[Air-L] PhD dissertation on the Internet in Israel - www.sociothink.com

[Nik John]

Dear Colleagues

I was recently awarded a PhD for my dissertation on the arrival and
diffusion of the Internet in Israel. It's online at www.sociothink.com

I do not try to identify the variables that predict the speed of the
Internet's diffusion in a new country, but rather, using the
methodological and theoretical tools of Science and Technology
Studies, I ask how the Internet got to Israel in the first place. How
was the knowledge transferred? By whom? What micro processes were
involved? What political, economic and cultural and regime was
prevalent in Israel at the time the technology arrived there? And how
did changes in that regime from the mid-80s to mid-90s impact on the
way the Internet was institutionalized in a new country? And  what
does all this teach us about how globalization happens? It's a study
about the social meanings of infrastructure and while it doesn't seem
to belong in any obvious category of "Internet studies", it most
definitely is a study of the Internet.

I also ask what bringing the Internet to a new country meant to
Israel's Internet pioneers, and compare this with the
techno-utopianism that characterized press coverage of the Internet in
its early years.

And for those of you who sometimes use computers to write in non-Latin
languages, there is a chapter on how the evolution of the way we
present Hebrew letters on the Internet is not just a story about the
technical superiority of Unicode, but actually involves the "browser
wars" between Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, the shift from
mainframe to personal computers, and the emergence of a relevant
social group (computer programmers) that was able to devote resources
to dealing with a problem that was becoming increasingly troublesome
to it (namely, the customization of software). While the case study
involves Hebrew, the findings apply to other non-Latin languages, and
have implications for our understanding of the Internet as either a
cause for cultural homogenization or a preserver of local languages.
My own view is that a global solution (Unicode) might offer a lifeline
for the representation of local cultures online.

Comments of any kind will be received with interest.

Best

Dr. Nicholas John

Research Fellow
The Interdisciplinary Center for Technology Analysis and Forecasting
Tel Aviv University
http://ictaf.tau.ac.il
Personal site: www.sociothink.com
nikjohn at gmail.com
Tel: +972 3 5781993
Mobile: +972 54 7906073