Showing papers in "First Monday in 1998"

Homesteading the Noosphere

Abstract: After observing a contradiction between the 'official' ideology defined by open-source licenses and the actual behavior of hackers, we examine the actual customs which regulate the ownership and control of open-source software. We discover that they imply an underlying theory of property rights homologous to the Lockean theory of land tenure. We relate that to an analysis of the hacker culture as a 'gift culture' in which participants compete for prestige by giving time, energy, and creativity away. We then examine the implications of this analysis for conflict resolution in the culture, and develop some prescriptive implications.

The Hi-Tech Gift Economy

Abstract: During the Sixties, the New Left created a new form of radical politics: anarcho-communism. Above all, the Situationists and similar groups believed that the tribal gift economy proved that individuals could successfully live together without needing either the state or the market. From May 1968 to the late Nineties, this utopian vision of anarcho-communism has inspired community media and DIY culture activists. Within the universities, the gift economy already was the primary method of socialising labour. From its earliest days, the technical structure and social mores of the Net has ignored intellectual property. Although the system has expanded far beyond the university, the self-interest of Net users perpetuates this hi-tech gift economy. As an everyday activity, users circulate free information as e-mail, on listservs, in newsgroups, within on-line conferences and through Web sites. As shown by the Apache and Linux programs, the hi-tech gift economy is even at the forefront of software development. Contrary to the purist vision of the New Left, anarcho-communism on the Net can only exist in a compromised form. Money-commodity and gift relations are not just in conflict with each other, but also co-exist in symbiosis. The 'New Economy' of cyberspace is an advanced form of social democracy.

Cooking pot markets: An economic model for the trade in free goods and services on the Internet

Abstract: It has long been assumed that there is something beyond economics involved in the proliferation of free goods and services on the Internet. Although Netscape's recent move to give away the source code for its browser shows that the corporate world now believes that it is possible to make money with free software - previously eyed with cautious pessimism - money is not the prime motivator of most producers of the Internet's free goods, and neither is altruism. Efforts and rewards may be valued in intangibles, but, as this paper argues, there is a very tangible market dynamics to the free economy of the Internet, and rational economic decisions are at work. This is the "cooking-pot" market: an implicit barter economy with assymetric transactions.

A Taxonomy of Internet Commerce

Abstract: This paper attempts to clarify terminology discussing the interface between commerce and the Internet. It is also an empirically derived classification system or taxonomy of existing Internet business models. This taxonomy has two main branches - transplanted real-world business models and native Internet business models. The latter part of the paper discusses the role of business, governments, regulation and ideology in the development of I-Commerce and makes some cautious speculations regarding its future.

TAZ servers and the rewebber network: Enabling anonymous publishing on the world wide web

Abstract: The World Wide Web has recently matured enough to provide everyday users with an extremely cheap publishing mechanism. However, the current WWW architecture makes it fundamentally difficult to provide content without identifying yourself. We examine the problem of anonymous publication on the WWW, propose a design suitable for practical deployment, and describe our implementation. Some key features of our design include universal accessibility by preexisting clients, short persistent names, security against social, legal, and political pressure, protection against abuse, and good performance.

Trust Management on the World Wide Web.

Abstract: As once-proprietary mission-specific information systems migrate onto the Web, traditional security analysis cannot sufficiently protect each subsystem atomically. The Web encourages open. decentralized systems that span multiple administrative domains. Trust Management is an emerging framework for decentralizing security decisions that helps developers and others in asking “why” trust is granted rather than immediately focusing on “how” cryptography can enforce it. In this poster, we summarize the implications of Trust Management to future Web applications.

Who Will Create Metadata for the Internet

Abstract: After metadata schemes are established for the Internet, the next major obstacle will be to persuade information creators to use these schemes. To date, no mechanism has been effective in promoting the use of metadata for the Internet. This article examines the reasons why major categories of information providers may not see metadata as a worthwhile investment. Once these reasons are explained, the authors offer an alternative solution to create a "metadata explosion."

Power to the people: Role of electronic media in promoting democracy in Africa

Abstract: This paper presents an analysis of the role of electronic media in promoting the formation of democratic political regimes in Africa. With the dramatic expansion of various forms of electronic interchange, including electronic mail and the Internet, opportunities for communication across national boundaries, and cross-fertilization of ideas are greater than ever before. This article argues that access to electronic information can have a positive impact in promoting democracy in Africa, by providing civil society with greater leverage vis-a-vis the state and political elites. However, without parallel efforts to insure that access to the Internet is not restricted to urban, elite populations, political instability may result. The paper is structured as follows: Section I makes the theoretical case for the role of increased information access and communication in the promotion of democratic political regimes. Section II presents an overview of the state of electronic access in Africa, including indigenous and international donor supported initiatives to promote African connectivity. Section III presents an empirical analysis of the relationship between access to electronic media and political participation and democratization in Africa. Section IV considers methods to increase usage of electronic media as a tool for increased participation and democratization in Africa.

The Internet and Public Discourse

Abstract: Many legal systems, for example in the United States, have had difficulty comprehending the Internet because incompatible precedents based on so many existing media (post, telephone, newspaper, street corner, etc.) seem to apply. The Internet frustrates these traditional analogies because it is really a meta-medium: a set of layered services that make it easy to construct new media with almost any properties one likes. Despite this great flexibility, however, the dynamics of technical standards are emerging as a potentially conservative force. To help in mapping afresh the legal and political concerns that the Internet has raised, this article sketches a series of four models of the interaction between Internet architecture and public discourse.

Self without body: Texual self-representation in an electronic community

Abstract: This paper examines how a textual mode of communication has combined with the new technologies of computer-mediated communication (cmc) to produce interesting new opportunities for social interaction and presentation of self. These opportunities are in turn used in ways that promote the process of community in a text-based electronic environment. This paper first examines some of the common textual adaptations this electronic communications environment engenders. It then examines how one Internet newsgroup, alt.cyberpunk, developed a cooperative narrative in which participants made presentations of self that, in other venues, might be considered "fictional" but must be accepted at face value in a way similar to the manner in which presentations of self are accepted within physical environments. The paper concludes that these new opportunities for self-presentation are engendered by the tightened feedback loop that cmc technologies bring to a textual mode of communication. "Real-time" textual interaction engenders a novel new social environment.

The WebCommunicators: Issues in research into online journalism and journalists

Abstract: With a worldwide growing interest in journalism and journalists came an upswing in cross-national survey research among journalists from the print and broadcast media in the last five years. Since 1994 a new type of communicator is on the World Wide Web: the online journalist. Research into online journalism and journalists has been understandably scarce - the medium is young. Those studies that do exist suffer from a kind of anachronistic approach: explaining the new by using the old. This paper offers a brief overview of the existing literature and makes some suggestions to develop a comprehensive research instrument for the online news environment that can both stand the test of time as well as offer researchers anywhere a model for cross-national research.

Electronic Commerce: The Issues and Challenges to Creating Trust and a Positive Image in Consumer Sales on the World Wide Web

Abstract: We live in a world increasingly propelled by technological change. The next big thrust in a quest to make our lives better, simpler and more productive is electronic commerce (or E-commerce). What is E-commerce? Who will use it? What are the barriers to its successful implementation? How will a viable consumer model be constructed? While I will examine the technology that makes this e-commerce possible, I will also examine the issues of trust and image in e-commerce. It is not possible to separate the issues of technology, security, and trust. The whole image that secure, Web-based commerce needs polishing if it will ever meet expectations. One prediction claims that e-commerce will achieve revenues of $200 billion globally by the end of the year 2000. Considering that in 1995 approximately $131 million of goods were purchased online, the jump to $200 billion is staggering. The technologies that make the World Wide Web and e-commerce possible have some potentially negative components. Privacy issues are a major concern for many, since there are the means to collect consumer information easily with digital tools. Transaction security is equally important as well. These issues need timely resolution with government and business working together to ensure the privacy of consumers and the fidelity of transactions. Business and government need to develop a set of specific standards that are part of a uniform business code for transacting business on the Internet. Without cooperation, government agencies will step in and deal in a reactionary mode to abuses that are either taking place or imagined.

Brave New Universities

Abstract: Market capitalism, not the Internet per se, is the force behind developing the wired university. Applying market principles to North American Universities will, as David Noble warns, fundamentally alter them and possibly destroy what we think of as a "great democratic higher education system". Ironically, however, students in their roles as consumers are more likely to embrace than to resist these changes. The brave new universities that emerge will be hailed as yet another triumph of the free market even as liberal education atrophies. This article spells out the dystopian scenario.

The New 'Civic Virtue' of the Internet

Abstract: Who should the law-makers of cyberspace be? Who should be setting the rules that apply to conduct in the new global medium of 'cyberspace'? What polity or polities should we look to as a source of legitimate and welfare-enhancing rules for conduct on the net? We believe that the most obvious answer to this question - existing territorial sovereigns - may well be wrong. We question whether a governance system divided into territories demarcated by physical boundaries can simultaneously serve the two key governmental goals of legitimacy and efficiency in a world in which the effects of conduct has been decoupled from the physical location in which the conduct occurs. The new science of complex systems gives us reason to hope that an overall system of governance of the net that reconnects rule-making for online spaces with those most affected by those rules - but that also allows online groups to make decentralized decisions that have some impact on others, and that therefore elicit disparate responsive strategies - will create a new form of "civic virtue". The ideal of rational debate among "wise" elected representatives regarding the overall "public good" may be replaced, online at least, by a new architecture of governance that allows dispersed and complex interactions among groups of individuals taking unilateral actions and seeking more "local" goals and solutions. Instead of attempting to rely even upon the best of our democratic traditions to create a single set of laws imposed on the net "from the top down," we may all be better off if we allow the emergence of diverse and contending rule sets, in distinct areas of the net, which pull and tug against each other (and that help to recruit or drive off potential participants) - with the result that an optimal overall combination of rules arises. Rather than relying on good citizens of the global electronic polity to debate thoughtfully about a single shared vision of the common good, we might do better to look for a form of "civic virtue" that can reside in the very architecture of a decentralized, diverse complex system, like the net.

A Typology for Ready Reference Web Sites in Libraries

Abstract: Many libraries manage Web sites intended to provide their users with online resources suitable for answering reference questions. Most of these sites can be analyzed in terms of their depth, and their organizing and searching features. Composing a typology based on these factors sheds light on the critical design decisions that influence whether users of these sites succeed or fail to find information easily, rapidly and accurately. The same analysis highlights some larger design issues, both for Web sites and for information management at large.

Book jacket as access mechanism: An attribute rich resource for functional access to academic books

Abstract: Book jackets provide a model for access to documents on the World Wide Web. They demonstrate a means for making available many of the representational attributes important to making relevance judgments. Such attributes have been posited for retrieval models for some time, but have not been implemented in most formal access systems. Even in the Web environment physical availability is not the same as accessibility. The attribute categories discussed here emerged from 228 book jackets for non-fiction works in a medium size academic library. Models of document searching and book jacket design are discussed in relation to the individual scholarly searcher and new modes of document searching.

Desperately Seeking: Helping Hands and Human Touch

Abstract: We are living in a time of increasing information overload. Many solutions have been or are being drawn up to tackle this problem. However, today's most prominent solutions - such as Information Push and Search Engines - do not seem to be able to fully handle the problem. In this paper we will look at a number of solutions which may help us deal with information overload in the online marketplace. These solutions include "agency", agent-like applications, improvements in the information chain and - most importantly - information brokering. Some of these solutions require changes in the whole groundwork underlying the online marketplace; they are about whole new ways of interfacing with the online marketplace as well as the full employment of possibly intelligent software agents.

Virtual Harassment: Women and Online Education

Abstract: Research has shown that female teachers in higher education are often targets for student agression in the form of harassment. Because women have not traditionally held positions of power within academic institions, their ability to maintain authority is often challenged by students who are uncomfortable with female authority figures. As higher education moves online in the form of internet courses, MOO discussions, and email and listserv conversations, female instructors may be subjected to virtual harassment. Here I analyze conditions of cyberspace that may prove problematic for female instructors and offer suggestions for dealing with such issues.

Hypertext, the Next Generation: A Review and Research Agenda

Abstract: What is the future for hypertext? This article attempts to answer this fundamental question by examining the technological and commercial development of the World Wide Web. What do the experiences of electronic publishers on the Web reveal about the strengths and weaknesses of hypertext? Based on these experiences, some promising avenues for future research are outlined.

The work of the encyclopedia in the age of electronic reproduction

Abstract: Most discussion on the impact of the shift from print to electronic publishing has focused on issues like the fate of linear narrative, notions of authorship, and copyright. This article examines how the digitization of literature affects the craft of editing, and the everyday work of content producers. It focuses on the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which like all encyclopedias has been profoundly affected by the emergence of compact discs and the World Wide Web. The digitization of the encyclopedia has affected the structure of articles; it has also begun to affect the character of editorial work, the responsibilities of editors, and relations with authors, animators, and others.

Privacy Protection: Time to Think and Act Locally and Globally.

Abstract: This paper is included in the First Monday Special Issue: Commercial Applications of the Internet, published in July 2006. What sorts of privacy can consumers expect on the Internet? How havepolicies been evolving - or not evolving - in the past twelve months? This article examines the unique aspects on online communications and interactivity and analyzes the real meaning of community in the context of the Internet.[1]

Predicting E-mail Effects in Organisations

Abstract: By the 21st century electronic mail (e-mail) will be a pervasive communication medium creating new possibilities and having unforeseen consequences in organisations This paper attempts to predict e-mail developments and subsequent issues in organisations System designers and managers need to look beyond the efficiency and productivity gains of technology to second level effects in order find the primary e-mail issue for organisations with the continued expansion of global telecommunications networks

Information Technologies and Tertiary Education in New Zealand

Abstract: This article considers the extent to which, and ways in which, information technology issues have been addressed in recent tertiary education policy documents in New Zealand. By comparison with other reviews of tertiary education - notably the Dearing Report in the United Kingdom - these documents have little of substance to say about such issues. It is possible to speculate, nonetheless, about what might happen should current trends in the reform of tertiary education continue. It is argued that changes in the tertiary education sector need to be seen as one part of a wider process of neoliberal social transformation. Building upon some prophetic comments from Jean-Francois Lyotard on the changing role of the state in postmodern societies, the paper discusses three key features of New Zealand's tertiary education environment: the decline in institutional authority, the heavy emphasis on skills, and the emergence of new forms of control over educational subjects. A brief assessment of future prospects for education in a social world combining neoliberal individualism with the latest developments in information technology is offered.

On the Early Days of Usenet: The Roots of the Cooperative Online Culture. (Chapter 10)

Abstract: Even if we have shifted away from discussing human networks, we are getting a first hand EXPERIENCE of what they are through this mailing list. No amount of \"a priori\" theorizing of their nature, has as much explanatory power as personal experience. By observing what happens when connectivity is provided to a large mass of people in which they can FREELY voice their ideas, doubts, and opinions, a lot of insight is obtained into very important issues of mass intercommunication. Jorge Phillips, Human-Nets Mailing List Subject: Administrivia, 03 June 1981

Higher education: From craft-production to capitalist enterprise?

Abstract: have argued in these electronic pages. But the same technology - if its deployment is guided by university faculties rather than by capitalist enterprise - can be a tool which will improve the quality of higher education as well as make higher education accessible to more students. The author argues that in this struggle between the drive of capital and the values and institutions of higher education the outcome is far from inevitable.

Web-site sensitivity to privacy concerns: Collecting personally identifiable information and passing persistent cookies

Abstract: The World Wide Web has attracted both business and non-business sites that want to establish an online presence for reasons ranging from prestige to money-making. A common trait of many Web sites, however, is the need to monitor visitor use in order to know how the site is being used. For sites that wish for more information than can be provided by server log files, one option is to ask for visitor registration. Another option involves the use of cookies that can keep track of a user's visit and store other useful information. Registration and cookies have become prevalent on the Web at the same time that problems with these practices are being increasingly noted as a possible invasion of privacy. A study of 100 popular Web sites by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) determined a baseline figure for the appearance of privacy policies as well as for use of visitor registration and cookies. The present study examined the same sites six months later in order to establish any changes in patterns of usage. This examination suggests that the Web has become more sensitive to the privacy concerns of its users while, at the same time, increasingly resorting to the employment of privacy-threatening registration and cookies.

Drawing Sea Serpents: The Publishing Wars on Personal Computing and the Information Age

Abstract: A remarkable quantity and range of books on the Information Age is being published, presenting just as remarkable a breadth of opinions and convictions about this era While it is difficult to keep up with these publications, the effort is worth it because they provide a means of contemplating just what one's place is in an age noted for rapid change, great promises, and equally great perils This essay provides an impressionistic description of nearly a hundred books published in this decade (about half in the last three years), with some advice about what they have to offer and how they should be read Approached in the right manner, regular reading in some of the topics described by the author can help individuals to reflect on their own individual use of computing technology and to sort through the hype, hubris, and hysteria that have accompanied what has normally been called the Information Age

The Social Forces Behind the Development of Usenet (Chapter 3)

Abstract: Right at this moment someplace in the world, someone is being helpful (or someone is being helped.) At the same time, others are participating in various discussions and debates. A new communications medium is currently in its infancy. Over the past two decades the global computer telecommunications network has been developing. One element of this network is called Usenet (also known as Netnews). The original carrier of this news was called UUCPnet (or just UUCP). The rawest principle of Usenet is its importance. In its simplest form, Usenet represents democracy. The basic element of Usenet is a post. Each individual post consists of a unique contribution from some user placed in a subject area, called a newsgroup. In Usenet’s very beginning (and still to some extent today), posts were transferred using the UUCP utility distributed with Unix. This utility allows the use of phone lines to transmit computer data among separate computers. Usenet grew from the ground up in a grassroots manner. Originally, there was no official structure. What began as two or three sites on the network in 1979 expanded to 15 in 1980. From 150 in 1981 to 400 in 1982. The very nature of Usenet is communication. Usenet greatly facilitates interhuman communication among a large group of users.