Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 376.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: "Price, Dan" <dprice@tui.edu> (29)
Subject: New Media & Social Llife
[2] From: Jennifer De Beer <jennifer_de_beer@yahoo.com> (290)
Subject: Fwd: L.A. Times column, 10/16/00 -- ICANN Elections
[3] From: Patricia Galloway <galloway@gslis.utexas.edu> (11)
Subject: Re: 14.0365 anthropological cyberspace
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 09:38:29 +0100
From: "Price, Dan" <dprice@tui.edu>
Subject: New Media & Social Llife
Hello,
In the article mentioned by Charles Ess, one finds the following statement:
"The more hours people use the Internet, the less time they spend with real
human beings," said Stanford Professor Norman Nie, director of SIQSS and
principal investigator of the study.
Am I missing something here? Up to now, it had been my impression that
Willard and Charles and all the other participants of the List-Server were
real human beings. I had this impression even though I have never met them
face to face. It is similar to my contact with many scholars before the
advent of the Internet-that is, contact only by snail mail and professional
journals. At that time, I thought I was in contact with real human beings,
but maybe the authors of the study know otherwise.
Likewise I have never had any face to face contact with Plato or Aristotle,
but my suspicion is that they were real human beings too. I am in dialogue
with them about their ideas and propositions through the reading of their
texts and I consider that "contact with real human beings."
Something is really awry with the study if this is the basic
premise: When one is online, he/she is not spending time with real human
beings.
--dan
Sincerely,
Dan Price, Ph.D.
Professor, Center for Distance Learning
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<http://www.tui.edu/Faculty/FacultyUndergrad/PriceDan.html>http://www.tui.edu/Faculty/FacultyUndergrad/PriceDan.html
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--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 09:41:11 +0100
From: Jennifer De Beer <jennifer_de_beer@yahoo.com>
Subject: Fwd: L.A. Times column, 10/16/00 -- ICANN Elections
Willard,
I thought colleagues might like to step back and look
at the bigger picture of 'Internet governance'. The
latter term bringing a most unwelcome chill to my
spine.
Best,
Jennifer
--- Gary Chapman <gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
> Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2000 12:24:58 -0500
> To: chapman@lists.cc.utexas.edu
> From: Gary Chapman <gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu>
> > Elections
> Reply-to: gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu
>
[material deleted]
> ------------------------------------------
>
> Monday, October 16, 2000
>
> DIGITAL NATION
>
> Stirring the "Dot-Whatever" Pot
>
> By Gary Chapman
>
> Copyright 2000, The Los Angeles Times, All Rights
> Reserved
>
> While most Americans are focused on the looming
> national elections,
> there was another interesting election last week,
> one with some
> intriguing implications for the future. The Internet
> Corp. for
> Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, which is based
> in Marina del
> Rey, conducted the world's first global
> "cyber-election." Internet
> users around the world voted five new at-large
> members onto ICANN's
> board of directors, one for each major continent.
>
> ICANN is the not-for-profit corporation launched two
> years ago to
> manage the systems that make Internet addresses
> work. These include
> the domain name system -- through the ".com,"
> ".org," ".gov" and
> other suffixes on Web page and e-mail addresses --
> and the underlying
> Internet numerical address system, which assigns
> unique address
> numbers to networked computers and other devices.
>
> ICANN is considering, among other things, adding new
> domain name
> suffixes -- called Top-Level Domains -- to the
> Internet, such as
> ".web," ".kids" and ".biz," to name just a few.
>
> ICANN has been controversial since its inception.
> Critics have
> charged that it has a distinct tilt favoring
> large-business
> interests, that its meetings and decisions are less
> than completely
> open, and that its structure is not sufficiently
> democratic or
> inclusive.
>
> In response to some of these complaints, and with
> funding assistance
> provided by the Markle Foundation in New York, ICANN
> created at-large
> seats on its board, positions filled by the
> unprecedented, worldwide
> virtual election that concluded Tuesday. Potential
> voters had
> registered this summer, once again through the
> Internet, and then
> cast their votes through an online election
> developed and managed by
> the New York electronic voting firm Election.com.
> The candidate
> slates were divided by continent in order to prevent
> dominance by
> U.S. or European voters.
>
> The North American position was won by Karl
> Auerbach, an engineer and
> researcher for Cisco Systems, the giant
> network-equipment firm in San
> Jose. Auerbach, who lives in Santa Cruz, has been an
> outspoken critic
> of ICANN. His election platform, for example, calls
> for the
> resignation or firing of ICANN's chief executive,
> Michael Roberts,
> and the same for the organization's secretary and
> general counsel,
> Louis Touton. "Part of my platform was to get rid of
> the senior
> staff," he said.
>
> Auerbach is blunt, to say the least. ICANN's
> Roberts, he told me,
> "created a style of condescending arrogance that is
> not good for the
> organization. . . . I will not tolerate Michael
> Roberts trying to be
> king of the Internet."
>
> Also somewhat surprising to observers was the
> election of Andy
> Mueller-Maguhn of Germany for the European at-large
> seat. He is a
> longtime member and spokesman for the Chaos Computer
> Club in Germany,
> a loose organization of hackers that has been linked
> to computer
> break-ins, although Mueller-Maguhn himself has been
> an advisor on
> Internet policy to the German government. His
> opinions on ICANN are
> nearly identical to Auerbach's, so the two of them
> are likely to be
> the source of some interesting hell-raising once
> they take their
> positions next month at the ICANN board meeting in
> Marina del Rey.
>
> The other three election winners -- Ivan Moura
> Campos for Latin
> America and the Caribbean; Masanobu Katoh for Asia,
> Australia and the
> Pacific; and Nii Quaynor for Africa -- are expected
> to be supportive
> of most, if not all, of ICANN's current policies and
> character.
> Unfortunately, no women were elected to the ICANN
> board.
>
> The at-large members will be outnumbered on the
> board -- appointed
> members still number 19, including chairman Esther
> Dyson, who will
> leave the board at its meeting next month, and Vint
> Cerf, the
> co-inventor of the Internet Protocol and widely
> regarded as one of
> the "fathers" of the Internet.
>
> "The at-large members are very much in the position
> of Sisyphus.
> We're going to be frustrated over everything we try
> to do," Auerbach
> told me last week. On the other hand, he said,
> "Being on the inside
> is incredibly important. No one is going to shut me
> up when I make a
> point. I hope to set a standard of transparency that
> other board
> members will be held to."
>
> Both Auerbach and Mueller-Maguhn are expected to
> push for more
> democratic and open procedures, a significant
> expansion of top-level
> domains and an end to the $50,000 fee ICANN has
> required of companies
> or individuals who sign up to manage a domain. They
> also have
> promised to be counterweights to ICANN's tendency to
> favor trademark
> holders in disputes about domain names. Large
> trademark holders --
> typically large companies -- want to limit the
> number of new domains
> so they don't have to police a lot of domains for
> trademark
> violations. Auerbach and Mueller-Maguhn believe
> that's curtailment of
> free speech and the democratic potential of the Net.
>
> Auerbach fairly radiates anger with the way ICANN
> has worked so far,
> but, he said, "Policy matters can be reversed." In
> addition to his
> technical expertise -- Auerbach has been an Internet
> engineer since
> 1974, he says -- he is not just coincidentally an
> attorney.
>
> Esther Dyson said about the new board members, "I
> think we're going
> to learn a lot from them, and they're going to learn
> a lot from
> serving on the ICANN board. So it's a good thing."
>
> The technical arcana of domain names and Internet
> addresses may seem
> remote from daily life.
>
> But technical and policy decisions about how the
> Internet works will
> have a profound influence on privacy, freedom of
> expression,
> censorship and the balance of power among
> governments, corporations
> and individuals.
>
> Observers of the ICANN controversy -- especially
> ICANN's critics --
> view this as an important dispute, if only because
> ICANN is the
> earliest prototype of what might loosely be
> described as Internet
> governance. "The Internet is in Day One of its
> infancy," Auerbach
> said.
>
> Gary Chapman is director of the 21st Century Project
> at the
> University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at
> gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu.
>
> ------------------------------------------
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=====
~~
Jennifer De Beer
Do not be bullied by authoritative pronouncements about what machines will
never do. Such statements are based on pride, not fact. --Marvin Minsky,
MIT, 1982
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--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 09:41:59 +0100
From: Patricia Galloway <galloway@gslis.utexas.edu>
Subject: Re: 14.0365 anthropological cyberspace
"Ancient Voices in Cyberspace"!! "primitive"!! Yeek!! All these people
are as modern as you or me! Please, Patricia Search, read Johannes
Fabian's Time and the Other!
(I apologize for all the exclamation marks. Fabian talks about the
"denial of coevalness" that denies the whole of their history to peoples
who live on the margins of nation-states and makes them into models for
"ancient" versions of human lifeways. Fabian's work is now taken for
granted in anthropology--so to hear this kind of treatment called
"anthropological" is like fingernails on a chalkboard. What it is is bad
old colonialist anthropology.)
Pat Galloway
University of Texas-Austin
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