Wikipedia (Group 6)

A friend told me that wiki means "what I know is..." this sounds better than the other explanation :) Although I am not a heavy user of Wikipedia, the idea of Wiki is now getting so popular that it is almost impossible not to notice it. Now I have to use wiki at work - work logs, internal notices, schedules, etc. And I also created a wiki for my group project for this class. Wiki is a wonderful tool for collaboration, only on condition that everyone pays attention, be responsible, and change their habbit a little bit. Wikipedia also depends on the sense of responsibility of its contributors. In this sense, it is very similar to the nature of the accumulation of human knowledge. But in the wiki era, the accumulation and knowledge sharing is more open and free. Personally, I do see the Wikipedia (or the whole Web 2.0) as a great achievement of man kind.

Open Source (Group 5)

The Open Source movement is a really interesting topic. Thanks to it, I am able to use a lot of useful and cheap and compact pieces of software. In my opinion, there are two topics directly related to the Open Source movement: 1)digital divide, 2) monopoly. The prices of software in the United States might be OK for many domestic consumers, but when you think of the developing countries, it is a completely different matter. Why piracy is so prevalent in developing countries? Why using pirated software is almost normal in some countries? It is not that they don't want to buy them, they just cannot afford them. And they do need them... The big software companies in the United States do produce excellent products, but not for everyone. If there is a digital divide, the companies are enlarging it with high prices and non-discrimating prices. Programmers who support the Open Source movement really give a chance to many people in the world and also prevent monopoly.

Professional journalism vs amateur blogging (Group Four)

Since I basically knew nothing about journalism, this topic is fairly new to me and I've thought about such an issue. I think it really matters who are doing the news blogging. As a classmate pointed out, most of the bloggers are recording their daily lives. These blogging activities are far from journalism. The examples and case studies given by the group are really good, but it seemed to me that many of them still happened in the professional journalism field. A lot of the people are not really "amateur" in this sense. To really understand what is going on in the blog world, a lot more studies should be done, a lot more questions should be asked.

DMCA (Group Three)

This topic involves too many debates and issues. As a result, the ten-munute presentation was actually harder for me than some other half-hour presentations. Our group had to choose very carefully what to include in this presentation and what not to. For me, I had to prepare a long time because I had to learn to speak very fast to as to cover all the things that seemed important to my part. It's a pity that some of the issues were not covered in the presentation and the last three parts were just a big rush. And we didn't even have a chance to let the class to discuss. I think the Fandom topic discussed by Rebecca is really new and interesting to me. Here I also see the openness of the American academia - such a topic would never (at least for now) appear in an academic journal in my country. But anyway, we do have more urgent and important things to solve.

Net Neutrality (Group Two)

Group Two did an excellent job presenting and discussing this topic in class. Net neutrality is something that I hadn't heard about at all before class. It is really hard to decide which side should one stand for. I feel like we, as average people, are still outsiders in this battle between Network companies and ISPs. The term "Net Neutrality" gives people an impression of equality and freedom. It calls for a free market on the Internet. But according to the ISPs and other opponents, it is not - it conceals the potential charges on the consumers. Which one is more reasonable? We really need to look into the interest and drives of both sides. After listening to Group Two's interpretation and analysis, I think the worries from Google etc are not unreasonable: if the ISP becomes monology, there is such a danger that they charge fees from the Internet companies. Actually, now, I basically have no choice but to use charter's cable services. But there are other ways to prevent them from happening other than just calling for the technological equality, which will not do any good to the existing digial divide. Free market? We still have to watch on the ISPs. I just don't trust them so much.

USA Patriot Act (group one)

The USA Patriot Act has been a real headache for us international students. It might be fine with students from developed countries and areas, but definitely had a negative effect on students from the developing countries like my country. I still remember the year when a lot of good students were refused to enter the US after the 911 affair. It's understandable that a country should do so to fight with the terrorists, but is this the ultimate method? Actually, I think in other countries this kind of act probably will not draw so much attention and debates, but in this country, freedom is no fundamental that people have to think about what it really means.

My feed - the end

I'll have to go to the forum now - to get some shopping information, because, I have to...

My feed 3

I'm still resisting the temptation, though it's pretty hard.

My feed 2

I did it. I haven't been there for 2 days. Let's see whether I can persist.

My feed

I decide to be disconnected one of my feed: MIT BBS, which is a big forum of and for Chinese students studying in the United States. I'm quite addicted to it recently. Especially, I got a lot of deal information from that, which is really really bad for me, such a poor poor international students. So, no BBS, no line shopping, as long as possible.

Feed

If I live in the world that the fiction describes, what will it be like? I keep asking about this question when I read the novel. I also keep fill in these details that the author does not talk about. For example, what is it like when people are face to face while chatting without really speaking? It must be really really cool. :P Another example, do people get to talk to each person that he/she wants to? Or is there something like MSN id and password? Another big qestion is, how can people prevent themselves from addiction if they can connect to all the entertainment and shopping information all the time? I tried so hard every day just to stop myself from fooling around on the Internet, even though I just have two computers. I can't imagine what I can do if a computer and internet connection is built in my body. Although what in the book is not really what's happening in real life, if we think seriously, those things are not really far from our lives...

Chapter 29 The future looms (Sadie Plant)

This is another feminist work besides Balsamo's article (Chapter 16). Cyberfeminist is the new word here. It is interesting in that it tries to reveal the female elements in technology, which has been largely overlooked by almost everyone. The story of Ada reflects many of the female stories in the academia and industy. The other day I was talking with my friends about the increasing number of female computer programmers, the new blue collars. An example is that a lot of female Chinese students came to the States and finally became computer programmers, no matter what their former majors are. As more and more women come into this profession, it's time to think about this gender and technology. Maybe not only the creation of technology, but also the use, needs, and dissemination of technology.

Chapter 28 For a cultural future by Eric Michaels

The story of introducing TV and TV making into Australian Aborigines is fascinating. Nowadays few researchers can have the chance to do such a cultural, social and media experiment. I remember seeing the Australian Aboriginal paintings, sculpture and other art products in Australia three years ago. At that time, the Australian government was trying to protect and promote the Aboriginal cultures - a different story than I read about in this article which is written in 1987. I wonder how exactly hi tech has been intertwined in their lives, and what the aboriginal cultures are like today. When we think about our own cultures and technology, this story really tells us something.

Chapter 27 The mode of info and postmodernity by Mark Poster

OK, in the print culture, there is a distance (gap) between the speaker and the listener, and the principle of language is to extend the human voice while permitting individuals to think. In the electronic culture, the gap still exists, but the interpretation is a different: the electronic communication both broadens the gap (allowing enlarged space between the speaker and the listener), and bring them together. Therefore, language in the electronic culture in no longer "objective" and "neutral", instead, it "becomes or better reconfigures reality". Well, first, I don't quite get the meanings and implications of the term "the mode of information". Second, I think that Poster describes language and interactivity is a highly sophisticated manner. Maybe too sophisticated. Is there really such a huge difference in lanuage itself made by the electronic communications? I don't really think so. To me, language is far from objective or neutral even in the so called print culture. The electronic communication does, to a large extent, change the way people communicate. The communication has become highly interactive. However, it does not seem to me that the essence of language itself is changed as well. The author's arguments are intriguing, but might be a little overstated.

Information and American Democracy (by B. Bimber) the second half

On Tuesday's class we talked about how our identities/affiliations affect our political decisions. I think it's a very interesting topic. For persons like me, who don't have a lot of opinions of their own (for politics...) or are not very involved in political activities, who they are, where they are, and who they think they are really important factors for them to make a decision. Of course, these factor also affect what they hear. Can WEB 2.0 make a big difference? Information is more affluent, it is more convenient for people to interact and cooperate. But does it affect what they listen to? There are so many blogs, wikis, podcast, etc., but how many of them really reached out instead of sharing information in a small circle? Today I went to a webcast on new information technologies and libraries. The speaker talked a lot about the new and exciting stuff. But they also emphasized that don't use a technology because it's cool, use it when you really wanna serve certain purposes. Libraries have always been engaging in user's participation, so these new techs can enhance that function. So does election or other political activities. But what if there are just too many feeds, podcasts, blogs, or simply too much information?

Information and American Democracy (by B. Bimber)

This book is interesting, but I have an impression that Bimber is trying to include too many perspectives and issues in this book. It is understandable because politics is a very complicated topic, IT or information is also complicated, so the relationship between them must be even complicated. Anyhow, this first chapter does a good job laying out the whole book, and I expect to see more about the things that he mentions but does not explain explicitly at the beginning (for example, digital divide and citizen engagement). Another issue about this book is the author's position. At the beginning (p12-p15), he seems to be planning to seek a kind of causal relationship or machenism. It looks like information is at least an important causing factor (maybe one of the factors) of democracy. But later on, he seems to give up this piont. Instead, he claims himself to be neither technological determinism nor social constructionism, which makes me a little confused...

Chapter 26 The virtual sphere (Papacharissi)

This chapter talks about the Internet as a public sphere. I think several pieces of our readings (e.g. those on the digital divides) have touched on this point: technology can faciliatate participation of the public sphere (here is "virtual sphere"), but it does not guarantee it. This also reminds me again of Lessig's "code" and "choice". And Papacharissi brings us some interesting observations, among which fragmentation and irrational discourses are particular interesting to me.

Chapter 25 Structural transformations of the public sphere (Keane)

Since every chapter in this part is about public sphere, I come to wonder the specfic relationship between democracy and public sphere. Is democracy more of an abstract idea, while the public sphere emphasizes the "spatial relationship"? Or the public sphere is a path to and a necessary part of democracy? Or democrary emphasizes on this particular political system, while the public sphere emphasizes more on the specific debates, discussions, and communication among citizens? What are the specific roles of the public spheres in democrocy?

The author differentiates micro-public spheres, meso-public spheres, and macro-public spheres, which is very helpful in understanding the concept of public spheres. But I don't quite understand the author's use of the word "refeudalization", which, as he claims, is different from Habermas's use. To me the transformations of the public spheres do not have implications of "feudalization".

Chapter 24 The Media and the public sphere (Garnham)

Again, in this chapter Garnham talks about the shift of public information as public good to "privately appropriate commodity", which immediately reminded me of Schiller's "deregulation, privatization, and the expansion of market relationship" and the privatization of science information and government information (chapter 17). In particular, he critisizes libraries' shift from open access to accessing proprietary databases on a payment-by-use basis. I think there is a misunderstanding of the library services because libraries are trying so hard to fight for the open access. However, this does show people's concern about this issue. So librarians are not alone in fighting for free, open access against information as proprietary, private, and commoditized.

This issue is also related to the project of my group - Digital Millennum Copyright Act. When digital information get particular protection from the law, the content became more and more proprietary, then where is the place for the public sphere?

Chapter 23 The public sphere (Habermas)

This chapter is short, but concise and profound. Habermas talks about the histroy of public sphere very briefly, but again, very penetrating and illuminating. His analysis of feudal lord makes readers to rethink about the meaning of "representation". The liberal model of the public sphere and the ideal newspaper press remind me of the earlier readings (especially those on the digital divide) which criticize the press corporation as serving particular interests. The concept of "refeudalization" is absolutely an interesting idea.

Maybe because I'm from a different culture and learned history from a different perspective, much of the histroy analysis mentioned in this piece is new to me. For example, I do not quite see the role of the Chartist Movement and the Feburary Revolution in the development of the public sphere.

Just to remind myself, Habermas is translated into "哈本马斯" in Chinese. There might be other translations...

Chapter 22 New Directions in theory (Lyon)

I think it will be better if this piece is the first one in this part (Part 7: Surveillance) because it gives readers a general sense of this particular area of study. The brief introduction of the four strands of surveillance - nation state, bureaucracy, technologic, and political economy - is very helpful in understanding the importance of surveillance in the modern society. Of course, to me the last strand is much more familiar than the other three. Lyon also talks about Panopticon, or 'superpanopticon', but the way he puts it is much easier to understand than Foucault.

Chapter 21 Managing the informated organization (Zuboff)

Technology is not neutral - it changes the world. The kaleidoscope metaphor is a nice one. I think Zuboff's arguments about technology and human choices better explain the essence of technology than just control (Lasch). Technology is much more complicated than that. Although seeming like a technology determinist at the beginning, Zuboff does a very good job revealing the complex relationship between technology, management and organization. The pair of concepts "the intrinsic" and "the contingent" provides a very helpful frame for us to think about our "choices".

What makes this chapter different is that it's from the perspective of the managers. Technology and knowledge changed the "landscape of authority", thus the old methods of surveillance or control are outdated, and division of labor is changed. Managers have to create a learning environment to support this kind of change. I think this is what the author means by "informated organization.

Chapter 20 Panopticism (Foucault)

To me, this piece is one of the hardest to understand. The idea of Panoptican doesn't seem to be very hard - after listening to Greg's interpretation. But in this chapter, Foucault seems to have broadened this idea to a more general sense, and have made many new claims out of it. But to be honest, I do not quite get it - maybe due to the superabundant metaphors and abstract/difficult words...

My questions are, for instance: how to understand "certainty" and "uncertainty" in this article? what are the differences between sovereignty and discipline, and between discipline and social norms? What does Foucault mean by "carceral archipelago"? There just seem to be too many concepts that I can not understand right away. I'll have to listen to the lecture and class discussion.

Chapter 19 The Degradation of the practical arts (Lasch)

Is technology simply a tool or does it have values? I used to lean toward the first view, that is, technology is just a tool (of course, I'm not under corporate sponsorship). However, after reading this chapter, I have to say, Lasch's argument that technology is not neutral is very powerful and persuasive. He talks about control, as we have read about Taylorism, and claims that many of the newer technologies origined from the need of managerial control. This argument is very hard to refute. However, should we limit our view of technology to the recent 100 years or so, or should we think about technology as something accompanying the human histroy? It's really hard for me to think of technology as social control in the Stone Age. And I really think that "control" is only part of origin of technology and application of technology.

Chapter 18 The Digital Divide (P. Norris)

If the last chapter is about information per se, this chapter is more about information on the Internet or information technology, and the relationship between the Internet and the digital divide. Among the three kinds of divide - the global divide, the social divide, and the democratic divide, the emphasis is clearly on the last one. For the first two divides, Norris is more concerned with describing the potential problems/porspects and the different views of these problems/porspects from cyber-optimists, cyber-skeptics, and cyber-pessimists (which, by the way, is a pretty useful classification). He does raise many interesting questions. For example, after talking about social divide, he asks whether there are 'special barriers' in using the Internet compared to the old mass media, given there is no absolute social inequialities.

While he raises questions instead of putting forward arguments and giving evidence to the first two divides, he does analyze and argue about the application of the Internet in the democratic divide. This is a middle ground between change everything and change nothing: "digital technologies have the capacities to strengthen the institutions of civic society mediating between citizens and the state, especially the power of insurgents"(p.280). In Lessig's word, we can make a choice about the code...

Chapter 17 Data Deprivation (Schiller)

This chapter is mostly about information rather than information technology. Many of Schiller's arguments reminds me of the critics of the information society in the first part of the reader. Large corporations dominates and controls the information flow, while giving people the impression of free speech or free expression. But whose freedom is it? This resembles the argument that "corporate planners ... tailored images and slogans that helped depict identities, attitudes, and lift-styles" (Winner, Chapter 4, p.49). This is largely a economic matter: only these large corporations can afford to deliver the messages using mass media (the next chapter raises a good counterargument against this).

However, Schiller goes beyond the "deregulation", "privatization" and "expansion of market relationship" in economy field, and talks about the actual information flow in scholoarly information communication and government documents and records. If in universities and governments, public/social records is now serving the financial or political purposes of certain people/institutions, then what is left free for the general public? Schiller cites data from ALA, which is great. :)

As summarized in the end, "deregulation of economic activity, privatization of functions once public, and commercialization of activities once social" are possible sources of the digital divide. But is this a necessary product of information society?

The Geography of the Internet industry - second half

The second half of the book, actually starting from part of Chapter Four, is dominated by the "venture capital", so it is much more about economic geography than physical geography as Greg put it. After showing the correlation between the "clustering pattern of the Internet industry" and the involvment of venture capital investing using statistical method in Chapter 5, Zook goes on to analyze in Chapter 6 why venture capitalists play such an important rold in the geographic characteristic of the Internet industry. The heading of this chapter, "Finance and the brokering of knowledge", reminds me of knowledge management. Although this term KM is not really mentioned in this book, but the idea is everywhere, especially in Chapter 4 and 6.

I find one interesting thing: although the preface of the book is written by Castell and the author does cite Castell from time to time, this book does not give me the impression of "space of flow". Instead, it's a book about space of local over global, and space of concentration, which seems quite different from the flow that Castell talks about. Maybe I didn't really understand the idea of flow?

The Geography of the Internet industry by M. A. Zook

This book is pretty interesting and easy to read, at least for the first half of it. The thesis has been very clear: geography has been playing a significant role in the development of Internet and Internet industry, which is to the contrast of the "commonly held assumptions that physical locations would become irrelevant"(p.3).

The maps, graphics, and data in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 are self-evident in showing the geography of the Internet and Internet industry. The author then goes on to interpret the phenomenon from different perspectives. Chapter 4 talks about economic clusters, knowledge management, and venture capital. Though the author puts everything pretty straightfoward, I feel that the arguments are not persuasive enough. The author successfully cited a lot of theoretical analyses, but his own arguments are submerged. Plus, when he talks about producing tacit knowledge and transferring tacit knowledge, I feel that they are pretty much the same thing. Chapter 5 is much better, because it is centered on a particular issue, rather than mix things together.

Chapter 14 The Three Jobs of the Future (Reich)

This chapter is short and interesting especially from an outsider's point of views. The author claims that Americans are on longer in the same large boat, but on different smaller boats. I don't really know a lot about American societies so I might be wrong, but it seems to me that it has always been the case because the social-economic polarization has always been a big issue - of course not only to the US but a lot of other developed and developing countries... The concept of 'value' that the author emphasizes here is very helpful for the understanding of the competitiveness in the global market. But this concept is a little vague...

Chapter15-Economic structure of knowledge societies

Though being the longest chapter among the four, this piece is really easy to read and understand. And I do think the theme of this chapter particularly important to understand the information society. In Bell's chapter, I read about work, class, and professionalization, which is really illuminating. Stehr further discusses these issues, as well as other ecomonic issues that did not appear in Bell's chapter. The analysis is really systematic and easy to follow. It'll be great if Stehr talks more about the impact of the economic structure of the developed countries on the developing countries.

Chapter 16 Forms of Technological Embodiment

This chapter differs with others in this book radically: it is not a society-level analysis, but a feministic "body theory" study. It focuses on the transformation of the conception of the human body, rather than the significant macro issues in the "globalizing", "informational" or "network" society.

Although many pieces that we've read touched on the transformations of human lives, this is the first time in this semester that we read about things so micro and so close to our everyday lives: fashion magazines, cosmetic surgeries, online communication, virtual reality technology, electronic database... By recounting a science fiction, the author introduces her body theory – the postmodern forms of technological embodiment: (1) the marked body which bears the cultural identities, (2) the laboring body which reproduces materials and culture, (3) the repressed body which means the repression of the material body, and (4) the disappearing body which signals the increasing replaceability of body components. Focusing on gender and racial analysis of hi tech, the author provided a new perspective for us to understand the transformation in the information society.

Chapter 13 Mobile Sociology

I admire Mr. Urry very much for his wonderful writing, but I kept feeling that this piece is a little too dense to read. There are a lot of metaphors, especially when he talks about “global fluids” (p.197). Too many metaphors without specific examples and evidence gave me some headache.

He did make a good analysis of the transformation of society, emphasizing “globalization”. However, is there anything new? Anything different or beyond Castell’s description and analysis expect for more metaphors?

Urry claims that the “complex” nature of the society (or societies) makes all the classic sociological theories useless (p. 197), and only “complexity theory” is helpful for understanding the societies. I really doubt this. When were the societies not complex? Although they might have not been so complex in the global sense before the last century, it has always been extremely complex, at least on local levels. If the class theories worked for the “older” societies, I don’t see why they will totally lose their power in the globalizing world.

Last but not least, there is no society? Well, it makes some sense if we wanna emphasize the globalization. But, the society defined here is completely based on nation state. When we talk about “human society” or “western society”, we don’t merely mean the nation-based societies. Besides, although I agree that the world is becoming a globalizing society, there are still so many things that are particular to a certain societies (regions, nations, whatever) and worth studying, I believe, by sociologists.

Digitizing the News (Boszkowski)

One great thing about the book is that, as Greg talked about "How to read a book in one minute", the author lays out the whole book in the first chapter: the thesis, theories, methods, main findings, and the content of each chapter. It's so explicit that I can get an idea about the whole book without going into every details of each chapter.

Although I am not familiar with the journalism profession and do not know much about American media and newspaper, this book is still interesting to me. And many points can be related to other readings and Lessig's book. The thing that I like most is that the author grasps the dynamics of this particular soical process of "appropriating new media". For example, the first main empirical finding is that "print papers have enacted a culture of innovation that led them to react to social and technical developments rather than more proactively contribute to these developments, focus on protecting the print franchise rather than on prioritizing nonprint publishing, and empasize smaller but more certain shorter-term benefits", where the readers can see one aspect of this process. Then the empirical case studies show another aspect (or aspects, more precisely) of the process. The social process in the American Dailies is like a miniature of the "information society", and the dynamics in it reflects the dynamics in the whole society.

Chapter 12, Garnham

This is a really thorough critique! When reading all these chapters, I keep wondering: what kind of social changes are fundamental to a society? There does not seem to be an answer. It seems like theorists are using different standards or just avoiding this question. To Garnham, Castells’ theory is technological determinism. This term probably can apply to all advocates of information society. Technological determinism is not a difficult term to understand, but now it becomes harder, because when reading the original works, it is not that easy to tell. At least Castells keeps telling the readers that IT does not cause the changes, but information revolution is important for the changes.

Chapter 10 and Chapter 11: Castells and the Network Society

From these two small pieces, it is easy to see why Castell’s works are so popular: probably not only insightful, but also fun to read. It seems that Castells tend to analyze all these social issues from a global perspective, to show bigger pictures, and to make more connections than other writers. Another difference is that Castells’ description to “network society” sounds more realistic, not so Utopian as others do. I think it is just his global vision, his understandings to all kinds of social trends, and knowledge of other part of the world that makes him advocate a “network society” rather than “information society”. This network is a much bigger concept than “information” or “information technology”. It is more like a social norms or social structure, which has much more implications than just “information”. However, the basic claims of network society still resemble information society in a lot of ways…

Many concepts and ideas in these two chapters are very interesting, especially black holes of informational capitalism, timeless time, and space of flows. To me, they do grasp some essences of the current world.

Urry-British

Compared with Kumar’s piece, Urry’s writing is not that straightforward. Or should I say, the main arguments and the first 5 pages seem straightforward, but not the analysis about “the sociological problem” which is the most important part of this piece. Moreover, I have to say that I did not quite understand the “architecture” metaphor at the end of this chapter. Fortunately, the Melin’s did a great job in the Introduction summarizing the main ideas of the three chapters. It helped me a lot understanding Urry’s claims.

Kumar the Critics

As Bell puts the change in sector distribution and the pattern of occupations to the center of the changeover to a post-industrial society (I have to say, seems very persuasive to me when I read it), Kumar refutes Bell’s arguments directly and effectively. Bell, in his book, not only utilizes many numbers to analyze status and trends, but also argues again many sociologists who claim that the white collars are not an independent class, which seems very convincing. Kumar, after 20 years, also uses a lot of numbers and evidence, and more detailed analysis to argue against the whole idea of professionalization and professionals as the center of social change. He has many interesting arguments, some of which we have read about, such as information, knowledge, power, and control. The claim that IT “has a greater potential for proletarianization than for professionalization” sounds bold but powerful. His claims of the relationships between IT and political actors (military department and large corporations) are more direct and radical than what I have read so far, which, I believe, are insightful and penetrating indeed. Same with the “ideology” part.

I like this piece of work very much.

Bell the precursor

It is good to read the three pieces together because Kumar and Urry’s pieces may have supplemented what have been left out of the first one. So after reading all of them, I think I got a fuller picture of Bell’s idea of post-industrial society and later information society.

The third part of the reader continues the theme of the first two parts – advocates and critics. As a precursor, Bell’s analysis of the post-industrial society is very insightful and attractive. This is written in 1973 – really impressive. (And as Melin said in the Introduction, many of the ideas appeared in 1960s!) In some ways, this extract reminds me of Masuda’s piece from time to time because both of them compare and contrast the three forms of societies, and claim the characteristics of the new form of society based on the old forms. I could not tell what I felt wrong about them when I read, but when I came to Kumar’s work, I found the following critics:

“Current changes are seen according to a model derived from (assumed) past changes, and future developments are projected following the logic of the model.”

This reminds me of a term “social Darwinism”. I am not sure whether it is the right way to use it, but I think there is definitely something to think about.

Part three of the book is all about “choices”. The main argument is that the society should keep those values inherited from the “framers”; however, there are too many ambiguities which make the translation of values rather difficult, so choices must be made to between different values. I got the feeling that cyberspace is just an extension of the real world. As the world is changing, value system is also changing gradually, then finally we will have to make choices between old and new values. The different kind of infrastructure of the cyberspace – code, rather than “built environment” – only makes this kind of choice more dramatically. If there is no cyberspace, there probably will be some other kind of “space” or context that forces us to make choices.
The author’s claims on intellectual properties are especially interesting and enlightening to me. “Is the protection too great?” I believe every librarian has this question on mind. From copyright to “copy-duty”, what a fantastic idea. The author does make this book very interesting to read. I only wish I had more time to read it carefully.

Codes and Other Laws of Cyberspace

This book is not so easy to read as I thought it to be. The main reason here is, again, that I do not have enough knowledge and understanding of the politics and society of the United States. This idea of "American democracy" (the related ideas of power, control,and actions) can get much more complicated in real life than just an idea, or just the practice of election. Several of the articles that I've read for this class have talked about this particular issue. In this book, as I can see so far, democracy is also a great concern (this is particularly evident in the last couple of chapers). Maybe I'm just ideologically sensitive to this topic? Anyway, it struck me when I read about the author's argument that the government is "pathetic" and incapable of making the "choice". I believe I'll learn more about this society and its democracy when it comes to the fourth book.

Although it is sometimes hard for me to clearly understand the author's claims and evident, fortunately, he did a great job laying out and reiterating his main arguments and theses. Thus, the structure of the book is very helpful for understanding.

The arguments of this book have a lot of similarities with last week's readings (the critics of the information society), yet much more comprehensive. It's not from historical perspectives, but more from a lot more aspects: social, political, legal, and economic . The Net can serve as a source of control - Lessig does not make the claim based on historical experience, rather, he starts from the "architecture" of the Net itself. If the readings for the last two weeks are more about the general idea of information society, then this book begins to explore the "nature" (maybe "status" or "architecture" is a better word because the "cybersapce has no nature") of the cyberspace itself in details and in depth. I've only read less than a half of the book, but I find that the questions that the author discusses are not only intriguing and also timely. As the Net is becoming more and more a part of our lives, as power and control are extending to this space, the code is something everyone involved in the cyberspace should think about seriouly.

History of the Info Revolution

From the information society advocates' neglect of nation state and idealistic freedom and social order, to the critics' distrust in information society’s self adjustment, this week’s readings become more and more interesting. Robins and Webster’s article is the most insightful of all. The idea that technological progress is closely related to social control and social management has been explored in Winner’s piece, but no with such sufficient evidence and powerful arguments. This idea directly refutes Masuda and Dyson et al;s Utopian outlook of information society from social and historical perspectives. It seems that the critics are more realistic and see more problems through the prosperous technology development (especially at that time – 1996 & 1998) than the advocates do.

In my own opinion, I agree with the critics that it is totally unrealistic to sit there and wait for the technology itself to solve social problems. Technology is not the panacea – I think many people would agree with that. However, technology is a powerful tool for human to change their situation. Yeah, it can be tools for the nation state to perform social control, too. But this is not to say that people cannot use it for better democracy, social equity, better environment, and all. How can one deny that human is gaining more and more “freedom” (physically, economically, and emotionally) in the process of history. The greatest driving force is not only human mind, but also, I believe, technology development.

The Cult of Information

Roszak might be too critical? I do agree that relying too much on computers can do a lot of harm, and actually I often talk with friends about the negative side of technology, but speaking of Roszak's worry that computers would "shape our thought", I think it a bit exaggerating. Of course our thoughts are always changing, adapting, and adjusting with the change of our situation. As we are more and more reliant on computers (an important tool), our thoughts will also change. However, creativity lies in human mind, not in our tools. I tend to think such tools will mostly likely amply our thoughts, imagination, and creativity, rather than "shape" our mind or our conception of thought. What is more, how many people really think computers can mimic and replace human's intelligence? If one has some knowledge in AI, one probably will find that such things only exist in science fictions. The real situation is that AI research hasn't been making great progress for quite some time.

Who Will We Be in CyberSapce?

Winner raises a very interesting question: does the intensive application of high technology necessarily change the way people define themselves, the society where they live, and the relations among people or among people and society?

Winner spends a lot of the words on the analysis of the industrial society, and uses it as an analogy which leads us to think about the “information society”. He is telling us: don’t be over optimistic about technology, be critical! Technology does not necessarily bring true democracy and social equity. Some of his arguments directly points to the article written by Dyson et al., which are very interesting to read.

I think the arguments in this article are powerful and persuasive. And I do agree and appreciate his criticism toward “mythinformation”. There is only one thing that I have doubt at. The analysis and critiques of the industrial society cited by the author are mostly about the early or mid 20 century. I keep wondering, haven’t things changed a lot since then? Is it not just a process of progress?

Chapter 3

I like this piece because the authors interpret those important concepts (cyberspace, property, market place, freedom, community, and government) in a clear and straightforward way. Some of the claims are very interesting and powerful. However, I dislike it at the same time because I cannot agree with some of their arguments. For example, as the “intellectual property” becomes “electronic property”, according to the authors, this kind of property changes from “public good” to “private good”. The reason is that knowledge has become “customized”. Is it really so? First, I don't think the reason for knowledge to be “public good” is because most people’s “information needs were standard”. Second, even if knowledge becomes “private good”, there should still be some form of protection or regulation, to prevent abuse or monopoly.

Chapter 2 and Chapter 3

Maybe because they were published in the late 1990s, Leadbeater’s Living on Thin Air and Dyson et al.’s Cyberspace and the American Dream seem more realistic than Masuda’s descriptions of Information Society – although they call it "knowledge society" and "knowledge age" respectively.

Leadbeater’s emphasis is obviously on economy, but his explanations on the three driving forces in the new society are very insightful. Globalization challenging nationalism, fast creating, disseminating, and exploiting of knowledge, collaboration driving creativity, these factors make this era different from previous societies.

One thing I found especially interesting is that he defines the knowledge-driven economy as knowledge making differences (advantages and disadvantages) in economy, rather than emphasizing the importance of knowledge intensive industries. This is important, I think, for people to understand the idea of information society. It's not to say that materials are not important anymore, rather, they are just not of "competitative advantages" as in the industrial society.

Chapter 1 Masuda

Technology, economy, social structure, political system, reforms, symbol, and values… Masuda drew a complete blueprint of the information society. The 17 aspects listed in the book predict a new form of human society in a highly synoptic manner. I like the way that Masuda put the characteristics of two different forms of society – the industrial society and the information society – side by side, and I think he accurately describes some of the features of today’s society (e.g., technology amplifies human mental labor, information as the societal symbol, the importance of knowledge in expanding market).

However, most of the items seem very distant, especially those with regard to social and political aspects. I wonder whether Masuda, in his book, has predicted some kind of time frame for this new form of society. If so, what is it. Today, those statements about voluntary community, synergy, and universal standard of value sound to me like Utopia. I agree that if we are to take the label “information society” seriously, there should be such a set of characteristics that distinguish it from other previous societies. Masuda did a nice job listing them, but if they are accurate predictions, we are still very very far from information society, even the most developed countries.

Webster's Introduction

Webster put the significance of this “reader” in a nice way. Whether we buy the title “information society” or not, we have to admit this book says something that’s really important to our society and our lives. “…there can be no doubt that the issues matter enormously, both intellectually and practically.”

A question on my mind is: what’s the difference between knowledge society and information society? Is it just a grander notion? Or the inventors of this term really meant something else or something more? Maybe my classmates have read something about it? In LIS field, well, information and knowledge are actually different notions… as Soojin is always saying. 

I totally agree that theories can be very useful tools for us to understand the world. I always feel that we can learn a lot from people who are insightful enough to put things into frameworks, to simplify them, to generate “theories.” Theories provide us with multiple perspectives and potentially useful ways of thinking. They are not only practical but also powerful and enlightening. I’m looking forward to reading more of this book.

Testing!
I just bought the text book, The Information Society Reader, and read a few sentences. It seems like a really interesting book and might inspire a lot of thoughts!