Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 28, 2002 at 11:18:39 AM CET

The Myth of the Undestroyable Internet

It's a common belief that the internet, as it is decentralised, is nearly undestroyable. Scientists from the Ohio State University now disproved this assumtion. In the years of commercialising the vulnerability of the net increased, they say. BBC (english) and Spiegel (german) are reporting. But I would add, that we should watch critically, what solutions to this problem will follow. Look at other recent attempts of the government of the USA to rise fear of terror attacks and in this way also higher the acceptance of guarding, protecting and lastly controlling things as the net. See also this Washington Post article. But maybe some kinds of "guarding" only decrease the openess of the net? Decentralizing, as the scientists want, should also mean to build net hubs outside the US. This again could be done together with development assistance, especially in "internet-suffering" countries in africa or asia (we reported). Just a thought ... Via ITW

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 26, 2002 at 10:44:29 AM CET

Research Project: The Great Chinese Firewall

An Interdisciplinary Research Project at the Freie Universität Berlin is researching "China’s Internet Policy between Technological Development and Political Reaction". Monolog

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 26, 2002 at 10:42:04 AM CET

Doing Nothing in the Net

The Institute for European Cultural Anthropology in Vienna is doing a research project and exhibition about "Doing Nothing". They were thinking also about doing nothing in the Internet. Not much to read, but a short introduction about "Doing Nothing" in the Net at their website. Via Monolog

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 25, 2002 at 10:59:42 AM CET

Wired: Science and Religion

The probably most important technocultural magazine of the internet, Wired, has a cluster of articles about Science and Religion in their actual monthly magazine (which you can buy also as printed issue). The main statement seems to be, that in our society religion and science aren't antipodal anymore. I didn't read it yet, but I think I have to. If the most important technocultural magazine is approaching religion, it's definitely important. There's already heavy discussion in other parts of the net.

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 24, 2002 at 8:05:47 PM CET

Is Society Going Wireless?

Howard Rheingold, an early cyberspace guru, published his new book "Smart Mobs" one month ago. Since this time there's discussion on the web (and gladly also at the e_thnology-course in our institute) if the web is going wireless. Rheingold predicts, that the next revolution is the communication from everywhere at every time. There's some kind of introduction to the book at the online magazine edge. Then there's a interview with Rheingold about his book at Well.com, also an intellectual online magazine. Finally I stumbled across this Review at Mindjack.com, a magazine about internet culture. BTW, I don't think that there will be a revolution, simply because western society is not a mobile society. Who is not mobile doesn't need to go wireless. But I didn't read the book - so maybe I took him wrong here.

And last but not least: There is a possibility of going wireless in a special way, as Argentina is currently showing. Maybe Germany will also take this special way. We can forget about Rheingold then ...

A early technological prophecy And a last one: If we talk about technological predictions we have always to keep in mind, that a lot of former predicitions didn't come true. One of the funniest things predicting a wonderful future of a technological world is this movie (free download) from the world fair 1962, which was sponsored by AT&T. There is a permanently smiling couple which shows stunning futuristic features like the oven which you can switch off by telephone (this one is still predicted today, by the way). But some of the early ICT-Features predicted in the movie really came true, like "push button phoning".

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 21, 2002 at 5:32:53 PM CET

The Personal Home Page as an Object of Research

I found an interesting paper about this topic from Nicola Döring, Ilmenau Technological University, Germany. The abstract says: "The paper presents the personal home page as a new object of sociological, psychological, linguistic, and communication studies research. It shows how theories of identity, self-presentation and computer-mediated communication are being applied to personal home pages. The paper is the first systematic review of about thirty personal home page studies. (...) The paper ends by suggesting some possible directions for future research." Via Monolog.antville.org, a interesting weblog from a Volkskunde/folklore-student

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 21, 2002 at 3:46:18 PM CET

A Dark Web Besides Google?

In our course "e-thnology" at our institute we sometimes talk about the future of the internet, and last week someone asked, if there isn't the danger, that the very popular search engine Google is going to have the monopoly to decide which knowledge is found. Imagine, the web would be only one company, which decides what to publish on the web. Google exactly does that, some could say. Because, what isn't found, practically does'nt exist. In the last month this has been discussed also in the internet: Does search engine's power threaten Web's independence? It's natural, that there is some concern. A lot of formerly powerful search engines disappeared in the last years (The Search Engine Graveyard). A website called Google-Watch is already online only to complain about Googles Monopoly. Not very serious, to add. My thoughts: I don't believe this hype of a "danger". The dangerous things of monopolies is not that they rule the market by perfection of their product. The trouble is always, if they rule the market by blocking alternatives, like Microsoft in the "Browser War". If they rule the market once, they can lower the quality of the product without having commercial loss. But if there are alternatives, any lowering of quality would be the end. We had that with IBM more than ten years ago. Working in the search engine segment for four years now as a side job, I can clearly say: There are A LOT of alternatives, just waiting for Google to implode by its own weight. This is maybe the good thing of the net: As its most important ressource is the idea, things can change very fast. Look at this little search engine called Gigablast: Only people in the scene know it. It's a one-man-project. It's not commercial. Don't you think, that if Google will abuse its monopoly, search engines like this are already waiting to serve the masses, to get in the buisiness? Related reading:Telepolis and Washington Post wrote about the fact, that students forget about other possbilities of information research besides Google - libraries for example.

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 21, 2002 at 11:39:01 AM CET

The Weird New Field of Object Sexuality in the Technological World

The term "cybersex" is far away from us, it really is bound to the 90's. But at Telepolis (german) they have an interesting new thought, which sheds new light on phenomenons we may have called "cybersex" or - less upbeat - "internet love". They write, that at least some sexual relationships on the web are in fact "objectum sexuality" to the computer. This means, instead of loving Linda with ICQ #xyz from the Chatroom abc, it's rather a love with the computer itself, standing at the desk in front of you, and maybe the webcam you installed on top of it. Well, an intersting thought, an amusing article, lots of links, but I think it's also a little bit overdone. In english you can read a story at Wired which inspired the one of telepolis.

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 18, 2002 at 10:48:54 PM CET

Internet Use and E-Commerce in Developing Countries

The UN today published the E-Commerce and Development Report 2002 (PDF-Datei, 272 Seiten). It's an important data and information source, it seems. And I guess you can find everything you wan't to know about IT and developing countries ... but I don't wan't to read it without needing to ;-) Gladly Forbes (english) and heise (german) are writing only about some important facts of the report.

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 18, 2002 at 9:01:20 PM CET

The Indigenous Maori of New Zealand in Cyberwar with LEGO

The maori people, inigenous people of New Zealand, are probably using some kind of modern shamanism to defend their culture. The LEGO-Company produced some action-toys bearing some names and religious words of the maori, like Toa, Mata Nui, Pohatu, Whenua, and Tohunga. The company did already stop producing last year, after maori people protested. But now a hacker did attack a fan site, were the old names and words are still in use. But the american fans also seem to have "The Power": They hacked some maori sites. The result: The LEGO-Fan-Site is still down, the maori sites were temporally unavailable. Spiegel (german) reports, they are assuming that in fact anti-globalisation activist around Indymedia did the attack. Stuff (english) is also reporting. Update:And somedays after us Wired reported about the story.

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 17, 2002 at 8:54:52 PM CET

Commodifiaction in Online Games

Telepolis reports about the evolving capitalistic markets in Online Games. The author mentions also the most important study in this segment from Edward Castranova.

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 15, 2002 at 3:41:44 PM CET

New First Monday

Finally there is a new issue of the peer reviewed, scientific journal "First Monday". As always, there are a lot of intersting articles regarding research of internet culture.

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