organizing the first plenary around three men
> and
> organizing the last plenary around three men is unsettling to say the
> least, and stood in stark contrast with issues of cultural diversity
> addressed by dozens of research panelists and workshop conveners.
>
> Similarly, while questions of race, gender, and class were explored
> by
> many sessions, issues of sexuality were altogether missing.
>
> The other flaw was an embarrassment of riches -- there were simply
> too
> many interesting sessions and workshops going on concurrently. Unlike
> most academic conference which offer a dizzying array of (often
> unrelated) scholarship, Shaping the Network Society enjoyed -- and
> succeeded because of -- a carefully crafted focus. The result, as
> noted
> earlier, was a mad scramble between papers, where frantic conference
> attendees tried to fit in as many papers as possible.
>
> The timing of Shaping the Network Society could not be better. Today,
> as
> cyberspace becomes synonymous with e-commerce and many folks' idea
> of an
> online public sphere is a chat room on AOL, forums like this are
> desperately needed. Indeed, as cyberspace continues to be colonized
> by
> commercial interests, progressive- and community-minded artists,
> activists, community leaders, computer scientists, journalists,
> politicians, scholars, students, techies, and freaks need multiple,
> international forums like this one to discuss what's happening, where
> were heading, and how to turn the tide.
>
> As an academic, I found the conference to be a breath of fresh air
> compared to the commercialization of cyberspace that is currently taking
> place within society in general and within academia in particular.
>
> Advertisements for companies like Blackboard and WebChat have turned
> the
> first ten pages of the Chronicle of Higher Education into a shopping
> mall
> for distance education companies. Moreover, whether you like David
> Noble's
> ideas or not, what he describes is certainly taking place at an alarming
> rate; as I write this conference review, many courses at my university
> have been transformed from traditional to entirely online, as deans,
> provosts, and presidents continue to run their departments, colleges,
>
> and universities as mini corporations. Finally, the kind of
> corporate-sponsored scholarship which marks the sciences has made its
> way
> into the humanities. Witness, for example, US WEST's funding of the
> "research" institute, the Center for Digital Culture, whose most recent
> white paper is titled, unsurprisingly, "E-Commerce and the Digital
> Frontier."
>
> While thousands race to make bank in cyberspace, it is refreshing to
> see
> so many cybernauts from around the world brainstorm, discuss, and help
> construct public space on the Internet. Although many battles against
> the
> forces to recraft cyberspace into cyberspace.com have been lost, the
> fight
> -- and dance -- is not over, as was clearly evident in full force in
> Seattle.
>
> *****
>
> David Silver is a doctoral candidate in American Studies at the University
> of Maryland and the founder and director of the Resource Center for
> Cyberculture Studies. He can be reached via his Web site at
> <http://www.glue.umd.edu/~dsilver/>.
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