[Air-l] summer gems

[jeremy hunsinger]

On Saturday, August 17, 2002, at 06:18 PM, david silver wrote:

> Folks,
>
> Perhaps as a complement to the interesting abstracts of papers coming
> through air-l, I'd like to share some interesting readings I've been
> mulling over throughout the summer.  Am I imagining things or has the
> summer pipeline of publications been particularly interesting this 
> summer?

Well it isn't just publications that have been interesting, there have 
been some interesting movements and changes in the groups that govern 
the net.  There are 3 major events that I've witnessed this summer which 
could have great effect in the near future, and there are other things 
occurring now, which also could have interesting effects.

Many of you are aware of what occurred with ICANN and the death of the 
At large membership, but along the same lines the Auerbach suit seems to 
have one at a certain level, now the directors will be able to see the 
ICANN operational records.  There is quite a bit more going on with 
ICANN, i'd suggest frequenting http://icannwatch.org

In parallel moves, though clearly not orchestrated, ISOC, which is the 
holding organization for the IETF, and IAB amongst other things (The 
IETF is the Internet Engineering Task Force, and the IAB is the Internet 
Architecture board, they are the groups that develop and approve 
standards for the internet) has changed its governance from a fairly 
open structure with some democratic principles to a fairly closed 
bureaucratic structure.  You can find details at http://open-isoc.org

Finally, the third major change underway that is somewhat interesting 
and possibly suspect is the movement of the .org TLD which is due to be 
given now to ISOC(and partners) from NSI according to teh recent ICANN 
report.  For those that do not know ISOC and ICANN have significantly 
overlapping senior people involved in interesting ways.  So, while it is 
not improper that this occur according to ICANN rules, it is something 
that I intend to watch and keep track of for a while.  This is good for 
ISOC because it guarentees a funding stream, but will it be good for the 
Internet and the growth of .org?  I am not sure, but for me the recent 
moves away from democratic oriented, or at least transparent and thus 
answerable, governance of ICANN and ISOC sort of insure that the 
governance of the internet will continue along a direction of more 
institutional control based on corporate and fiduciary interests.

----
while that occurred, there is also a working group in the IETF recently 
founded to look at the question of intellectual property rights in 
ieft.  This as most of you are aware is an area that has seen 
significant moves toward privatization and ownership in the last few 
years, including last year where there was an attempt to include 
proprietary standards into W3C open standards, thus requiring people to 
possibly have to pay licensing fees to even surf the web.  Given the 
recent history of this, several activists organizations are actively 
watching and possibly interacting with that working group to try to 
prevent future problems in these lines.

-----
Ok, so other than that, going on, I agree with David that it has been a 
fruitful summer for publishing and activities.  There were the materials 
he mentioned, in which several of our members have been participating, 
but there was also the CATAC conference which i am sorry i had to miss 
because i ended up going to a Biotechnology, New Media, and Citizenship 
conference in Australia.  But Charles and Fay recently posted a way to 
get the materials from CATAC which is great.

On some related sides of internet studies I've only read a few books 
this summer(mainly because i've been reading for prelims and teaching so 
I can't read everything I want, darn 24 hour days), nonetheless, I'll 
give my non-critical, mostly constructive 2 sentence reviews below

Scott Lash's Critique of Information is an interesting read in many 
respects.  Parts are similar to his earlier works, dealing with the 
ontological foundations of critique, etc. But he has has some insights 
into the sociology of the net mixed in, along with some of his political 
economic analysis of the transformational aspects of information in our 
culture.  Fascinating read overall, though it has some editing errors 
which gets irritating.

Pierre Levy's Cyberculture which is part of Mark Poster and Kate 
Hayle's  series, i think, is an excellent overview of cyberculture that 
i think would make a good part of any class onthe subject.  It is 
introductory in part's, activist in others, and theoretical in others.  
Yet overall, it is an easy read with some areas that are contestable, 
but overall it is well thought out.

Media Manifesto's by Regis Debray is interesting in several ways.  It 
seems to be Debray's defense of a new program of study which he called 
mediology, which is significantly different from media studies in the 
U.S. as I understand it(which is as sophisticated as many of you).  In 
it Debray is analyzing the relationship between technology and ideation, 
the formation of cultures and the changes that occur in them.  I've only 
read it once, it was a fairly easy run through, but it is something that 
I want to return to in order to reread because some of the concepts in 
this work seem to be fairly significant if we were to apply them toward 
the internet.

Feenberg's Transforming Technology: A Critical Theory Revised is a 
collection of some of his journal articles with some additions that help 
to extend and clarify his Critical Theory of Technology.  While mainly a 
work in the Frankfurt School tradition looking at technology in broad 
terms.  I think that if one follows this tradition of analysis and does 
not have the papers in your files yet, that this book can add a fair 
amount to ones understanding of the philosophy and social theory 
surrounding technology.

and finally

Andrew Barry's Political Machines, which I am not finished with, but I 
was reading while in Australia, is turning into a fascinating look at 
the relationship between governance and technology and the 
interrelations between the two including some insightful chapters on 
european technology policy.  It is in general, so far, a book in the 
foucauldian school of political analysis with several interesting 
additions and applications.  I think it is definitively going to be a 
book that I'd use in teaching a graduate level class on technology 
policy, however, given the divergent traditions in that arena, 
significant groups probably will not find the book as valuable as others.

---
plus i taught my class on the political economy of the internet again, 
that was fun, if anyone else is teaching in this area, let me know, i'd 
love to share notes.


> jeremy hunsinger
jhuns at vt.edu
on the ibook
www.cddc.vt.edu
www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy
www.dromocracy.com
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