Subject: Shaping the Network Society: A Conference Review
Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 09:33:18 -0400




>
>***                                                  ***
>*** feel free to forward as far and wide as possible ***
>***                                                  ***
>
>  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/>.
>