Turkle Sherry, 1997

Seeing Through Computers Education in a Culture of Simulation

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=seeing_through_computers

The American Prospect, 8, 31, March-April 1997. Today nearly everyone is certain that schools and universities should teach students about computers, but exactly what they should teach isn't so clear…

Paccagnella Luciano, 1997

Getting the Seats of Your Pants Dirty: Strategies for Ethnographic Research on Virtual Communities

http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol3/issue1/paccagnella.html

The study of social worlds built by people on computer networks challenges the classical dimensions of sociological research. CMC scholars are prompted to exploit the possibilities offered by new, powerful, and flexible analytic tools for inexpensively collecting, organizing, and exploring digital data. Such tools could be used within a Weberian perspective, to aid in systematic examination of logs and messages taken from the actual life of a virtual community.

Szpakowski, Mark Szpakowski, 1997

Community Memory - 1972 - 1974, Berkeley and San Francisco, California

http://www.well.com/~szpak/cm/

Community Memory was the world's first public computerized bulletin board system. It was created by Efrem Lipkin, Mark Szpakowski, and Lee Felsenstein, acting as the Community Memory Project. Lee took care of hardware, Efrem software, and Mark user interface and information husbandry. A second incarnation of Community Memory, aimed at creating a global information network, appeared in the later seventies. Its major players were Efrem Lipkin and Ken Colstad.

Smith Christine B., 1997

Casting the Net: Surveying an Internet Population

http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol3/issue1/smith.html

Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, CA
At any given moment there are thousands of surveys and polls being conducted on the web, yet surprisingly little scholarly research is reported about this new technique. After a summary review of the comparative literature on e-mail and "snail mail" and a more extensive review of research involving web-based methods, this article contrasts e-mail and web-based survey techniques used in an ongoing study of the web presence provider industry. Practical issues of web-surveying methods are highlighted, such as programming pitfalls, sample-building, and incentives.

Barbrook Richard e Andy Cameron, 1997

CALIFORNIAN IDEOLOGY - L'ideologia californiana

http://www.pol-it.org/ital/barbrook8.htm

Alla fine del ventesimo secolo, la convergenza a lungo predetta dei media, del computer e delle telecomunicazioni nell'hypermedia finalmente si sta verificando. Ancora una volta, il movimento inesorabile del capitalismo per diversificare ed intensificare i poteri creativi del lavoro umano si trova sul punto di trasformare qualitativamente il modo in cui lavoriamo, agiamo e viviamo insieme. Tramite l'integrazione di tecnologie differenti intorno a protocolli comuni, qualcosa sta per essere creato che è più della somma delle sue parti.

Hamman, Robin, 1997

The Application of Ethnographic Methodology in the Study of Cybersex

http://www.cybersociology.com/files/1_1_hamman.html

Text based computer mediated communication (CMC) has recently been the focus of many ethnographic studies by social scientists. In my own research of cybersex, I followed the lead of these researchers and utilised ethnographic methods but encountered several significant difficulties. These difficulties include the lack of parameters for users of text based virtual environments, the necessity of online interviews rather than face to face ones, and the frequent misinterpretations that occur due to the narrow bandwidth of text based CMC.

Clarke Roger, 1997

ENCOURAGING CYBERCULTURE

http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/EncoCyberCulture.html

Many of the challenges presented by the information infrastructure are not readily amenable to legislative and other hierarchical solutions. They require gentler, community-based measures as an adjunct to, and even an alternative for, formal regulatory action. Communities in cyberspace need means of achieving cohesion and maintaining relationships, while avoiding unduly dysfunctional behaviour by community-members and outsiders. This paper's purpose is to investigate the means whereby such a 'cyberculture' can be brought about.

Turkle Sherry, 1998

Cyborg Babies and Cy-Dough-Plasm Ideas about Self and Life in the Culture of Simulation

http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/cyborg_babies.html

In Cyborg Babies: From Technosex to Technotots, Robbie Davis-Floyd and Joseph Dumit (eds.). New York: Routledge, 1998.

Griffiths Mark, 1998

Does Internet and Computer 'Addiction' Exist? : Some Case Study Evidence

http://sosig.esrc.bris.ac.uk/iriss/papers/paper47.htm

It has been alleged that social pathologies are beginning to surface in cyberspace, i.e. technological addictions. To date there is very little empirical evidence that computing activities (i.e. internet use, hacking, programming) are addictive. Anecdotal evidence indicates that the typical 'addict' is a teenager, usually male, with little or no social life and little or no self confidence. This paper concentrates on five case studies of excessive computer usage. It is argued that of the five cases, only two of them are possibly 'addicted' using addiction components criteria. The excessive usage in the majority of cases was purely symptomatic and was where the internet/computer was used to counteract other deficiencies.

Chandler D., 1998

The Construction of Identity in the Personal Homepages of Adolescents

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/strasbourg.html

Researchers and journalists have highlighted radical transformations of identity in chat systems and anonymous e-mail, but the more subtle potential of the ‘personal homepage’ on the World-Wide Web tends to be overlooked. This new multi-media online genre can be defined as addressing the question ‘Who am I?’ Young people constitute the vast majority of those who have such pages on the Web, and exploring this same question is central to the identity work of adolescence. Websites are frequently signposted as ‘under construction’, but the construction involved is at least in part that of their makers’ identities. The medium and the genre have particular features which may play a part in phenomenological shifts in the sense of self, leading some webpage authors to experience the Web as possessing particular potency as a means of self-presentation. This is related to the involvement of the medium in changing relations between public and private. Writing which is ‘personal’ is at the same time automatically published for a worldwide readership, and it is not uncommon to encounter intimate diaries and journals within publicly-accessible homepages.

Hine Christine, 1998

Virtual Ethnography

http://sosig.esrc.bris.ac.uk/iriss/papers/paper16.htm

This paper explores methodological issues raised by an ethnographic approach to the Internet. The paper is motivated by an ongoing concern with the Internet as a technology and as a communication medium. The aim is to develop ways to study not just to how people use the Internet, but also the practices which make those uses of the Internet meaningful in local contexts. The first section of the paper maps out an emerging approach which is illustrated in the second section by data drawn from the Louise Woodward case. The final section reflects on the implications for methodological adequacy of an ethnographic approach increasingly divorced from reliance on a single bounded field site.

HONGLADAROM SORAJ, 1998

Global culture, local cultures, and the Internet: the Thai example

http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/catac98/pdf/19_hongladarom.pdf

This paper addresses the questions of whether, and if so, how and to what extent the Internet brings about homogenization of the local cultures in the world. It examines a particular case, that of Thai culture, through an investigation and interpretation of a Usenet newsgroup, soc.culture.thai.

Jones Steve, 1998

Understanding micropolis and compunity

http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/catac98/pdf/02_jones.pdf

This article begins with an analysis of virtuality and virtual culture as forms of social flow and build toward an analysis of the elements of micropolis, fractalized metropolis, as the setting for postmodern (sub)urban life.

Appadurai Arjun, 1998

translocation_new media/art: "Modernity at Large"

http://www.appadurai.com/interviews_baldauf.htm

Interview with Arjun Appadurai by Anette Baldauf and Christian Hoeller.

Mizrach Steve, 1998

Natives on the electronic frontier: Television and Acculturation on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation

http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/natives-frontiers.html

In this paper, I will examine the question of the impact of television on the acculturation of indigenous people. Many anthropologists see television as a major causal force in the loss of indigenous culture. Through a research questionnaire, I surveyed 20 Lakota Sioux, and followed this up with unstructured interviews. They were questioned about their TV viewing habits and their interest and involvement in their own culture. I also conducted ethnographic interviews with other reservation residents on their perceptions of television. My findings suggest that TV does not play a role in acculturation of the Lakota people, and that it could even play a role in cultural preservation. This further suggests that anthropologists may need to revise some of their assumptions about technology’s effects on indigenous people.

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