[Air-l] Re: UCLA Internet Use Report
RG Lentz
rgmagnolia at earthlink.com
Fri Nov 30 04:50:57 PST 2001
Re Willard's Uncapher's post:
"The report obviously sticks to a rather instrumentalist view of the
Internet, tailored to e-commerce, and doesn't appear to venture, if the
pre-reports are accurate, to raising issues of surveillance, sharing of
data, encryption, and other such aspects of Net use."
Seems there is now a constant stream of cyber/Internet tracking studies
(Pew, NTIA, UCLA, etc.) with a (and a growing enterprise for academics to
add to this) available that focus mostly on household research with little
attention to questions related to institutional disadvantage, e.g.,
national surveys/tracking studies (census not random sample studies) on
libraries, schools, etc. where the policy remedies are focused (e.g.,
e-rate)? Also, these studies are so absent 'context' that it begs the
question: why are Internet researchers focusing on this? Where's the beef?
Soapbox here, but does it not bother anyone that there is so much
money/effort going into such tracking studies? To what end? I'll risk
posing the 'so what' question to get some discussion going.
B. Lentz, UTAustin
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