[Air-l] air statement -- david silver

[D. Silver]

Last week, Nancy Baym nominated me for an open seat position in the
upcoming AIR election.  I'd like to accept the nomination and offer a
brief personal statement.

Instead of using my time to broadcast my qualifications, I'd rather
discuss what I would work towards if elected.  Within two short years, the
existing council and members of AIR have established a dynamic academic
space to discuss Internet research.  It is now time, I believe, to expand
*dramatically* the conversations and communities.  Building on the
directions already put forth by AIR, I propose we work towards a more
diverse and inclusive association, especially in terms of
interdisciplinarity, internationalism, and, well, funkiness.

As evident in last year's conference and this year's program, AIR is, by
all accounts, interdisciplinary.  Yet it seems to me that it remains
dominated by communications, media studies, and sociology.  If elected, I
would work proactively to invite scholars from fields like ethnic studies,
women's studies, queer theory, and labor studies, as well as from fields
like anthropology, computer science, history, literature, psychology, and
public policy. I would work towards a massive and member-generated
database of academic and professional mailing lists, to which we could
send information regarding our organization. I would work to encourage
members to establish more special interest groups, and I'd encourage all
of us to do what Steve Jones does tirelessly:  to attend non-Internet
specific conferences and spread the word.

Last week, Charlie Breindahl encouraged members to think internationally.
I agree wholeheartedly with Charlie, even if it means I'm not elected.
Through the center I run (www.com.washington.edu/rccs), I have worked hard
at this task, publishing reviews of books written by authors from outside
the US and, in some cases, in languages other than English, and
maintaining a collection of syllabi and researchers from around the world.
Yet it's not nearly enough and, if elected, I would suggest a task force
on international issues and explore options of using translation software
to make AIR's Web site and discussion list more linguistically inclusive.

This is getting long, my apologies.  I'm almost through.

Although members of AIR have done an admirable job of keeping up with a
field that changes as I type, we need, I believe, to search wider, go
deeper, get stranger.  Some of us, myself included, are too comfortable
with derivative scholarship, looking once again at LambdaMOO and its 17
users -- :) -- while ignoring environments like Quake and Asheron's Call,
online communities that attract hundreds of thousands of users.  How can
we enliven our scholarship?  How can we expand our conversations to
include communities outside of academe?  As academics, how can we improve
(or begin?) our conversations and collaborations with digital artists and
activists?  And, perhaps most importantly for many of us, how can we help
one another keep up with our students -- students who demand more and more
classes in cyberculture and bring with them a significant amount of
experience, expertise, and curiosity?  In other words, how do we
rediscover, highlight, and fly high the less explored aspects of the Net,
the funky elements that attracted so many of us to the Net in the first
place?  If elected, I will jumpstart such discussions.

Finally, if elected, I will try my hardest to inaugurate on-site hot tub
parties at all AIR conferences.  Thank you for your time,

david silver
school of communications
university of washington
faculty.washington.edu/dsilver