The Rise of the Creative Class

The article reviews the book “Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy,” by Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian.

Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy

Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. Pippa Norris. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 303 pp. $60 hbk., $20 pbk. Forecasts that the Internet heralds a world of more democracy and less poverty seem as inflated as dot.com stocks. This rosy view has electronic voting, political chat rooms, and email access re-engaging apathetic publics in politics. Digital technologies redress economic disparities, and the benefits of the Internet percolate down to transform poor societies. Equally exaggerated is the gloom of naysayers. The Internet Age has done little to narrow the gap between rich and poor countries, the information haves and havenots, cyber-skeptics contend. Indeed, digital technologies could create new inequalities and reinforce the dominance of power elites. In her new book, Digital Divide, Pippa Norris, associate director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, steps into this fusillade of cyber-hyperbole, lowers the decibel with a well-written and thoughtful examination of Internet use and access in 179 countries and dissects the claims and counter-claims. Her research and findings place her on middle ground, somewhere between current reality and optimism. The Internet era seems to be changing "politics as usual" in a number of countries, expanding and loosening information about governments and politics, allowing the entrance of new political players, and fostering international movements on the environment, women's rights, and other issues across borders. The disappointment is that digital technologies are activating the already politically active and passing up the disengaged and uninterested. A major challenge to digital democracy is the gulf between the United States, Scandinavia, and other early Internet adopters and the rest of the world. That gap is now so wide that at the turn of the century, more than three-quarters of the online community lived in the developed world. Internet use tracks the path of economic and technological development. But that situation could begin to change, Norris says. The Internet is in its technological adolescence. Costs of access are falling. And governments can make a difference if policymakers take the initiative. We have the historical patterns of other communication technologies to study. Norris examines theories of technological diffusion and points out that the American response to the Internet is more akin to the rapid spread of televisions and VCRs than the slower adoption of telephones and radios. American dominance could recede as Internet access grows worldwide. Contrary to what officials of the Bush Administration contend, Norris finds that the digital divide between rich and poor within the United States remains substantial. Europe mirrors that trend. In the long run, the Internet could become more accessible to the excluded: lower income families, minorities, and women. …

Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide

Thirty-three brothels in rural and small-town Nevada, which contain between 225 and 250 prostitutes, are legal or openly tolerated and strictly controlled by state statute, city and county ordinances, and local rules. Twenty-two of the brothels are in places with populations between 500 and 8,000, and the remaining eleven are in rural areas. The legal and quasi-legal restrictions placed on prostitutes severely limit their activities outside brothels. These restrictions in conjunction with historical inertia, perceived benefits of crime and venereal disease control, and the good image of madams contribute to widespread positive local attitudes toward brothel prostitution. Interactions between clients and prostitutes in brothel parlors are also restricted and limited to a few basic types which are largely determined by entrepreneurial philosophy. KEY WORDS : Nevada, Political geography, Prostitution, Restricted activity spaces.

ANNALS of the Association of American Geographers

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Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation

In the last few years, a new type of synchronous social networking services (SNSs) has emerged—social live streaming services (SLSSs). Studying SLSSs is a new and exciting research field in information science. What information behaviors do users of live streaming platforms exhibit? In our empirical study we analyzed information production behavior (i.e., broadcasting) as well as information reception behavior (watching streams and commenting on them). We conducted two quantitative investigations, namely an online survey with YouNow users (N

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Information Behavior on Social Live Streaming Services

Today we cannot imagine our everyday life without the Internet. Some of us do not even remember the times, when we actually had to get outside to buy new clothes or book a vacation. Now, all these tasks can be managed, with the help of the Internet, comfortably from our homes. One of the most booming Internet offerings are the so-called social media. In our study we investigate the divergences in social media usage between different generations. The out-comes of our investigation might be a valuable guide for businesses focusing on online marketing, social shopping, or e-commerce in general, and desiring to reach the right target groups. Once the businesses identified services mostly used by their target customers, they can focus on building a relationship with them through the social network, committing them to the brand and, hence, influencing their decision-making.

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Inter-Generational Comparison of Social Media Use: Investigating the Online Behavior of Different Generational Cohorts

eGovernment in cities of the knowledge society. An empirical investigation of Smart Cities' governmental websites

Can cities be smart? In this article we define what a smart city is and formulate categories and indicators of smart and/or informational cities Based on these measures, we investigate four Japanese cities as case studies that appear to be highly developed modern metropolises We focus on infrastructures essential for an informational city as base for a ubiquitous, smart (in a narrow sense), creative, and knowledge city We measure the level of "smartness" or "in-formativeness" for each city and create a ranking Finally, as essential preconditions for a successful development of smart cities, we present political initiatives in Japan

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How "Smart" Are Japanese Cities? An Empirical Investigation of Infrastructures and Governmental Programs in Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, and Kyoto

Contemporary and future cities are often labeled as “smart cities,” “digital cities” or “ubiquitous cities,” “knowledge cities,” and “creative cities.” Informational urbanism includes all aspects of information and (tacit as well as explicit) knowledge with regard to urban regions. “Informational city” (or “smart city” in a broader sense) is an umbrella term uniting the divergent trends of informationrelated city research. Informational urbanism is an interdisciplinary endeavor incorporating on the one side computer science and information science as well as on the other side urban studies, city planning, architecture, city economics, and city sociology. In this article, we present both, a conceptual framework for research on smart cities as well as results from our empirical studies on smart cities all over the world. The framework consists of seven building blocks, namely information and knowledge related infrastructures, economy, politics (e-governance) and administration (e-government), spaces (spaces of flows and spaces of places), location factors, the people’s information behavior, and problem areas.

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Kaja J. Fietkiewicz

Papers

Information Behavior on Social Live Streaming Services

Inter-Generational Comparison of Social Media Use: Investigating the Online Behavior of Different Generational Cohorts

eGovernment in cities of the knowledge society. An empirical investigation of Smart Cities' governmental websites

How "Smart" Are Japanese Cities? An Empirical Investigation of Infrastructures and Governmental Programs in Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, and Kyoto

Informational Urbanism. A Conceptual Framework of Smart Cities