Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 401.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2003 09:57:14 +0000
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: review of Culture, Technology, Communication; CATaC
Humanists will likely be interested in a very recent review of Charles Ess
and Fay Sudweeks, eds., Culture, Technology, Communication: Towards an
Intercultural Global Village (SUNY Press, 2001), by Michel J Menou (City
University, London), in the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies, at
http://www.com.washington.edu/rccs/booklist.asp. Those who are unaware of
the conference series from which this book comes, Cultural Attitudes
Towards Technology and Communication (CATaC), the review and reply by Ess
and Sudweeks will provide a good introduction. As Menou says in the first
paragraph of his review,
>Among the many articles of faith brought by contemporary ICTheria is the
>notion of a new culture taking shape in a cyberspace that would be
>populated by ethereal creatures belonging only to this new universe.
>Within such a context, this book is extremely useful in bringing the hot
>air balloon closer to the ground. Even the dogs that covertly exchange
>emails, according to a famous cartoon, have a real dog's life, like most
>other users of the Internet.
The interesting problem, of course, is how life in the balloon and life on
the ground interact, how life changes as a result of the choices we make,
don't make, cannot make. For me the work of CATaC is one of the several
signs that life in the large and ill-defined commons we inhabit and study
is maturing. In any case, if CATaC comes within physical range, I recommend
it strongly. Otherwise, there's the book reviewed above and the Proceedings
volumes of CATaC 2000 (Perth) and 2002 (Montreal), for which see
http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/~sudweeks/catac02/.
Yours,
WM
Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
Humanities | King's College London | Strand | London WC2R 2LS || +44 (0)20
7848-2784 fax: -2980 || willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/
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