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Event: Cyberspace and the Future of Community (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 11:41:16 -0500
From: Allen Robel <robelr@stone51.netlab.indiana.edu>
To: rem-conf@es.net
Cc: kling@indiana.edu, robelr@netlab.indiana.edu
Subject: Event: Cyberspace and the Future of Community
Indiana University is pleased to provide Mbone coverage of the following event.
Cyberspace and the Future of Community
February 7, 1997
14:00 - 21:30 UTC (09:00 - 16:30 EST)
http://www/cs/indiana.edu/horizon/970207
Cyberspace and the Future of Community is jointly sponsored at Indiana
University by the Computer Science department, as part of their "Horizon Days"
series, by the Philosophy department, and by the Center for Social
Informatics (of the School of Library and Information Science), with support
from Sigma Chi for interdisciplinary campus meetings.
At a time when the vitality of community is in serious question in the U.S.,
some hope that Cyberspace can open up new ways for people to join together
around common interests. Electronic mail, newsgroups, civic nets
(such as HoosierNet), chat rooms, cybercafes, moderated discussion groups,
muds and moos -- these are just some of the ways people are starting to
interact on-line.
How well does the new technology underwrite age-old human tendencies to
congregate and communicate? Does it reflect something genuinely novel? Are
they good, bad, or transformative? Can electronic forums strengthen local
community, or will the new connections be national or international? How much
privacy must we sacrifice when we communicate on the net? What will happen to
ethics, responsibility, and personal identity?
Come participate in a public forum with five nationally-known commentators on
the future of community in the age of the internet.
****************************************************************************
9:00 a.m. Reception
9:15 a.m. William Mitchell
Dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning;
author of City of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn
(published on the Net)
10:45 a.m. Geoffrey Nunberg
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and Stanford University;
editor, The Future of the Book; commentator, NPR's "Fresh
Air," Usage Editor, The American Heritage Dictionary
1:30 p.m. Langdon Winner
Professor of Political Science and Technology Studies,
Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute; author of Democracy
in a Technological Society
3:00 p.m. Comments and discussion with
Rob Kling
Professor, School of Library and Information Science,
Director, Center for Social Informatics, Indiana University
editor of Computerization and Controversy
Gregory Rawlins
Professor of Computer Science, Indiana University;
author of Moths to the Flame
******************************************************************************
Available Abstracts and Biographies:
William J. Mitchell, MIT School of Architecture and Planning
City of Bits
In the past, we always had to go places to do things; we went to work, we went
to school, and sometimes we just went out. Now, the unfolding Digital
Revolution has changed things; telepresence is an increasingly viable and
attractive alternative to physical presence, and virtual spaces compete with
physical venues as sites for many transactions. This does not mean that
architecture becomes irrelevant, or that cities will just disappear, but it
does suggest that we must fundamentally reconsider our concepts of place and
community. The cities of the 21st century will be very different from those we
know today.
Biography:
William J. Mitchell is Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences
and Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. He teaches courses and conducts research in design
theory, computer applications in architecture and urban design, and imaging
and image synthesis. He consults extensively in the field of computer-aided
design and was the co-founder of a California software company.
Mitchell's most recent book, City of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn,
examines architecture and urbanism in the context of the digital
tele-communications revolution and the growing domination of software over
materialized form. In The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the
Post-Photographic Era (MIT Press, 1992), Mitchell examined the social and
cultural impact of digitally altered photographs and synthesized
photorealistic scenes.
In addition to numerous articles, Mitchell is also the author of Digital
Design Media, with Malcolm McCullough (Van Nostrand Reinhold, second ed.,
1995; orig. publ. 1991); The Logic of Architecture: Design, Computation, and
Cognition (MIT Press, 1990); The Poetics of Gardens, with Charles Moore and
William Turnbull (MIT Press, 1988); The Art of Computer Graphics Programming,
with Robin S. Liggett and Thomas Kvan (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1987); and
Computer-Aided Architectural Design (Van Notrand Reinhold, 1977). With
Patrick Purcell and Malcolm McCullough he edited, and contributed essays to,
The Electronic Design Studio (MIT Press, 1990).
Geoffrey Nunberg, Xerox PARC
Biography:
Geoffrey Nunberg (PhD, CUNY 1977) is a Principal Scientist at the Xerox Palo
Alto Research Center and a professor of linguistics at Stanford University. He
has done research on a number of aspects of natural language and on the
history and use of media; he is editor of the recent collection The Future of
the Book (UC Press). He also does a regular language feature on the NPR
program "Fresh Air," and is Usage Editor and Chair of the Usage Panel of the
American Heritage Dictitionary.
Langdon Winner, Science and Technology Studies, Rennselaer Polytechnic
Institute
Cyberlibertarian Dreams and the Future of Civil Society
The introduction of digital technology provides an occasion for transforming
countless social practices and institutions. At present there is a strong
tendency to argue that events are moving in a particular direction, that the
future will unfold in a particular way. This view is expressed in an emerging
ideology, cyberlibertarianism, a collection of ideas that links ecstatic
enthusiasm for electronically mediated forms of living with right wing
libertarian ideas about the proper definition of freedom, social life,
economics, and politics in the years to come. But is their vision of a wired
world truly the utopia it claims to be? Is it a reliable guide to the choices
before us?
Biography:
Langdon Winner is a political theorist who focuses upon social and political
issues that surround modern technological change. He is the author of
Autonomous Technology, a study of the idea of "technology-out-of-control" in
modern social thought, The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an
Age of High Technology, and editor of Democracy in a Technological Society.
Mr. Winner was born and raised in San Luis Obispo, California. He received
his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in political science from the University of
California at Berkeley. He is Professor of Political Science in the
Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute and Director of Graduate Studies in his department. He has also
taught at the New School for Social Research, M.I.T., the University of
California at Santa Cruz, and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, and
has lectured widely throughout the United States and Europe. In 1991-1992 he
was visiting research fellow at the Center for Technology and Culture at the
University of Oslo, Norway.
Rob Kling, Center for Social Informatics, School of Library and Information
Science, Indiana University
Biography:
Rob Kling's current research focuses on the ways that computerization is a
social process with technical elements, how intensive computerization
transforms work, and how computerization entails many social choices. He has
also
studied the ways that complex information systems and expert systems are
integrated into the social life of organizations. He has conducted studies in
numerous kinds of organizations, including local governments, insurance
companies, pharmaceutical firms, and hi-tech manufacturing firms. He has
written about the value conflicts implicit in and social consequences
ofcomputerization which directly affect the public. He is currently studying
the effective use of digital libraries to support research and teaching, and
the conditions that foster effective public use of the emerging National
Information Infrastructure ("data superhighways").
Dr. Kling is co-author of Computers and Politics: High Technology in American
Local Governments (Columbia University Press, 1982). He is co-editor of
PostSuburban California: The Transformation of Postwar Orange County
(University of California Press, 1990). Computerization and Controversy:
Value Conflicts & Social Choices (Academic Press, 1991) examines the social
controversies about computerization in organizations and social life,
regarding productivity, worklife, personal privacy, risks of computer systems,
and computer ethics. Dr. Kling is the sole editor of a substantially
rewritten 2nd edition of Computerization and Controversy that Academic Press
published in April 1996.
Gregory Rawlins, Computer Science Department, Indiana University
Gregory Rawlins is associate professor of computer science. He received a BSc
in mathematics from the University of the West Indies (1980), and an MSc in
mathematics and a PhD in computer science from the University of Waterloo
(1983, 1987). He chaired the first workshop on the foundations of genetic
algorithms in 1990, is on the editorial board of the Journal of Evolutionary
Computation, and has published several books on computer science both for
general audiences and for specialists in genetic algorithms and the analysis
of algorithms.
Rawlins's research centers on computational complexity and machine learning.
His current main passion is the investigation of self-adaptive software. He
is author of Compared to What?: An Introduction to the Analysis of Algorithms
(Computer Science Press), Moths to the Flame (MIT Press), and the forthcoming
Slaves of the Machine: The Quickening of Computer Technology (MIT Press),
appearing in Spring 1997.
--
Allen Robel Indiana University
mailto:robelr@netlab.indiana.edu Area Code + Prefix: 812-855
http://www.netlab.indiana.edu/~robelr Office 0962, NetLab 3697, Fax 8299