[Air-L] The Date and the Version Thang

Steve Jones sjones at uic.edu
Tue Jul 27 17:38:00 PDT 2010


The Internet begs to differ: http://aoir.org/2000/ The first conference was numbered 1.0. Why? I certainly don't remember that particular decision. (There's nothing unique about that, I've forgotten plenty of other ones as well.)

You could say v0.0 was the Drake conference in 1998 (WorldWideWeb and Contemporary Theory, organized by Thom Swiss and Andrew Herman, from which a book resulted with the same title) at which, after hearing about lack of interest in Internet research in various disciplinary associations I said something like, "Why don't we start our own association?," and that the beta versions were the meetings at several disciplinary organizations' conferences to drum up interest in (and volunteers for) AoIR. 

Does anyone actually remember the conferences by number? I confess I don't. I remember them by place, people, parties and presentations (not necessarily in that order, but can I get extra credit for alliteration?).

Steve

On Jul 27, 2010, at 7:15 PM, Matthew Allen wrote:

> I defer to Logie's more accurate and nerdoise account! I also remember the t-shirts. I think I bought two to celebrate being invited onto the AoIR executive that year.
> 
> On a broader matter, does anyone know of a good article or two that discusses 'versions' in software from a cultural / socio-political perspective? I am still working on my historicity of Web 2.0 stuff and need something which helps me explain the semiotics of writing / reading in versions....
> 
> Matt
> 
> Dr Matthew Allen
> Associate Professor and Head of Department, Internet Studies
> School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts
> Curtin University of Technology, CRICOS 00301J Australia
> m.allen at curtin.edu.au
> http://netcrit.net <http://netcrit.net/>  @netcrit
> +61 8 92663511 (v) +61 8 9266 3166 (f)
> Australian Learning and Teaching Council Fellow
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> From: Logie [mailto:logie at umn.edu]
> Sent: Wed 7/28/2010 12:32 AM
> To: Matthew Allen
> Cc: aoir list
> Subject: The Date and the Version Thang
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Jul 26, 2010, at 3:55 PM, Matthew Allen wrote:
> 
>> Re date and version confusion:
>> 
>> Personally I blame Nancy and Steve - why didn't they have the first conference in 2001 or (in one of those kooky computer-speak things, call the first conference v0.0). *grin*.
>> 
> 
> 
> Matt -
> 
> Don't blame Nancy and Steve. Blame me. The first conference was simply called "Internet Research" full stop. As I was working as local chair for the second conference, I set about designing a logo for the program and for the t-shirts that I hawked incessantly throughout the conference. In a moment of cutey-pie nerdosity, I hit upon the all-too-obvious idea of calling the conference "version 2.0" and thus we descended into the rabbit hole.
> 
> That logo is online (as are the remnants of the conference site, to my horror) here: http://aoir.org/2001/.
> 
> Personally, I think we should have followed Apple's move, and called the 10th Conference "Internet Research X" and then all subsequent conferences would have been decimal increments within "X."
> 
> More to the point, we COULD all decide that the whole "point oh" thing is sounding a bit 20th Century these days. Which reminds me, why didn't anyone fix that whole 20th Century = the 1900s thing in time for it to not confuse the hell out of me?
> 
> Yours, in befuddlement,
> 
> Logie
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> John Logie
> Associate Professor of Rhetoric
> Department of Writing Studies
> University of Minnesota
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
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