Showing papers in "International Journal of Communication in 2007"

Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society

Abstract: This article presents a set of grounded hypotheses on the relationship between communication and power relationships in the technological context that characterizes the network society. Based on a selected body of communication literature, and of a number of case studies and examples, it argues that the media have become the social space where power is decided. It shows the direct link between politics, media politics, the politics of scandal, and the crisis of political legitimacy in a global perspective. It also puts forward the notion that the development of interactive, horizontal networks of communication has induced the rise of a new form of communication, mass self-communication, over the Internet and wireless communication networks. Under these conditions, insurgent politics and social movements are able to intervene more decisively in the new communication space. However, corporate media and mainstream politics have also invested in this new communication space. As a result of these processes, mass media and horizontal communication networks are converging. The net outcome of this evolution is a historical shift of the public sphere from the institutional realm to the new communication space.

“No more peace!” How disaster, terror and war have upstaged media events

Abstract: We sense a retreat from the genres of "media events" (Dayan and Katz, 1992)--the ceremonial Contests, Conquests and Coronations that punctuated televisions's first 50 years--and a corresponding rise in the live broadcasting of disrupive events such as Disaster, Terror and War. We believe that cynicism, disenchantment and segmentation are undermining attention to ceremonial events, while the mobility and ubiquity of television technology, together with the downgrading of scheduled peogramming, provide ready access to disruption. If ceremonial events may be characterized as "co-productions" of broadcasters and establishments, then disruptive events may be characterized as "co-productions" of broadcasters and anti-establishment agencies, i.e. the perpetrators of disruption.

Perceptions of Mobile Phone Use in Public Settings: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

Abstract: This study entailed a cross-cultural comparison of perceptions of mobile phone use in select public settings, including a movie theater, restaurant, bus, grocery store, classroom, and sidewalk. A sample of participants from the U.S. Mainland, Hawaii, Japan, Taiwan, and Sweden was surveyed for social acceptability assessments of talking on a mobile phone in each of these locations. As hypothesized, settings involving collective attention were considered least acceptable for talking on a mobile phone. Results also revealed numerous cultural similarities and differences. Taiwanese participants tended to report more tolerance for mobile phone use in a theater, restaurant, and classroom than did participants from the other cultural groupings. Japanese participants also tended to be more tolerant of mobile phone use in a classroom, but less tolerant of use on a sidewalk and on a bus than were the other participants. The discussion offers theoretical implications of the findings.

Rawls, Fraser, redistribution, recognition and The World Summit on the Information Society

Abstract: This paper focuses on one of the most prominent manifestations of humorous communication in the present era – Internet-based humor. It explores both the content of Internet humor and the various forms that it takes. A content analysis of 400 humorous texts from eight salient humorous websites shows that the Internet functions both as a ‘carrier’ of old humor types such as jokes and cartoons and as a ‘generator’ of new humor types. The new types are defined and analysed in the light of three characteristics of the Internet: Interactivity, multimedia and global reach. Whereas interactivity is expressed in the humorous texts in a very limited way, the features of multimedia and global reach are more visible. The results point to a prominence of the visual humorous forms over the verbal forms, as well as to a global dominance over the local. This supremacy of the global is evident in the analysis of the humorous topics: Globally oriented topics such as sex, gender and animals are much more popular than locally oriented topics such as ethnicity and politics. This does not mean, however, that the humorous texts reflect a universal set of values. Not only are the vast majority of the texts in English, but they also reflect the values and priorities of Western, capitalist and youth-oriented cultures.

The Wireless Leash: Mobile Messaging Service as a Means of Control

Abstract: Mobile messaging, including short-messaging service (SMS) and multimedia messaging service (MMS), is an asynchronous mobile phone service that is too often deemed as a tool for entertainment and consumption at the micro individual level. This paper, however, examines the more structural aspects of mobile messaging being socially, economically, and politically shaped as a means of control. It first establishes conceptual connections between existing mobile communication studies and the historical tendency for information and communication technologies (ICTs) to be used for surveillance and authoritarian power projects. This discussion is substantiated by a brief global overview of related incidents occurring in Malaysia, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Hong Kong, all in 2005. The paper then focuses on mobile messaging and social control in China, where a massive IT industrial complex has emerged since 2000 to serve the control needs of the power elite, especially with regard to SMS. There is both macro institutional formations at the national and transnational levels and more specific organizational developments, such as in the workplace for purposes of labor control or at the interface between broadcast stations and audiences in order to reduce the political risk of phone-in programs. The overall argument is that, the political function of mobile messaging has to be understood as part of the existing institutional structures of a given society; and that only by fully recognizing problems in the political status quo, in power projects at micro, meso, and macro levels, can we seize the opportunity for social change.

[Special Section on Net Neutrality] The Benefits and Risks of Mandating Network Neutrality, and the Quest for a Balanced Policy

Abstract: A fundamental issue in the network neutrality debate is the extent to which network operators should be allowed to discriminate among Internet packet streams to selectively block, adjust quality of service, or adjust prices. This paper first reviews technology now available for traffic discrimination. It then shows how network operators can use this technology in ways that would make the Internet less valuable to Internet users, and why a network operator would have financial incentive to do this if, and only if, it has sufficient market power. A particular concern is that network operators could use discrimination to extract oligopoly rents from upstream markets that are highly competitive. This paper also shows how network operators can use the very same technology to discriminate in ways that benefit Internet users as well as the network operator. Thus, network neutrality supporters are right to fear unlimited discrimination in some cases, while network neutrality opponents are right to fear a policy that imposes strict limits on discrimination. From this, we argue that the network neutrality debate should be refocused on the search for a balanced policy, which is a policy that limits the more harmful discriminatory practices in markets where there is insufficient competition, with little interference to beneficial discrimination or innovation. We apply this balanced policy in a few controversial scenarios as examples. There has been too little attention on the possibility of a nuanced balanced policy, in part because the network neutrality debate is focusing on the wrong issues. This paper argues that the debate should shift toward the complex details of differentiating harmful discrimination from beneficial discrimination, and away from high-level secondary questions like whether discrimination is inherently just, who ought to pay for certain Internet services, how important general design principles are, what abstract rights and freedoms consumers and carriers deserve, or whether network operators can give their affiliates special treatment. Reality is more complex than these questions would imply, and none of them will serve as a basis for a sufficiently specific and effective policy.

Democratizing Global Communication? Global Civil Society and the Campaign for Communication Rights in the Information Society

Abstract: This paper is a case study of the role of transnational advocacy networks (TANs) and multi-stakeholder governance processes in the formation of international communication-information policy. It analyzes the Campaign for Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) during the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The paper combines methods of historical institutionalism and empirical social network analysis. It documents the important role of the CRIS campaign in determining the norms and modalities of civil society participation in WSIS, and provides a critical assessment of the ideology of "communication rights." The SNA data reveal the centrality of CRIS affiliate Association for Progressive Communications in WSIS civil society and the paper explains that centrality in terms of its organizational capacity to link multiple issue networks. The paper also explores the strengths and weaknesses of multi-stakeholder governance as revealed by the attempts to institutionalize WSIS civil society.

Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the Changing Arab Information Order

Abstract: This article explores the impact of Arab reality television on Arab governance. Reality television activates hypermedia space (Kraidy, 2006c), a broadly defined inter-media symbolic field, because its commercial logic promotes ostensibly participatory practices like voting, campaigning and alliance building via mobile telephones and the Internet. How does hypermedia space contribute to changing the ways in which Arab citizens and regimes access, use, create and control information? How do the new information dynamics affect the way citizens and governments relate to each other? To address these questions, this article focuses on recent social and political developments in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, treating the two countries as a dynamic pair whose multi-faceted interactions shape a pan-Arab hypermedia space. This article will endeavor to explain how various Saudi and Lebanese actors have appropriated the reality TV show Star Academy for social and political purposes, and how increased public awareness of the hypermedia space engendered by the program has affected the nature of governance in the two countries. This article concludes with a discussion of how hypermedia space contributes to shifts in the nature and boundaries of social and political agency.

Don’t Smile for the Camera: Black Power, Para-Proxemics and Prolepsis in Print Ads for Hip-Hop Clothing

Abstract: The UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions was adopted in October 2005. This article explores the Convention’s objectives and the contribution that the Convention is likely to make to their realisation in the future. In its final form the Convention is considerably less ambitious than many of its promoters had wished: key provisions are expressed in aspirational terms, the Convention’s dispute resolution procedures are consensual and the Convention explicitly states that it does not modify the rights or obligations of its Parties under pre-existing international agreements. The extensive support that the Convention received from the international community at the time of its adoption, with one hundred and forty eight countries voting in its favour, nevertheless affords it considerable political weight. The Convention may consequently play a role in the interpretation of existing international agreements, including the WTO agreements, and in negotiations over their future development. The article also suggests that there may be more scope than is initially apparent for the Convention to be used as a basis for evaluating state measures, not only in relation to international trade, but also regarding the domestic treatment of cultural minorities. For such review to become meaningful, however, active support will be necessary not only from civil society organisations, which played a key role in the Convention’s initial development, but also from contracting states and the various Convention organs

The Imperiled 'American': Visual Culture, Nationality and U.S. Foreign Policy

Abstract: This essay explores vital elements in the historical visual culture of the USA which the author argues help to explain both American cultural identity and, consequently, how the U.S. public’s mobilization for war seems to be an ongoing success story despite its partly countervailing tendency to insularity. The scare quotes the author has put around the word ‘American’ in the title are designed to open up the question of what the sense of being American, of having American nationality is, and what its sources are, especially in visual media. They are also in response to many Latin Americans’ ongoing irritation with the U.S. arrogation of “America” as a synecdoche to denote just one out of some 40 nations in the Americas, and thus as a constant reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine, affirming an expansive nationalism. The title also echoes the title of a book published 50 years ago, The Frightened Giant. Written by Cedric Belfrage (1956), a British political activist who had lived some 30 years in the USA and was deported during the McCarthy period, it addressed a paradox. The paradox was that U.S. citizens at that time were heirs to the radical political tradition of challenge to authority within the American revolution, but were too scared to lay claim to it in case they too would be defined as Communists and suffer the negative fallout. The USA in Belfrage’s view was a giant that had tragically allowed itself to become scared of its own shadow.

Governing the “Spatial Reach” ? Spheres of Influence and Challenges to Global Media Policy

Abstract: The advanced globalization process reveals not only new 'network' information infrastructures but new political terrains. Although communication theory has just commenced to debate new forms of 'public' discourse, it is of equal importance to address new emerging issues of information sovereignty within a transnational public space. The following article attempts to 'map' the arising spheres of 'sovereignty.' In the first part, the article develops the conceptual shift of 'sovereignty' as 'ontological spaces' which provide, in the second part, a framework of analysis of today's transnational political information flows.

[Special Section on Net Neutrality] Network Neutrality: Words of Power and 800-Pound Gorillas

Abstract: The debate over network neutrality means different things to different stakeholders. To advocates for the Internet, it has to do with preservation of the Internet’s open nature. On the other hand, to large service providers, it has to do with the viability of revenue streams, and in particular the future of television. The current structure of the television industry is much more vertically integrated and “closed” than the Internet, and this structure has sustained a well-understood value chain with stable opportunities to profit from content delivery, advertising, and so on. In contrast, the open design of the Internet limits the ability to profit from the delivery of content, and as the Internet more and more becomes the platform to deliver video, the threat to revenues is obvious. It is this collision between different revenue models, each valid in its own context, that provides the drive for the debate over network neutrality. The history of Voice over IP (VoIP) is a cautionary tale about the disruption of existing revenue models by the Internet, and those who count on the current revenue models for television are preemptively moving to defend themselves. Any attempt to intervene in this battle must first take a realistic view of what the options are for the stakeholders and how the battle might play out, and must not adapt an over-simple or over-constraining view of what it means to be “open.”

The State of the Debate on Network Neutrality

Abstract: The debate over “network neutrality” has recently emerged as the single most important communications policy issue—at least within the United States—that is now being debated around the world. The resolution of this debate may greatly influence what applications and content are available to Internet users, which business models are successful for service providers, which modes of social communication develop, and which technical designs are effective. As applications move to become Internet Protocol (IP)-based, the reverberations will also reach those sectors that build on or compete with the Internet, including the telephone, television, radio, and electronic commerce sectors. The magnitude of this issue demands careful consideration by policymakers. The papers in this special issue can serve as a valuable basis for such consideration.

Governance Without Politics: Civil Society, Development and the Postcolonial State

Abstract: In the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the G8 Summits and the World Bank, civil society organizations are often held up as the only legitimate institutional actors capable of representing and managing distributional inequities of a highly fractured information society. This paper locates the current role of civil society organizations in a longer history within the academic and policy fields of ‘development’ communications. While issues of access are clearly more central for Third World nations, this paper examines the social terrain behind the institutions of policy-making in the postcolonial contexts, specifically addressing debates between Southern and Northern perspectives in debates over the WSIS and the larger parameters of the Information Society. I argue that the dominant discourse on the digital divide—that between the North and South most generically—is rooted in assumptions about the neutrality of the category of civil society, devoid not just of history but of politics.

Gideon Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2012: Growing Up Gay Today

Abstract: We need to reconsider ways of thinking about queerness based on the experiences of pervasive invisibility in order to comprehend the experiences of today’s and tomorrow's kids, growing up in a culture that acknowledges queerness and does so by attempting to integrate it into the commercialized array of cultural products, niche-marketed demo slices and voting blocks. Much LGBT [pre-queer] theorizing presupposed invisibility and rare stereotypic representations as a limiting and distorting condition of growing up. What do we say now about growing up with reasonably common news and entertainment presence and with the opportunities for exploration and contact offered by the Internet? One way is to deny the meaningfulness of identity and theorize the problem away. But most kids are still experiencing isolation and vulnerability in enemy territory, and for them these admittedly problematic media images are far from trivial psychic/cultural resources.

Scenarios for the Network Neutrality Arms Race

Abstract: Several factors suggest that meaningful network neutrality rules will not be enshrined in near-term U.S. telecommunications policy. These include disagreements over the need for such rules as well as their definition, efficacy and enforceability. However, as van Schewick (2005)1 has demonstrated in the context of the Internet, network providers may have economic incentives to discriminate in welfare-reducing ways; in addition, network operators may continue to possess market power, particularly with respect to a terminating monopoly.2 On the other hand, the literature on two-sided markets,3 the challenge of cost-recovery in the presence of significant fixed and sunk costs, and the changing nature of Internet traffic all provide efficiency-enhancing rationales for discriminatory pricing and traffic management. Thus, policy-makers face a daunting challenge: discriminatory behavior is likely to occur and distinguishing between good and bad discriminatory behavior is difficult.

[Special Section on Net Neutrality] A Layered Network Approach to Net Neutrality

Abstract: Net neutrality was the most contentious communications policy issue considered by Congress during 2005-2006 The issue is the result of a fragmented communications policy unable to deal with technology convergence In this paper, we develop a net neutrality policy based on the layered structure of the Internet that gracefully accommodates convergence Our framework distinguishes between discrimination in high barrier-to-entry network infrastructure and in low barrier-to-entry applications The policy prohibits use of Internet infrastructure to produce an uneven playing field in Internet applications In this manner, the policy restricts an Internet service provider's ability to discriminate in a manner that extracts oligopoly rents, while simultaneously ensuring that ISPs can use desirable forms of network management We illustrate how this net neutrality policy can draw upon current communications law through draft statute language We believe this approach is well grounded in both technology and policy, and that it illustrates a middle-ground that may even be somewhat agreeable to the opposing forces on this issue

“Drowning In Information and Starving For Knowledge”: 21st Century Scholarly Publishing

Abstract: This essay draws on scholarly and public-policy literature, along with personal experience, to examine academic publishing in the global North, especially the United States. It does so in the hope of interesting academic readers, writers, presses, and distributors. The piece is idiosyncratic in its blend of impressionistic experience with, let us say, book learning.

How Documentary Filmmakers Overcame their Fear of Quoting and Learned to Employ Fair Use: a Tale of Scholarship in Action

Abstract: For the purposes of this paper, we interpret net neutrality as a restriction on price differentiation or price discrimination by firms involved in the communications services value chain- particularly those providing transport. The European regulatory framework for electronic communications services permits ex ante regulatory intervention in specified network or services markets only where there is dominance or 'significant market power.' We argue that this provision, combined with European competition law which can be applied to content as well as – concurrently – to electronic communications services, is adequate to deal with actual or prospective abuses of market power, whereas a blanket prohibition of the kind envisaged by proponents of net neutrality is likely in some cases to harm consumers' interests.

Global Hollywood 2010

Abstract: Of course, at some level, I didn’t need to move west to understand Hollywood. We all understand it. We have to, given its presence on cinema, computer, telephone, and television screens. Each year, a sixth of the world’s population watches the Academy Awards on TV, and more movie tickets are sold than there are people on the planet, while film-going is not even popular by contrast with the computer games and television that are mostly conceived, made, and/or owned — with the latter perhaps the key word — by the California-based studios and sub-contractors that we call Hollywood. The very word symbolises an invitation to replication and domination, an invitation both desired and disavowed. The money made in Hollywood continues to be astronomical, transcending even the aerospace industry as the largest export industry the U.S. has.

[Special Section on Net Neutrality] Network Neutrality: The Debate Evolves

Abstract: The network neutrality debate burst on political scene in late 2005-early 2006, centered on alleged incentives by broadband ISPs to act as Internet “gatekeepers,” disadvantaging certain Internet applications toward anticompetitive ends The debate is a continuation of an earlier debate on “open access” and was spurred by two high-profile events that appeared to presage such anticompetitive behavior Self-styled defenders of the Internet joined forces with interested parties such as Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft to demand legislation protecting the “neutrality” of the Internet, to ensure that broadband ISPs could in no way control the bits that passed between end-customers and application providers Predictably, the broadband ISPs objected to any legislation, stating they had no intention of keeping their customers from the content they desired In the heat of this debate, exactly what net neutrality is has been subject to change as the debate has evolved In this paper, I identify what appear to be the three major components of the net neutrality argument and analyze each in turn Only one component (vertical foreclosure) of the net neutrality argument raises valid concerns; I discuss whether those concerns are best dealt with by ex ante laws or ex post enforcement of existing law/regulation The paper closes with a discussion of how vertical foreclosure issues may become more serious with the advent of IPTV

[Special Section on Net Neutrality] Analyzing the Net Neutrality Debate Through Awareness of Agenda Denial

Abstract: Public policy making can be considered a set of processes that include the setting of the agenda, specification of alternative policy choices, an authoritative choice among those specified alternatives, and the implementation of the decision (Kingdon 1995, pp. 2-3). A successful policy outcome requires success in all these processes. With regard to the first process, the agenda “is the list of subjects or problems to which governmental officials … are paying some serious attention at any given time” (Kingdon 1995, p. 3). “Agenda setting, the politics of selecting issues for active consideration, can be examined from a variety of perspectives” (Cobb & Ross 1997, p.3). Much of the agenda-setting literature emphasizes how individuals and groups, or initiators, try to gain access to decision makers through issue expansion, that is, by framing issues to appeal to a larger audience. Cobb and Ross (1997, p. xi) focus on agenda denial, that is, “the political process by which issues that one would expect to get meaningful consideration from the political institutions in a society fail to get taken seriously.” Agenda denial concerns tactics used by issue opponents to keep issue initiators from attaining success at any stage in the set of policymaking processes. The current network neutrality debate is a clear example of agenda conflict, whereby proponents seek to get the issue of network neutrality on the agenda and opponents seek its denial. The lack of a consensus as to the definition of network neutrality is symptomatic of the ongoing battle to frame the debate. Opponents’ framing of the network neutrality issue represent strategies of agenda denial described by Cobb and Ross (1997). This paper asserts that awareness of the strategies of agenda denial assists evaluation of opponents’ arguments and provides a better understanding of the political dynamic of the overall network neutrality debate. In this way, network neutrality proponents may more effectively construct counterarguments and policymakers may better distinguish meritorious claims from rhetoric.

[Honoring Roger Silverstone] Essential Tensions: Winnicottian Object-Relations In The Media Sociology of Roger Silverstone

Abstract: If academia does indeed possess a habitus of its own (Gripsrud 1999), then perhaps it is one which tends to marginalise and subordinate the scholar’s social, even convivial, experience of networks, peer groups, mentors, affiliations, and friendships within the sober assessments and logical arguments of published work. Though it is frequently possible to reconstruct casts of supporting characters (and this may even be one of the chief pleasures of reading acknowledgements, footnotes and the like), written work still tends to proceed – in thrall to old, enlightenment legacies – as if it were the product of a pure and disembodied rationality. Avoiding ad hominem argumentation, and referring to one’s mates, acquaintances, lovers, colleagues and sparring partners by impersonal surname: it’s a useful pretence, but pretence, nevertheless – the cultural observance and instituting of a line between the ‘private’ or personal and the ‘public’. Following such convention, in what follows I could be expected to refer to the work of ‘Silverstone’. But I knew him as Roger: he was firstly the most inspiring of my undergraduate lecturers and latterly my Ph.D. supervisor. He was always a so urce of support and, when it counted, a teller of helpful home truths. So, in this essay, at this time, I will dispense with that well-worn mask of disinterest and impartiality. I doubt that Roger would have entirely approved: he once admonished me, after one oh-soradical postgrad attempt of mine to re-introduce the ‘private’ into ‘public’ academic writing, with the terse reminder that sometimes ‘private’ matters just aren’t very interesting to other people.

Regarding the Imprisonment of Others: Prison Abuse Photographs and Social Change

Abstract: Through four case studies of U.S. incarceration, this paper explores the relationship between the visualization of abuse and change in policy. By examining the verbal and visual presentations of abuses at Andersonville (1864-1865), Attica (1971), Guantanamo (2002-2005), and Abu Ghraib (2003-2005), the paper argues that there is no simple correlation between images, outrage, and social change. Querying prison images currently and historically questions the assumption that simply rendering visible the unseen will limit abuse. Indeed, these case studies suggest a more ambivalent role for the power of images: sometimes causing great change, at times resulting in little difference, and other times having questionable impact. At question is what role images play in drawing attention specifically to those places where attention was never meant to be, the institutions that have defined themselves by being out of sight and thus out of mind. In examining the power, use, and impact of still photographs, this paper interrogates the role of the state and identity in approaching structures of incarceration.

[Special Section on Net Neutrality] Scenarios for the Network Neutrality Arms Race

Abstract: Several factors suggest that meaningful network neutrality rules will not be enshrined in near-term U.S. telecommunications policy. These include disagreements over the need for such rules as well as their definition, efficacy and enforceability. However, as van Schewick (2005) has demonstrated in the context of the Internet, network providers may have economic incentives to discriminate in welfare-reducing ways; in addition, network operators may continue to possess market power, particularly with respect to a terminating monopoly. On the other hand, the literature on two-sided markets, the challenge of cost-recovery in the presence of significant fixed and sunk costs, and the changing nature of Internet traffic all provide efficiency-enhancing rationales for discriminatory pricing and traffic management. Thus, policy-makers face a daunting challenge: discriminatory behavior is likely to occur and distinguishing between good and bad discriminatory behavior is difficult. Assuming that various forms of network-based discrimination are likely to occur, broadband end-users may employ a variety of technical and non-technical strategies to counteract its effects, which in turn, will likely elicit further responses from the network operators. The goal of this paper is to characterize the resulting arms race by examining scenarios for how downstream end-users of broadband, sometimes in conjunction with upstream players (e.g. content providers), might respond to limit the potential harm from network-based discrimination. We identify three classes of end-user responses: (1) infrastructure-based bypass (e.g., municipal open access networks, mesh networking, or multi-homing); (2)

Let Them Eat Laptops: The Limits of Technicism

Abstract: Nicholas Negroponte, the MIT Media Labs 'onlie begeter' and one of digital techonologies most persuasive salespersons, has a new project. With undeniable logic and unimpreachable intentions he wishes every Third World child to be given a laptop. His reasoning is that without education, all other attempts at development are doomed to fail and that since education can be accomplished by computers, the way to make good its grievous failings in the South is with computers. He has therefore developed an elegant device of considerable sophistication but great ease of use – a brightly-coloured, plasticencased clockwork-powered computer which costs (or rather, he promises, will cost) around $100. This contrivence, a toy in appearance but a serious machine in operation, is what he intends to give away in millions and, according to his own publicity, he has already apparently had great success both in persuading Southern governments – Rwanda, Libya, Uraguay – and manufacturers – Quanta Computers -- to back his scheme. Negroponte's website is somewhat coy about how much money the initiative will involve but the budget is clearly in the order of billions: two billion children in the developing world x $100 a machine. Seed money alone -- from the likes of eBay, Google and Norstar, all at $2 million each -- would seem to exceed $12 million .