The Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture __________________________________________________________________ ISSN 1068-5723 March 22, 1993 Volume 1 Issue 1 EJVCV1N1 CONTENTS This entire issue is available as EJVCV1N1 $PACKAGE Table of Contents _______________________ FEATURE ARTICLES ================= Education, Cyberspace and Change. by J.L. Lemke (JLLBC@CUNYVM) (available as LEMKE V1N1 1,140 lines) Abductive Multiloguing: The Semiotic Dynamics of Navigating the Net. by Gary Shank (P30GDS1@NIU) (available as SHANK V1N1 797 lines) THE CYBERSPACE MONITOR ====================== edited by Algirdas Pakstas (Algirdas.Pakstas@idt.unit.no) (available as EJVCV1N1 MONITOR 2,206 lines) EDITOR MESSAGE MEDIA REVIEWS BOOKS: - INTERNET: GETTING STARTED NETWARE REVIEWS (systems/hw/sw/services) SOFTWARE: - ELECTRONIC JOURNAL SYSTEM SERVICES: - INTERNET TALK RADIO NETWARE TUTORIALS LISTSERV/LDBASE MEETINGS/CONFERENCES/EXHIBITIONS/EVENTS PROJECTS: - INVITATION TO JOIN ONGOING RESEARCH PROJECT ON THE USE OF ELECTRONIC MAIL DISCUSSION LISTS CALL FOR PAPERS/PARTICIPATION: - INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY 1993 - 16th IRIS (INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH SEMINAR IN SCANDINAVIA) - RUSSIAN FORUM/SEMINAR - NSC93: THE NETWORK SERVICES CONFERENCE - INTERNATIONAL INFORMATICS ACCESS '93 - CALL FOR STORIES ABOUT U.S. NATIONAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE - THE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION - NEW EJC ISSUE AVAILABLE FROM COMSERVE _____ Articles and Sections of this issue of the _Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture_ may be retrieved bia anonymous ftp to byrd.mu.wvnet.edu or via e-mail message addressed to LISTSERV@KENTVM or LISTSERV@KENTVM.KENT.EDU (instructions below) Papers may be submitted at anytime by email or send/file to: Ermel Stepp - Editor-in-Chief, _Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture_ M034050@MARSHALL.WVNET.EDU _________________________________ *Copyright Declaration* Copyright of articles published by Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture is held by the author of a given article. 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The message must read: GET EJVCV1N1 CONTENTS Use this file to identify particular articles or sections then send e-mail to LISTSERV@KENTVM or LISTSERV@KENTVM.KENT.EDU with the command: GET where is the name of the article or section (e.g., author name) and is the V#N# of that issue of EJVC The Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture __________________________________________________________________ ISSN 1068-5723 March 22, 1993 Volume 1 Issue 1 LEMKE V1N1 EDUCATION, CYBERSPACE, AND CHANGE J. L. LEMKE City University of New York Brooklyn College School of Education Brooklyn, New York 11210 USA [JLLBC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU] ABSTRACT Possible new directions for education and related social and cultural changes are discussed from the viewpoint of post- modern perspectives on learning, information technologies, and the dynamics of complex systems. A new model of educa- tion in cyberspace rather than in school and classrooms is formulated, together with key questions for a new educa- tional research agenda. The potential impact of these changes on cultural values and on the way humans interact with the natural and built environment are considered. INTRODUCTORY NOTE This article was originally written to provide a starting point for discussions of new perspectives on education made possible by advanced technologies. That discussion was con- ducted as an "electronic salon" on the internet organized by Chris Bigum and Bill Green of Deakin University in Australia in conjunction with a major conference held there in 1992. The perspective and style of the contributions was explicit- ly post-modernist. Some minor changes have been made to make this version more accessible to a wider readership. A FRAMEWORK: ECOSOCIAL DYNAMICS The functions of scholarship are not limited to the produc- tion and validation of new knowledge and new theoretical perspectives. As scholars we also have a responsibility to articulate the social and cultural changes that new develop- ments make possible, or even conceivable. These are not pre- dictions, they are options; and we must argue for them on the basis of value choices as well as factual determinations and theoretical interpretation. We have only a very limited repertory of metaphors for change. Change is most often spoken of in the language of movement. Whether as the progress of forward movement, retrogression, circularity, or the dialectic of `two steps forward, one step back', all these metaphors embody a decep- tive semantics in which change seems voluntary, like walk- ing, in which all directions seem equally "there" in princi- ple, in which past steps determine where we are but not where we go next, and in which there is always "somewhere" to go to. Scientific discourses are not immune to these ways of talk- ing (classical physics carries them to their utter limits), but they have evolved in highly specialized contexts alien to common experience. In their spectrum of divergence from common sense, they have elaborated some useful new metaphors for social and cultural change. I have described these in detail elsewhere and suggested their possible usefulness for models of cultural dynamics (Lemke, in press). Here I will only briefly sketch a few of these which I plan to use as a framework for this discussion. Organic growth is another possible metaphor for change, very different from the metaphor of motion. It belongs to a fam- ily of metaphors for the dynamics of complex systems that includes embryological development, ecological succession, biological evolution, and the postmodern physics of so- called chaotic systems (more specifically the nonlinear dynamics of systems with complex webs of internal self- coupling among their constitutive processes). These sorts of systems share many dynamical features, and they have also been described generically as autopoietic, self-organizing, or non-equilibrium dynamic open systems (see Lemke, in press, and references therein, especially Salthe 1985, 1989; Harrison 1982; Odum 1983; Jackson 1989; Prigogine 1980, 1984 also cited below; less technically, on chaotic systems, Gleick 1987). They include hurricanes, rainforests, cities, and organisms, as well as stars, flames, and even dripping faucets. In all cases the system is never a NOW, it is al- ways a TRAJECTORY of development over time. It is not the butterfly, but the larva-pupa-butterfly trajectory; not the person-now, but the zygote-embryo-child-adult-dotard trajec- tory. The trajectories of particular systems follow an average type-trajectory of development for their kind, modulated by individuations. The type-trajectory for the kinds of systems we are interested in cumulates and modifies over genera- tions; it evolves. Evolution takes place when some initially unique individuation becomes typical, and that happens, in- terestingly, when latent possibilities for divergence along the trajectory (potential side-routes not previously taken) are activated by novel environments. Once the developmental trajectory has evolved to follow a particular series of stages, changes in the later course of development require divergences earlier than the last relevant branching point, or bifurcation. One consequence of this is that children, in the course of development, can potentially advance cultural evolution, precisely insofar as they do NOT recapitulate all the stages of intellectual development of the previous gen- eration. The earlier the divergence, the more profound the possible changes in how the trajectory may ultimately devel- op. It is probably fundamentally wrong to imagine that the way to "progress" is to educate each generation up to maturity to be exactly like its predecessors, and then expect them to radically innovate. That model is a recipe for inhibiting social and cultural change. Encouraging children to do the bizarre, the unthinkable, the immoral, and even the impos- sible, would probably not rock social stability more than a very little bit, but it could produce individuations that history (i.e. the rest of us and our successors) would ultimately edit into fundamental sociocultural change. Another basic lesson of these models of postmodern dynamics is that it is SYSTEMS that develop, and that systems are al- ways systems of interdependent processes and activities (not aggregations of interacting "things" or "persons" as such). The trajectory-system for which one can formulate a dynamics is always a bit arbitary in its boundaries, because to exist it must transact with a sustaining, conditioning environ- ment, together with which it forms a supersystem on a larger scale, just as it is constituted in turn of interacting sub- systems at smaller scales. All dynamical analysis must be ACROSS SCALES (of time, space, energy-transfer, information- transfer) as well as over the durational, or trajectory "time" that these processes themselves engender. So it is again fundamentally wrong to imagine that human so- cial systems have an autonomous cultural dynamics; they can- not. Human social systems are inextricably interdependent with (and in many cases co-extensive with) systems of material processes that include the physical-chemical- biological ecosystem (both its biotic and abiotic com- ponents), up the scale hierarchy, at least to Gaia (the planet as a quasi-living, and conceivably quasi-conscious system; cf. Lovelock 1989), and probably beyond. Cultural practices are always also material processes; they construe meaning and assign valuation, but they also participate in eco-physical couplings (as well as in systems of purely semiotic relations) and co-evolve over time as parts of a larger, unitary "ecosocial system" (Lemke, in press). My concern in this paper is with ecosocial change, with changes in the practices and institutions we call education in the context of changes in the practices and institutions we call information technologies. But both these foci must be embedded in much larger and more complex systems, if we are to truly imagine the nature of likely and possible changes. DEVELOPMENT UP TO NOW: SCHOOL v. CYBERSPACE Ecosocial dynamics readily accommodates the classic princi- ple of "uneven development", i.e. within the same system, at the same stage of overall wide-scale development, different subsystems will have followed different trajectories of local-scale development, and the system as a whole will be "patchy": a mosaic of elements that show diversity of every sort, including the co-existence of contradictory elements, often from different periods of evolutionary history. In the same city you will find architecture, and even plumbing, from different decades and different centuries, side by side. In the same system of personal semiotic practices you can find a monarchical religion, a bourgeois economics, a classically socialist politics, and a postmodern epistemological stance, all happily co-habiting. In our postindustrial societies you can find on-line database tech- nologies and textbook-based schooling. Schools as we presently understand them hardly existed much before the 19th century, and it is hard to imagine that they will continue to exist in any recognizable form by the end of the 21st. All social institutions, as part of their legitimization, endow themselves with an aura of perpetuity. Modernism imagines that what are in their origins essential- ly 19th century bourgeois institutions continue to be in- finitely flexible and adaptable, their principles so in- herently correct that they will continue to serve useful functions in all possible futures, forever and ever, world without end (_pace_ Ozymandias). The fundamental assumptions of academic education are incom- patible with the present, much less the likely future needs of a postmodern society. Schools will continue to exist in patches, but they will grow sparser, less relevant to the system as a whole, to its futures. This trend has been evi- dent at least since the 1960s, when anti-establishment views had a substantial hearing (e.g. Illich, 1971). The dominant information technology in the Age of Schooling was the printed book. The technology advanced until large numbers of books could be had at reasonable cost by large numbers of people (subsidized by the death of forests, the toxic pollu- tion from paper mills and synthetic inks). This information availability made read-only print literacy a cultural prac- tice of gradually widening social value to individuals and institutions. Schools were instituted to teach reading, and with textbooks came curricula that, in principle at least, still consist essentially of learning to read one subject- specific register or another. Academic examinations are basically tests of what is supposed to be read in textbooks. Schooling today is a full-service institution. Like the fam- ily, it serves a multitude of economic, social, political, and ideological functions. But as a mode of education, it still relies heavily on its assumption that education is about reading textbooks. Apart from some areas of higher ed- ucation, textbooks (i.e. books written for and read only by school students and their teachers) are pretty much all that is read in schools. Textbooks are the specialized technology of print publishing for selecting and organizing a very small subset of all the information around. Great political (and pseudo-intellectual) battles are waged about what gets into them, and how much of it. The currently dominant ideology of curricular selection and priority holds that there are, in every subject, certain key abstract concepts which once "grasped" by students, can then be transferred or applied to novel situations throughout the rest of their lives. Postmodern, semiotic constructivist epistemologies undermine the logic and the interpretations of evidence for this older theory (see, e.g. Lave 1988, von Glasersfeld 1991; Lemke, forthcoming), which in retrospect seems not much more than a rationalization for the academic status quo. People learn to do things by DOING them; not by talking about concepts abstracted from doing them. What we actually do learn in school is simply what we DO in school. The fact that academics can construct post-hoc similarities between school activity types (semiotic practices) and those in the rest of human life does not imply that developing individu- als will automatically reconstruct the historically con- tingent ways in which their culture has decided that two distinct activity types involve applications of "the same" concept. It is only AFTER we have learned new activities that we can be taught to construct their "similarity" to prior activities, according to the conventions of our par- ticular culture and community. Schooling is starting to unravel. Schooling is reverting to the oral tradition from which it began: the teacher reads the textbook and gives an oral exposition of its contents, sometimes in dialogue with students. Fewer and fewer stu- dents actually read their textbooks, or learn how to con- struct meaningful discourse patterns by doing so. Students have other sources of information now about the amazing, horrifying, and often dangerous world in which we live. Sources whose content is more convincingly relevant: televi- sion programs and movies (with a residuum of comics and mag- azines). Video sources are oral and visual; they do not re- quire print literacy. These sources are well-adapted to convey startlingly novel information through sensory-interpretive channels that are (unlike print literacy) evolutionarily old, and whose use is second-nature. Those channels have been extended; you have to learn how to see video, it is a highly conventionalized semiotic medium. Its verisimilitude is only the sign of its success in accessing/extending the old channels. The rule of ecosocial change is: one step back in order to go two steps forward (_reculer pour mieux sauter_; retrogressive re- potentialization). Back from print literacy to oral-visual communication in order to go forward to video, cyberspace, and virtual realities. Today's students have already diverged, in interaction with video media, from the developmental track (as much a cultur- al as a biological one, clearly) that formerly led to print literacy. This same divergence is one that better prepares them, compared to previous generations, for what is coming next. That is how typical developmental trajectories evolve. I am not predicting the demise of written language in the near future; but it will be fused ever more closely with other semiotic modalities of communication and representa- tion. We used to wean children away from picturebooks. Adult books, scholarly books needed no pictures. Back one step: scholarly work, by the end of the next century, will be con- sidered incomplete if it consists of written text alone. Forward, diverging, two steps: to multimedia hypertext, and then to virtual realities in cyberspace. I am arguing that schooling is not likely to continue to function as the dominant form of education, certainly as the dominant mode by which society makes available what it con- siders important information for society-wide dissemination. Illich (1971) long ago argued that schools could be replaced by libraries as the dominant educational institutions. Li- braries, of course, will themselves be very different by the time this has happened (my guess: 50 years). Libraries will exist in cyberspace, and they will contain, not printed text-only books, but all electronically stored information which is publicly accessible. They will, un- fortunately, probably no longer be free, though it might be worth fighting for this. For a fee, more will be accessible. The library will merge with the bookstore, and both with the electronic database, which will hold not just text and num- bers, but pictures, graphic representations, videos, music, and virtual realities. Television, telephones, and computers will be absorbed into the new institution as well (while continuing to exist independently in the patchy way of un- even ecosocial development). In embryo, all this already exists. Any inexpensive com- puter, with another $50 for a telephone modem connection, can already link to a worldwide amateur network (Fidonet) of bulletin-board systems (BBSs) that are pioneering the cul- tural practices which establishment institutions (the Inter- net) will follow, just as the "Ham Radio" of the 1950s pioneered the Global Village long before sattelite televi- sion. BBSs are themselves often run on very inexpensive, jury-rigged computer systems. And they already have graphics, and music, and CD-ROM on-line. Video and virtual reality (VR) await only the fiber-optic cable network (or digital telephonics, or super data-compression schemes) that will replace present telephones lines and television (broad- cast and cable, picturephones and HDTV). Japan will have it first, thanks to being younger as a technological society (its trajectory individuating in more modern/postmodern con- ditions) and having been pushed "one step back" in WW2. Neoteny is extended immaturity, and hence prolonged capacity to diverge developmentally (cf. Gould 1977, Montagu 1981). College students, and adventurous faculty, have already dis- covered that even the primitive Internet can get you access to vast libraries of world-diverse information (though main- ly only text and numbers yet; pictures are just arriving). This capacity will grow exponentially in the next few years. Younger "hackers" discovered 10-20 years ago that a little innocent larceny could get you into even the proprietary databases of corporations and governments. Not textbooks, but authentic information in its customary forms. Not what someone else thinks you should know, but what you choose to find out. Not one controlled version of the truth, but as many versions as you care to examine. Not a test to evaluate whether you have learned the content of the textbooks, but value judgments about the worth of whatever it is you have learned. By you, by others; for specific, definable pur- poses. In our lifetimes, in the lifetimes of our students, and their students, people will learn what they need to know by accessing global electronic databases, and local proprietary databases, that will contain the totality of available in- formation, in forms that will organize that information, or allow us to reorganize it, into whatever forms may be most useful for our immediate purposes. The successor to print literacy will be the set of skills needed to locate and use- fully organize information, for ourselves and for others, in cyberspace. (For further discussion, see Lemke 1993.) What we today marginalize as "informal education" (museum displays, library use) and auto-didacticism will become tomorrow's norm; formal schooling will become rarer and more old-fashioned. It is already impossible to convincingly jus- tify any particular selection of information as THE cur- riculum. Recent efforts to do so have either been reaction- ary attempts to return to the curricula of pride and prejudice, or else fanciful flights of abstraction seeking to teach non-existent, universally applicable intellectual processes (pseudo-universal problem-solving skills, higher literacy skills, etc.). Both essentially deny the diversity of human experience and seek to substitute for it impossible claims of universality. There are no useful universals. Universal claims are always either parochial power-plays or abstractions of so high an order as to say almost nothing about individual instances. Where them seem to do so it is only because they conceal critical instance-specific information in the unacknowledged procedures for linking abstractions to instances (more ob- vious when we remember that an abstraction is itself only a set of procedures for linking instances to other instances). There will be no common curriculum in the future, except what is artificially maintained by political power. Educa- tion will not be the foundation of a common global culture; only shared technologies will interface between diverse com- munities. Each local community will be less stable because of this, but the global community will be better able to survive and prosper. People will create for themselves and others unique and dis- tinct educations. Each person will be knowledgeable about some particular collection of topics and practices, accumu- lated along their biographical trajectory; people will com- municate and collaborate in shorter- and longer-term com- munities, distinguishing less and less between those we today call "real" or "virtual". Many people will be "ex- perts" in esoteric interests of varying value to others. They will share those interests and their expertise with those who come looking for it or are willing to barter for it, as suits them or as they need. This information-culture- cum-barter-economy already exists among the BBSs and on the USENET and specialist conferences of the Internet. EDUCATION IN CYBERSPACE: THEORETICAL ISSUES We have arrived at a moment when research on education in schools has limited usefulness for the human future. Just as there was a time when research on horse-drawn carriage de- sign, or vacuum-tube circuitry, gave way to automotive engineering and solid-state electronics, so the future re- search questions of education will increasingly be about how people will educate themselves in cyberspace. Educational theory has resisted this shift, not surprising- ly. We can claim, against traditional CAI, that human social interaction is a necessary element of education, but cyber- space will be a virtual place FOR human social interaction. We can claim that people interact with other people in fun- damentally different ways, probably necessary for learning, from how they interact with artefacts and natural objects, including today's computers. But we also know that people can learn in additional ways if a base of social learning is provided: by observing, by listening, by reading, by video viewing, by manipulating objects, by experimenting, by writ- ing, by drawing, by calculating, etc., etc. And in cyber- space all of these, and more, will be available. You could even re-create virtual classrooms in cyberspace (though hopefully only for databases on the history of schooling). Educational theory now has to deal with new issues: What IS a teacher? What features would a program, an artifi- cial intelligence, in cyberspace have to have to fulfill the various essential functions of teachers? What features will tend to cue students to interact with the AI as if interact- ing with a person rather than an object? How, precisely, do people, in fact, now interact differently with other people than they do with artefacts like books, pictures, museum displays, and computer programs? And how do they consequent- ly learn differently? These questions begin as the direct extension of such simple present-day questions in CAI as what sort of helpfiles should be provided to students, or how best to design an on- line tutorial for the use of an application system. Granted that we are still some years away from AIs that will be able to flexibly dialogue in natural language (10-20 years), the identification of what such systems will need to do to func- tion as tutors is a present problem. Long before such AI tutors exist, there will be sophisticated instructional sys- tems that will show users what can be done with an applica- tion, what knowledge is available and how it can be ac- cessed, manipulated, and transformed, where to get further information on specific topics, etc. When natural language AI tutors appear, they will represent only incremental change. How do students at various levels of experience explore large databases? What are their strategies? What sorts of assistance would make it easier for them to pursue these strategies? How do the strategies shift in the presence of various facilities? How can access to databases be made more natural (i.e. easier to execute by extensions of evolved hu- man capacities for, say, spatial exploration, or verbal metaphoric association)? How do people co-organize information in multiple semiotic modalities (spoken language, written text, sound-music, diagrams, photo images, video sequences, spatial movements, tactile and other sensations, object manipulations, social activity sequences, etc., etc.) to produce complex "presentations" for themselves and others, for various pur- poses? What sorts of action environments would people construct to try out various imaginary action possibilities (simulations, experimentation, social interactions, etc.)? And what sorts of action environments should be made available to facili- tate learning various sorts of cultural practices? This is rather like the classic "learning environments" or "learning activities" problem in educational theory, except that in cyberspace one is no longer limited by the physical class- room and its resources. While it will be a long, long time before cyberspace virtual realities will have anything ap- proaching the complexity of interactional possibilities of material realities, they will quickly exceed those of the average school classroom. Cyberspace will be a convenient place to practice for, and review recordings of, participa- tion in material social settings and activities. Education will take place partly in cyberspace and partly by direct participation in social practices. Both will be superior to classrooms, as experience with clinical-practical education and realistic simulations has long shown. What should be the hierarchy of referral of student/user queries? to on-line helpfiles, AI database systems, expert conferences, peer conferences, human tutors, AI tutors, etc.? What should be the function of full-presence VR (or material co-presence) group interactions? i.e. when and why should students and human tutors either physically meet to dialogue and work together or meet in cyberspace as if fully physi- cally co-present? What can be accomplished in this way that cannot be by any of the other available modes of social in- teraction in cyberspace? (One interesting possibility is that of being able, at will, to re-view a scene or a datas- cape from the perspectives, visual and conceptual, of anoth- er participant.) How can systems be provided that will enable people to test their mastery of various topics and practices? Will this be necessary? Will some cyberspace conferences, for example, only be open to contributions from people who meet certain criteria? There will probably be a vast testbank, each of whose test systems will be recognized by varying numbers of institutions. It is as likely that a person would submit a list of tests they had passed, and the tests then be evaluated as establishing criterial equivalencies, as that they would be asked to submit to a specific test. It is also possible that resumes and individual educational portfolios, would prove more useful and valid than tests for such pur- poses, once methods of automating the application of various sets of criteria to the same portfolio are developed. The portfolio is in effect a personal-accomplishment database, subject to query and evaluation for many possible purposes, according to many possible value schemes. CYBERSPACE AND VIRTUAL REALITIES What IS cyberspace? The answer, to the extent there is one, makes more sense with a first understanding of the technol- ogy of virtual reality (Rheingold 1991; Benedikt 1991). VR is, most fundamentally, a type of interface between humans and computers. Just as typing at a keyboard replaced submit- ting punched "IBM cards" and looking at a screen replaced reading "printouts", just as the mouse and the point-and- click graphics screen (and soon the pen-stylus) changed this second interface still further; so, in the next full genera- tion of change, the computer will sense our head- and hand- positioning and show us 3-D images. When the 3-D image fills our field of view and automatically shifts in real time as we shift our gaze or move head and shoulders, a remarkable effect occurs: the sense of presence in a virtual, computer- generated reality. This sense of presence derives from the evolutionary adapta- tions that make us feel at home "in" material reality, that make our state of internal neurological activity "feel" like there is a real, external world around us. This sense is en- hanced by the ability to move around in this world (and have it seem to correspondingly shift around us as we do so) and to affect it, mainly by physical actions of touch. It is the COUPLING between efferent, active nervous activity and af- ferent, perceptual signals that we interpret as being in a real external world. It is the ADDED INFORMATION at the point-of-turnaround between efferent and afferent, the con- tribution our bodies do not normally signal as coming from "us," that we learn culturally to interpret as an "other," real on the same order as we feel ourselves to be real. When the computer mediates between our actions and our percep- tions, the nervous system and its cultural programming in- terpret this as an external reality and provide us with a sense of presence in this "virtual" reality. A virtual reality is then a possible world, as real to the senses and responsive to actions as the material world, but more protean. It is a domain where magic works, where a word or gesture can change local reality, much as now a click of the mouse can transform a graphic image on the screen. Any- thing semiotically constructable can exist in virtual reality. Any semiotically constructable transformation can take place in virtual reality. And virtual reality can be semiotically, and physically (analogue coupling inputs), coupled to material reality, so that it can constrain our possible constructions in ways that will work outside VR as well as inside it. But in VR we can decide in just which ways we will allow it to constrain us. Through VR we can explore databases collected in interaction with material phenomena, and we can operate remote robots in the material world, seeing through their eyes, being where they are, acting with their effectors. We cannot move the robots instantaneously from site to site, but we can move our own sense of presence from robot to robot with a word, or a glance. We could also turn around and look, from a new viewpoint, at ourselves. We can limit ourselves to the possibilities inherent in a set of material-world data, but we can also learn to under- stand that data better by altering it and seeing, from the inside, how the world the new data describes would then be different. Material-world data will include 3-dimensional recordings of human activities and events that we can enter, move around in to see from any point-of-view, touch, and manipulate in every conceivable way, as data. They will also include recordings of phenomena never before experienced by human beings, transduced for human senses. And through VR inter- faces, and remote effectors, we will be able to act on phenomena in places and at scales, where the sense of human presence has never gone before. Cyberspace is the space of interactive computational pos- sibilities. It is, in one sense, a network that makes all participating computers and their accessible contents (data, programs) available to the users of any participating com- puter, anywhere. It means that all the information on earth and every strategy for transforming information ever con- ceived anywhere are in principle available to every user all the time. It is not just a storage space, it is a space in which you can do things. You can create, or borrow, a vir- tual room, and meet other users there face-to-face, body-to- body, (realistic or fantastic) virtual-image to virtual- image. You can move around in this room; you can touch and feel virtual people and things. You can create images, sounds, language, objects, people, actions, events, from recordings of material reality or by direct construction ex nihilo. You can expand the room, or shrink it, change your viewpoint by "flying" above it, or below it. If it proves the case, as many people now believe, that hu- mans can better navigate in search of cyberspace resources (databases, programs, specific computers, users, confer- ences, etc.) when these are represented in a visual-spatial way, then there may come to be, in the Network, a standard CYBERWORLD where computer nodes appear as spatially separate boxes or fanciful shapes coded to their types (super- computers, corporate systems, BBSs, PCs, etc.) in distinct locations, where users' addresses have virtual spatial loca- tions, where databases and other resources are visible as in a 3-D map, where there are signposts or other systems to help you find your way around, where proprietary data is guarded, or hidden, and where there are Worlds within Worlds at various scales (fractal cyberspace). This master CYBER- WORLD will be cyberspace in another sense, or at least its standard VR representation. Ultimately, cyberspace is what you can do in it, the space of possibilities for computation and interaction, for the creation, storage, and transformation of information -- in a domain where everything meaningful is information. VR simply makes cyberspace feel familiar to the learned extensions of our evolved human capacities for perception and action. CYBORG EVOLUTION: ECOCYBERSYSTEMS AND SURVIVAL Can a community learn? Can a species? Do we educate societies as we do individuals? If so, what are the implica- tions of cyberspace technology for education in this larger sense? "Education" and "learning" are rather old-fashioned ways of talking about some aspects of developmental processes of in- dividuation in dynamical systems. These processes, for indi- vidual human organisms, are "epigenetic" (Waddington 1957, 1969; Lemke 1984, in press), i.e. they are processes in the development of more inclusive systems that must be defined across many scales from our DNA and its biochemical interac- tions with a cellular and organismic environment to our human-scale semiotic and material interactions with other humans and with the rest of our ecosocial environment. The individual organism is not a sufficient substrate system to discuss even "learning," much less "education". "Learn- ing" is not a process that takes place INSIDE the system we call a human organism; its semantics is highly misleading. People do not learn. Learning is not an internal process. People participate in larger systems and those larger sys- tems undergo developmental processes; in interaction with their own relevant environments, they create the conditions for their own further change along evolved, type-specific and individuating trajectories. Some things change inside people as they participate in these processes, and other, internal developmental processes of the same kind are going on within us among our own subsystems, coupled to our par- ticipation in these larger processes. What fundamentally changes, what we call learning, is how people interact with and participate in the larger ecosocial systems that sustain them. Learning is, consequently, neither a "mental" nor a "cogni- tive" process (cf. Thibault 1986, Lemke 1989, Geertz 1983), unless we view cognition and the mind as themselves essen- tially interactional processes extending beyond individual human organisms -- as social and transactional phenomena, in which individual brains and bodies participate, but which do not take place "in" individuals, but only between them and their ecosocial environments (cf. Cole et al. 1971, Cole & Scribner 1974, Lave & Rogoff 1984, Lave 1988). What then can it mean for a COMMUNITY to learn? Simply that it participates in a still larger ecosocial system and un- dergoes development in interaction with it. The community learns in the sense that its ways of interacting with the larger system, and some aspects of the internal interaction of its constituent subsystems (e.g. of individuals, but more basically of the activities and processes in which individu- als participate), change. Of all the possible kinds of de- velopmental change, we tend to call only those learning which exhibit increased complexity of response, an enlarged combinatorial space of action possibilities, and an in- creased long-term adaptedness to the environment. Develop- ment in general, of course, also includes senescence, also includes fatal innovations. A species is a type. An organism, or a community, belongs categorially to some type, inheriting characteristics shared with other systems descending from the same lineage, but is a token of the type, an instance of the category. Tokens de- velop. Types evolve. The evolutionary trajectory of a type is an envelope of the successive developmental trajectories of its tokens over generations (Salthe 1985, 1989; Lemke, in press). Tokens individuate in development, becoming unique while staying somewhere in the vicinity of the average de- velopmental trajectory characteristic of their type. When that average changes, as a result of systematic shifts in the individual development of tokens over generations, we say that the type has changed, has evolved. Species learning is thus an evolutionary process. Once again, however, learning is not a process internal to the species. Species co-evolve as components of ecosystem- types. Just as individuals do not learn, so neither do species. But just as individuals participate in the develop- mental processes of larger ecosocial systems, so do the type-specific behavioral trajectories of species evolve along with the ecosystem types in which they participate. The notion of a species, however, while formally just a synonym for type, has tended to mean a type of individual organism, and that, as we have seen, is not the right unit of analysis for education, unless we treat it transactional- ly. What a species learns in evolution, if anything, is how to participate differently in its ecosystem-type, how to re- late differently to its typical environments. It is fashionable today to speak of "cyborgs". This metaphor (e.g. Haraway 1991) reminds us that we are not just organisms, we are organisms constituted by our interactions with our environments, and increasingly those environments are artefactual. We are made by doing-with, and the things we do-with include computers, video, and all the other tools of our technologies. There are not simply humans on one side and machines on the other. Humans are shaped by their inter- actions with machines just as machines are shaped by their interactions with humans. The appropriate system level for analysis is the human-machine system, the cybertech-organism system. But the notion of "cyborg" does not go far enough. It retains the limitations of the romantic notion of autonomous individuals; a cyborg is just a different sort of individual. We speak of it still in the language, the meta- phors, the semantics appropriate to human individuals. The meaning we need to make is a dialectical synthesis of the notions of cyborg (unitary machine-human individual) and of eco-social system (unitary material-semiotic, ecological- social community). We need a notion for a system of material-processes-that-are-also-sometimes-semiotic- cultural-practices, rather than a system of individuals. We need a notion of system as token, not type. We a notion of a system within which individuals are constituted, and which is itself constituted in part by the actions of individuals. And, for present purposes, we need to foreground the role of cyberspace technology in these processes. Ecocybersystems. ECS. How do we expect ecocybersystems to develop in the near fu- ture? What changes in how humans participate in the larger ECS will this entail? What possibilities for the future of humanity, of the planet, of ECSs and wider ecosocial systems are we making as we participate in newly developing ECSs? For those still more comfortable with the older metaphors: How will cyborg experience change what it means to be human? Will cyborg children learn to feel new connections with the ecosystems that sustain them, as well as with the tech- nologies that entrance and enhance them? Will human culture evolve ethically and politically in the cyberspace environ- ment to accept a more mature responsibility for the survival of a rich and diverse ecology on our planet and perhaps others? Will we learn to identify with Gaia and her sisters, to make their/our interests humanity's highest value princi- ple? The highest good which discourse can frame is not the good of the individual, nor of the family, the tribe, the city, the nation, or even of humanity, but the good of the Whole. Humanity will live or die as part of the Whole. Human cul- tures must evolve toward Gaian values that put ecosystem in- terests above human interests, and value other species and even abiotic systems for their contributions to the Whole, rather than their contributions to our own small part of that Whole. Or someday soon there will be no human cultures. How will human development in cyberspace, humanity's partic- ipation in ecocybersystems, educate individuals, com- munities, and finally, one hopes, our species to interact differently with the rest of the Whole in which we have our being? One existing VR prototype system (Rheingold 1991: 26-45) al- lows the user to see and touch human-scale 3-D images of large biological molecules. The complex spatial conforma- tions of these molecules determine how they interact chemi- cally (and vice versa). Users can manipulate the molecules as if they were human-scale objects, jockeying them to see if they can be fit together as needed. They can modify a synthesizable molecule to see if it will fit better to func- tion as a therapeutic drug. All the evolved skills of hand- eye coordination can be used to augment theory-based im- agination of possibilities. New hand-eye coordinations are learned to handle the unfamiliar computer-transduced responses of intermolecular forces, and potentially even quantum effects. The human user is changed by participating in a world that responds differently to human action. The prototype is not a full-immersion VR, it has only a weak sense of presence, though a strong sense of the reality of the VR molecules and their behavior. How will humans be changed when they develop with frequent full-presence expe- riences in the world of molecular-scale forces? Children will one day grow up playing not just in the Nintendo world, but in full-presence worlds where the laws of VR nature correspond to those of quantum forces, the be- havioral codes of other species, and phenomena from vastly different scales of time, space, and energy than humans have ever experienced in the past with the vividness of full- presence VR. Their developmental trajectories as part of ecocybersystems will diverge early and far from past norms, down many new pathways. This development is not simply a biological process. It is simultaneously a development of systems of cultural and semiotic practices, activity types for individual interaction with VR and material environ- ments. And it will be a developmental process of and in a community, shared by many individuals. In cyberspace we will be able to see VR worlds, and record- ings of and real-time sensor inputs from World-One, in in- frared, microwave, and x-ray bands of a newly visible spec- trum. We will be able to hear at all frequencies, from the echoes of earthquakes and the songs of whales and insects, to the resonances of crystals. We will be telepresent with probes on Mars and on the deep-ocean floor, we will be able to walk the Martian plains, kick lunar dust, sound with whales. We will be able to float above the earth at any elevation, seeing in any spectrum, observing cities or rain- forests in real-time or watching the changes of days or years go by in minutes, or seconds. We can live at the pace of a tree or a forest, a hurricane or a glacier, a cell or a molecule. We will do all this as children. We will not de- velop along the same cultural paths as in the past. Hopefully, we will bring these same technologies to the study of the social and cultural components of our ecosystems. The life-histories of cities, the patterns of economic flows, the changing distribution of wealth and con- sumption of resources, the incidences of violence, the prevalences of weapons, the development of movements in art, the evolution of genres in literature, the histories of lan- guages, the heteroglossia of discourses, the evolution of technologies. I cannot foresee how these experiences will change us, will change how we participate in the larger systems of which we are a part. But I hope that, in expanding our experience beyond the realm of the human-scale, of local information and local concerns, we will learn to FEEL what it means to participate in the Whole in ways other than those that have been traditionally thought human. We can do this by extend- ing our evolved capacities to feel and act in a world. I hope that in roaming the many worlds of the Whole, in learn- ing to live by their rules, to see ourselves and the rest from their points of view, we will come to identify our- selves with the Whole, and to seek its interests. If we do not, I fear that other evolved patterns of our behavior -- our greed and our aggression, our fear and our will to con- trol -- will lead us inexorably to destroy the larger sys- tems that sustain us, or push those systems to a point where it is we who will be destroyed. I have left many important questions out of this discussion, principally those having to do with social conflict over the control and use of these technologies. I have only tried to sketch a vision of what I would fight for in these coming battles. I believe that we have begun to open new pos- sibilities for the future that are worth working our way towards. The vision must continue to grow. REFERENCES Benedikt, Michael. (1991). _Cyberspace: First Steps_. Cam- bridge, MA: MIT Press. Cole, M., Gay, J., Glick, J. and Sharp, D. (1971). _The Cul- tural Context of Learning and Thinking_. New York: Basic Books. Cole, M. and Scribner, S. (1974). _Culture and Thought_. New York: Wiley. Geertz, Clifford. (1983). _Local Knowledge_. New York: Basic Books. Gleick, James. (1987). _Chaos: Making a New Science_. New York: Viking. Gould, S.J. (1977). _Ontogeny and Phylogeny_. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Haraway, Donna. (1991). _Simians, Cyborgs, and Women_. New York: Routledge. Harrison, L. (1982). An overview of kinetic theory in develop- mental modeling. In S. Subtelny and P. Green, Eds., _Developmental Order: Its Origin and Regulation_. New York: Alan R. Liss Illich, Ivan. (1971). _Deschooling Society_. New York: Harper & Row. Jackson, E. Atlee. (1989). _Perspectives of Non-Linear Development_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lave, Jean. (1988). _Cognition in Practice_. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press. Lave, J. and Rogoff, B. (Eds.). (1984). _Everyday Cognition : Its Development in Social Context_. Cambridge, Mass. : Har- vard University Press. Lemke, J.L. (1984). _Semiotics and Education_. Toronto: Vic- toria College/Toronto Semiotic Circle Monographs. -- . (1989). Social semiotics: A new model for literacy education_. In D. Bloome, Ed). _Classrooms and Literacy_ (pp. 289-309). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing. -- . (1993). Hypermedia and higher education). _Interpersonal Communication and Technology_ (IPCT-L@GUVM), April (1993. -- . (In press). Discourse, Dynamics, and Social Change. In _Language as Cultural Dynamic_ [Focus issue of _Cultural Dynamics_, M.A.K. Halliday, issue editor; R. Pinxten, Editor- in-chief. Leiden: Brill.] -- . (In press). Discourse, Dynamics, and Social Change." In _Language as Cultural Dynamic_ [Focus issue of _Cultural Dynamics_, M.A.K. Halliday, Issue Editor]. (Available by Anonymous-FTP from CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU as DYNAMICS PAPER. All rights reserved.) -- . (Forthcoming). Semiotics and the deconstruction of concep- tual learning). _Journal of the Society for Accelerative Learning and Teaching_. Lovelock, J. (1989). _The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth_. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Montagu, A. (1981). _Growing Young_. New York: McGraw-Hill. Odum, Howard T. (1983). _Systems Ecology_. New York: John Wiley. Prigogine, I. (1980). _From Being to Becoming: Time and Com- plexity in the Physical Sciences_. New York: W.H. Freeman. Prigogine, I. & Stengers, I. (1984). _Order out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature_. New York: Bantam Books. Rheingold, Howard. (1991). _Virtual Reality_. New York: Simon & Schuster. Salthe, S. (1985). _Evolving Hierarchical Systems_. New York: Columbia University Press. -- . (1989. Self-organization in hierarchically structured systems). _Systems Research 6_(3): 199-208. Thibault, Paul. (1986). _Text, Discourse, and Context: A So- cial Semiotic Perspective_. Toronto, Victoria University: Toronto Semiotic Circle Monographs. von Glasersfeld, Ernst. (1991). _Radical constructivism in mathematics education_. Kluwer. Waddington, C.H. (1957). _The Strategy of the Genes_. London: Allen & Unwin. -- . (1969). _Towards a Theoretical Biology_, Vol.2. Chicago: Aldine Publishing. [pp.106-123]. _____ Articles and Sections of this issue of the _Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture_ may be retrieved bia anonymous ftp to byrd.mu.wvnet.edu or via e-mail message addressed to LISTSERV@KENTVM or LISTSERV@KENTVM.KENT.EDU (instructions below) Papers may be submitted at anytime by email or send/file to: Ermel Stepp - Editor-in-Chief, _Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture_ M034050@MARSHALL.WVNET.EDU _________________________________ *Copyright Declaration* Copyright of articles published by Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture is held by the author of a given article. 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The message must read: GET EJVCV1N1 CONTENTS Use this file to identify particular articles or sections then send e-mail to LISTSERV@KENTVM or LISTSERV@KENTVM.KENT.EDU with the command: GET where is the name of the article or section (e.g., author name) and is the V#N# of that issue of EJVC The Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture __________________________________________________________________ ISSN 1068-5723 March 22, 1993 Volume 1 Issue 1 SHANK V1N1 ABDUCTIVE MULTILOGUING THE SEMIOTIC DYNAMICS OF NAVIGATING THE NET Gary Shank Northern Illinois University (P30GDS1@NIU) Abstract This paper argues that Net communication is neither oral nor written, but semiotic. In order to support this claim, the article seeks to define and apply the ideas of abductive reasoning and the concept of multiloguing as a way to understand the semiotic nature of Net communication. Implications of Net communication are explored from this perspective. In addition, the article lists the most explicitly semiotic discussion lists and describes each briefly. Finally, the paper argues that a conscious understanding of abductive multiloguing will help us both navigate the Net and evolve a style of scholarship appropriate for the medium. Introduction One of the challenges of working and dealing with the Net is to understand it, and to understand how to use it in effective ways. The Net is many things to many people. For some, it is a way to get in touch and chat with other teens or young adults. For others, it is a way to talk to experts to determine how and why a particular damnable computer or program won't run properly. And for a growing segment of users, it is part of their scholarly life. It is the virtual culture of these scholars that interests me in this paper, and it is this group I hope to serve. I would like to further that project by talking with and about some of the key ideas of semiotics, and showing how semiotics and the Net are inextricably linked. In order to do that, I need to establish a bit of context. One of the most important projects of this century has been the effort to grasp the nature of language. In the 19th century, the science of linguistics was concerned with trying to find the historical roots of all modern languages and dialects. Saussure (1959) led the move away from this historical consideration by looking at language as a system of meanings where those meanings are arbitrarily coded by words and more systematically coded by networks of meanings. Jakobson (1957) and Hjelmslev (1963) developed systems of phonological and semantic oppositions that helped chart and codify the networks of meanings first described by Saussure. Eco (1984) extended the project of Hjelmslev to include communication in general (cf. Fiske, 1982; for a summary and sampling of some of the crucial trends and directions in the links between linguistics and communication theory). Lakoff & Johnson (1980) were able to bring our understanding of language and our basic modes of thinking together in their work on metaphor and thinking, building on the psychological work on communication and thinking of Vygotsky (1962) and Bakhtin (1981). At the same time that linguistics was expanding into its new realms, contemporary philosophers were focused on investigating the nature of meaning. Some, like Heidegger (cf. Guignon, 1992) and Goodman (1978) explored the relation of language and meaning. Others attempted to work out a pragmatic model of meaning (cf. Rorty, 1982; Trimbur & Holt, 1992; Pepper, 1942; Murphy, 1990). Finally, others attempted to work out a postmodern theory of meaning that would allow us to extend and push against the models of meaning created by the successors of Saussure (cf. Johnson, 1992; Feyerabend, 1975 Lyotard, 1979; Baudrillard, 1988). These two projects have now pervaded all scholarly fields. Meaning and language have been the focal concerns of inquiry in such areas as linguistics, the social sciences, and even the physical sciences. In fact, if we look at the trends listed above in a whimsical fashion, we could even say (with tongue planted firmly in cheek) that the intellectual preoccupation of 20th century linguists and philosophers has been to determine exactly how to "talk ourselves clear". In the spirit of that project, I would like to try to "talk myself clear" about the following; 1) the use of semiotic theory to enhance our understanding of the Net, and 2) documenting current scholarly activity about semiotics on the Net. The Nature of Multiloguing As we said earlier, this is the century of language. In line with that observation, we can further say that the paragon of language- in-use is the conversation. Linguists and philosophers, from Plato to Saussure, have insisted that the conversation, or language-in- use as speaking, is prior to and privileged when compared to other modes of communication (cf. Fiske, 1982; Saussure, 1959). Therefore, we should expect models of conversation to be incorporated in basic communication models. And this is what we indeed do find. For instance, in Roman Jakobson's version of communication (Jakobson, 1957), we find that any act of communication consists of a sender, a receiver, and a message. The message travels along some medium, or more precisely, is conveyed by the medium from the sender to the receiver. There are three basic types of conversation that can be described using the Jakobson model. First of all, there is the monologue. This is where there is only one sender, and one or multiple receivers who listen passively to the message of the sender. In academic settings, the lecture is the ideal model of the monologue. The lecture has its origins, by the way, in the medieval scriptorium, where the master read manuscripts to students who then copied the manuscript for their own use. Therefore, it was essential that the receivers be passive in this circumstance, in order that they could hear properly. The second type of conversation is the dialogue. In the dialogue, the sender and receiver take turns. This is the basic model of all dyadic oral communication. The third and final type of conversation is the discussion. In the discussion, we have one person who starts as the sender, and multiple receivers. While it is important for the receivers to take turns as senders, in the discussion the initial sender still retains control of the conversation. In most academic settings where the discussion form is used, the teacher serves as the initial sender and monitor and controller of the discussion. The initial sender retains his/her position of control because the conversation, as an oral form, depends on maintaining dyadic turn-taking, even with multiple sender-receiver combinations. In recent times, scholars like Derrida (1976) and his followers have challenged the idea of the conversation per se as the privileged unit of communication. Derrida, like Saussure before him, argues that sign usage, more than speech, is the basis for communication. And, as such scholars as Baudrillard (1988) and Barthes (1957) have shown, there is no simple translation of sign usage to any single communication model. Sign usage is like speech, in that there is the sender-receiver model in many cases. But sign usage can be like writing, where it is important to "read" signs that are already present and not currently being produced by a sender, and it is important to also "write" signs, by creating sign patterns that we hope will eventually be picked up by currently non-present receivers. Therefore, when we are dealing with semiotically informed models of communication, we need to go beyond (while still including) the conversational models of communication types. These concerns are particularly important for those of us who communicate via the Net. Is Net communication like conversation? Quite a bit. Messages on the Net tend to be informal, to be phrased in conversational form, and can engender a great deal of direct and dyadic interchange. Is Net communication like writing ? Absolutely. Messages are written instead of spoken. Nonverbal, gestural and articulatory cues, so important in speech, are missing (the whole notion of emoticons, like the famous "smiley" ":-)" are ways to try to introduce some of those oral contextual features into Net communication, but their success is limited at best). But the linguistic models of lecture, dialogue, discussion, and even text (the written model of communication) do not capture the dynamics of sign usage that characterizes Net communication. A new linguistic model is needed. Let me briefly suggest a model of sign communication that might describe Net communication. I call it the multilogue. In the multilogue, we have a number of players. We have the starter, or the initial sender, who starts the "thread" (a well- established Net term, by the way). Once a thread has been started though, it is no longer under sender control. This is because the mechanics of Net response do not require turn taking. From the oral side, it is as if everyone who is interested in talking can all jump in at once, but still their individual voices can be clearly heard. From the written side, it is as if someone had started writing a piece, but before he/she gets too far, people are there magically in print to add to, correct, challenge, or extend the piece. Therefore, what we have is a written quasi-discussion that has the potential to use the strengths of each form. Since the "feel" of Net communication is still oral, I think it is best to call this form of communication "multiloguing", to retain the link with its oral heritage. So far, in my effort to "talk myself clear", I have addressed the kind of "talk" that we do on the Net. Now, what about the notion of being "clear"? Abduction and Meaning Meaning is the key challenge of any scholarly activity. If we cannot determine what we mean, then we are nowhere. I want to argue that meaning has evolved in the scholarly world, and that the virtual community is poised at the brink of another evolution of meaning, one that is critically informed by semiotic ideas. For those readers who are semiotically sophisticated, I apologize in advance for the elementary and somewhat imprecise discussion of meaning and signs that will follow. But, given the broad readership of this journal, I want to be able to get across some fairly complex ideas to people who are intelligent and can follow an argument, whether they have a requisite background in semiotics or not. The traditional academic community, prior to the scientific revolution, equated the idea of meaning with necessity. If something was necessarily so, then it was by definition meaningful. The logical tool for discerning necessity was the deductive syllogism. As a brief reminder, and for later comparison purposes, let me offer the following rather mundane deductive syllogism about my beloved mongrel dog, Spuffy. We know for sure and certainly, let us say for the sake of argument, that all dogs bark. We also know that Spuffy is a dog. Therefore, we can certainly and absolutely conclude that Spuffy barks. Deductions such as these allow us to extend our realm of certainty both systematically and confidently. As such, deduction is a powerful tool for extending what we already know into what we might suspect but cannot be sure we know. Our traditional scholars believed that deduction was the only valid form of reasoning. The scientific revolution, as Peirce (1956) pointed out, was first a revolution in logic. Specifically, modern science was made possible by the work of logicians working centuries earlier, who argued for the validity of inductive modes of reasoning. Unlike deduction, inductive results are probable rather than certain, but they allow us to build tentative rules of truth from circumstances of observation. Let me re-phrase the earlier syllogism to reflect the logic of inductive inquiry. Let us suppose we have reason to believe that Spuffy is a dog. Furthermore, we observe that Spuffy barks. Now, we can claim that it is probable that all dogs bark, since we have some (limited) empirical evidence to that effect. This form of reasoning allows us to build rules for further inference, rather than depending on those rules to be true by fiat alone. In other words, I don't have to just accept that all dogs bark. I can turn to the world of experience, so long as I am willing to accept that the rules I get as a result are probable, rather than certain. The logic that informs semiotic thinking is related to the above forms, but nonetheless represents its own departure. Peirce (1956) called it abduction, and insisted that it represented the only other possible mode of reasoning that we could add to deduction and induction. Abduction allows us to reason from the experience at hand, to so as to understand that experience not as a unique phenomenon, but as a meaningful case of some hypothetical rule or principle. Let me illustrate abduction with one final syllogism. Suppose I mention Spuffy to you in a passing conversation. You wonder what sort of "thing" a Spuffy is. I then tell you that Spuffy barks (or you hear Spuffy bark from the other room). The syllogism now looks like this: Spuffy barks. Hmm, I believe that all dogs bark. Maybe Spuffy is a dog. Abduction is the basic logic of reasoning to a hypothetical meaning. Therefore, any discipline that has the issue of meaning as one of its central concerns will also be concerned vitally with abductive reasoning. One of the major areas that semiotics addresses is the issue of meaning. Semiotics, or the general theory of how things act as signs, is naturally concerned with meaning (cf. Peirce, 1956; Eco, 1976; Deely, 1990; Percy, 1957; Barthes, 1957; Sebeok, 1986; Uexkull, 1982; for a set of definitions and descriptions of the relation of semiotics to meaning). This is due to the fact that signs are generally not interesting in and of themselves, but in terms of what they stand for. In other words, signs are not data to be verified as to whether they are true or not, but are instead clues about what various things and circumstances could mean. The logic of signs can be further characterized as abductive logic ( cf. Hanson, 1958; Peirce, 1956; Fann, 1970; Kapitan, 1990; Tursman, 1987; Holland et al. 1986; for discussion on the general nature of abduction and abductive logic). When we look at actual inquiry that is grounded in abductive reasoning ( eg. Bonfantini & Proni, 1983; Caprettini, 1983; Cunningham, 1989; Ginzberg, 1989; Sebeok & Umiker-Sebeok, 1983; Shank, 1992; Shank, 1988; Shank, 1987), we see the emphasis on creating hypothetical patterns of understanding that allow us to move inquiry forward, not only theoretically and empirically, but conceptually as well. When we look at the task of inquiry at this point in history, it appears that we have a refined set of methods to determine whether or not certain claims are empirically true, but very little guidance in determining how to understand the nature and implications of those findings. The value of an abductively based semiotic model of inquiry is that issues of meaning and understanding come to the forefront. I want to conclude this section by claiming that much of the discussion that occurs on the Net is abductive in nature. There are a great number of postings that are strictly informational, and other posts that ask explicitly for information. But more often than not, discussions tend to be directed toward the implications of ideas, and toward casting a frame of reference to render puzzling findings and notions as intelligible. These activities are clearly abductive, since they end with meaning claims, and their purposes are to foster a shared understanding of circumstances and phenomena. Abductive Multilogues on the Net What happens when we combine the idea of abduction with that of the multilogue? I want to briefly argue that "abductive multiloguing" describes the most effective and unique forms of communication that occur among the scholarly community on the Net. Furthermore, this perspective of abductive multiloguing helps define and shape the emerging virtual culture of that community, allowing us to make some predictions about future growth and trends. The first thing that an abductive multiloguing perspective predicts is that scholarship in the virtual community will continue to be more and more interdisciplinary. This is the case for several reasons. First of all, discussions are inclusive rather than exclusive. Credentials are not checked at the door of most discussion lists, and so persons with varying interests are allowed to listen and participate. Therefore, rather than retreating into more and more specialized discussions, we can reasonably expect a topic to expand into wider and wider content realms, as people with different areas of primary expertise bring that expertise and its insights to bear on the discussion at hand. We can see this principle in operation via the following example. Suppose we eavesdrop on a list devoted to, say, Latin, (like the new list Latin-l@psuvm) where some of the members are carrying on a thread about mottos. In a real example, one person called in to ask for help of other list members in translating a sub rosa motto for a college. The motto, in English, was "creating the illusion of progress". The member did not ask for people to supply their credentials when offering a translation. Instead, they accepted the variant translations on their own merits, depending on expertise where and how they found it. In retrospect, the case on many lists is very similar to the creed of the first of the "hackers" in the early days of computing, when hacking did not connote illegal activities. These early hackers were respected for what they could do, not for who they were or for what degrees or credentials they could bring to bear. Some of this feeling lives in many, though not all, discussion lines. Furthermore, the very idea of the multilogue helps preserve this egalitarian atmosphere, since there is no "teacher" or primary "discussant" to either lecture or to lead and orchestrate the discussion. Since everyone comes into the discussion sequentially, everyone has equal access to being heard. Secondly, the multiloguing dimension allows members of the community to pull together disparate arguments and examples, file them electronically, archive and examine them, and pull them up for later reference, all with the perceived immediacy of oral speech. This can allow us to create a broader base of potential abductive "rules" to bring to bear to any relevant discussion. For example, let us suppose that I am carrying on a discussion about legends on a medieval list. I happen to remember about an interesting new urban legend from a folklore list which I had archived. This legend is a variant of the medieval legend under discussion. It is a simple matter for me to retrieve the urban legend from my files, and then re-transmit or paraphrase it in the medieval list, thereby making a point about legend that I might not have been able to make without the assistance of the folklore example. Again, the multilogue form facilitates this type of hyridization of information, since we expect and operate within a series of simultaneous and parallel sets of discussion in the typical multilogue setting anyway. Finally, the virtual community consists of people with wide- ranging interests and areas of expertise, and all members of the community have access, in principle, to the expertise of each other almost instantaneously. Let me demonstrate this last point with an actual example. Last spring, I had a student who was doing research on the Negro Leagues. In order to help her get access to information, I accessed Statlg-l@brownvm, which is a baseball discussion list. In a matter of days, I received an enormous amount of scholarly information from a list that ostensively is dedicated to informal discussion of baseball matters. But since the list is linked to the scholarly community, I was able to take advantage of that link. I might add that my student was designing an adult education curriculum unit on multicultural issues, and under normal scholarly circumstances, would probably have had a difficult time gaining such immediate access to such knowledge and expertise. But the link to the Net made it quite easy. The second effect that this perspective predicts is that more and more scholarly research performed on the Net will deal directly and centrally with issues of meaning. The last few decades have been labelled as the era of the "information explosion". We now literally have much more information than we can understand. As we continue to pool our knowledge across discipline boundaries, there is an emerging trend for comparing systems of understanding across those same boundaries. So,we tend not only to share facts, but also ways of looking at the world. For example, a chemist may send us information that we might be able to use, but equally importantly, that same chemist might share with us his/her way of looking at various aspects of the world. Since we learn much of what we know by modeling the behaviors and ideas of others, this promises to be a powerful system for sharing not only data but worldviews. Sometimes, the pursuit of meaning takes off on its own merry abductive way, leading to strange and unusual fruit. Just recently, a member of the Erl-l list on educational research accidently sent a private message, about the need to keep a refrigerator door shut, to the entire list. He/she immediately apologized, but several people failed to see the apology, and took the message as a cryptic message about the state of educational research today. Even now, the metaphor continues to expand, where people are considering the significance of the contents of the refrigerator, the fact that the door does not seal easily, and the amount of energy required to keep the food cold. On one level, this is an exercise in learned silliness, but at a much deeper level, it is an exercise in taking apart and examining the basic metaphors that hold the field together, and examining what happens when those fundamental metaphors are replaced. Again, the multilogue form helped to sustain and foster the abductive musings. The final prediction of the perspective is that the nature of the researcher in the virtual community will be drastically different from the more traditional researcher working in the non-virtual community. The abductive researcher is less like an experimenter and more like a detective (Shank, 1987). In fact, the abductive researcher is more of a hunter-gatherer. He/she learns to gather information and combine that information in bricolage fashion. These unique and interdisciplinary craftings of ideas and facts allow the researcher to work outside of strict theoretical boundaries, and to turn to the world of experience directly for guidance. Given the wealth of information available to the hunter-gatherer on the Net (3000+ lists on Bitnet alone), it should be no surprise that the virtual scholarly community will evolve individuals who will thrive on being able to juxtapose and combine seemingly disparate threads of information in order to yield new and exciting venues of insights. Furthermore, the medium allows for multiple and communal approaches to the juxtaposition of insights. All one has to do is to toss out a new insight, and more than likely a new thread will develop. Semiotic Scholarship and the Net The scholarly community on the Net is not just a topic for semiotics. In fact, there is a very active and lively set of discussion groups on semiotic topics. I would like to offer my own personal and subjective description of some of these groups. All addresses for these groups are in Bitnet format. Semios-l@ulkyvm: This list is dedicated to discussions of visual and verbal semiotics. Steven Skaggs, a professor of visual design at the University of Louisville, is the listowner of this group. This is the most explicitly semiotic of the discussion groups. It is a moderate to low volume list, with a fairly serious and informative tone. Some of the semioticians who have posted on this list in recent history include Joseph Ransdell, Peter Salus, Nathan Houser, Jean Umiker-Sebeok, Alan Harris, Bill Spinks, and Terry Prewitt. As you might have noticed, this list does tend to have a Peircean cast to it. Derrida@cfrvm: This list is dedicated to the ideas of Jacques Derrida and the process of deconstruction. This list can be quite lively, sometimes playful, and at times frankly annoying. To paraphrase Bob Scholes, a noted literary critic who is also on the list, posts here can be very smart and very silly. At times this list has tried to engage in active discussion of works by Evans and Attali, but these efforts have not coalesced into extensive efforts. This is a fairly high volume list, although volume is sporadic rather than constant. David Erban at Central Florida is the listowner. Pmc-list@ncsuvm: This is the list that distributes the journal Postmodern Culture in electronic format. This journal is published three times a year, and its quality is quite high. The journal comes out of the Comparative Literature Dept at North Carolina State. Pmc-talk@ncsuvm is a separate line that engages in discussion about articles in the journal or, most often, on some topic that is of interest to someone on the line. Volume on this list is fairly low. There are a number of other lines that might be of interest to the semiotically informed or interested. Medtextl@uiucvmd deals with medieval textuality and codicality, and is one of the most erudite and pleasant lists on the net. Qualrs-l@uga deals with all aspects of qualitative research in the human sciences, and very often the discussion on this lively and busy list turns to issues that are of concern to semiotics. Comserve@rpiecs has several discussion lists that are of interest, including Philcomm (philosophy of communication) Rhetoric, and the Electronic Journal Of Communication. Let me end this list with the following disclaimer: as anyone who navigates the net is aware, this listing is both only partial and is exceedingly temporal. The Net continues to expand, grow, and evolve, and the multilogue continues in its own omnidirectional manner. All I can finally recommend is to use one of these lists as an anchor to link you to the semiotic discussion on the Net. and then, like any anchor, it becomes useful when you can pull it in, and set sail in your own direction. Conclusion Tom Sebeok (1986), arguably the father of contemporary American semiotics, likes to compare semiotic interplay to a spider's web. The spider does not just use the web to secure food; it is also a means of communication with other spiders. When a spider trods upon those few strands that he/she knows are free from the adhesive that will secure unwary prey, those steps create vibrations. And those vibrations can be used to send signals to other spiders treading the web. Furthermore, the spider continues to weave the web, extending not only the range of sustinence and nutrition, but of communication as well. The person, according to Sebeok, spins "webs of interpretations" that extend out and beyond our immediate sphere of influence or even understanding. The Net is certainly a Sebeokean Web, where all of us are seeking the paths upon which to tread safely, as well as sending out our own vibrations and weaving our own filaments of understanding. And it has its traps for the unwary as well, so that navigating the Net is not just a simple exercise of discovery. It is impossible to predict just exactly what the scholarly virtual community will "morph" into, but it is reasonable to assume that this community will have a major and significant impact on the scholarly community at large. And ideas like the abductive multilogue will be necessary to help us to understanding not only what we are doing, but also what we are becoming. References Bakhtin, M. (1981). The Dialogic imagination. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Barthes, R. (1957). Mythologies. New York: Noonday Press. Baudrillard, J. (1988). Selected writings. M. Poster (Ed. & Introduction). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bonfantini, M. A. & Proni, G. (1983). To guess or not to guess? In T. A. Sebeok & U. Eco (Eds.), The sign of three. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Caprettini, G. P. (1983). Peirce, Holmes, Popper. In T. A. Sebeok & U. Eco (Eds.), The Sign of Three, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Cunningham, D. (1989). Abduction and affordance: J. J. Gibson and theories of semiosis. In T. Prewitt, J. Deely & K. Haworth (Eds.), Semiotics 1988 (pp. 27-33). Washington, DC: University Press of America. Deely, J. (1990). Basics of semiotics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press. Eco, U. (1984). Semiotics and the philosophy of Language. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Eco, U. (1976). A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Fann, K.T. (1970). Peirce's Theory of Abduction. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff. Feyerabend, P. (1975). Against method. Thetford, Norfolk, UK: Verso. Fiske, J. (1982). Introduction to communication studies. London: Metheun. Ginzberg, C. (1989). Clues: Roots of an evidential paradigm. In J. & A. C. Tedeschi (Trans.), Clues, myths, and the historical paradigm (pp. 96-125). Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Goodman, N. (1978). Ways of worldmaking. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Guignon, C. (1992). Heidegger: Language as the house of being. In C. Sills & G. H. Jensen (Eds.), The philosophy of discourse: The rhetorical turn in twentieth-century thought, Volume 2 (pp. 163-187). Portsmouth, NH: Boyneton/Cook Heinemann, Hanson, R. N. (1958). The logic of discovery. The Journal of Philosophy, LV (25), 1073-1089. Hjelmslev, L. (1963) Prolegomena to a theory of language. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Holland, J.H., Holyoak, K.J., Nisbett, R. E., & Thagard, P.R. (1986). Induction. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Jakobson, R. (1967). Selected writings. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton. Johnson, J. (1992). Lyotard: From libidinal aesthetics to language games. In C. Sills & G.H. Jensen (Eds.), The philosophy of discourse: The rhetorical turn in twentieth-century Thought, Volume 2 (pp. 125-154). Portsmouth, NH: Boyneton/Cook Heinemann. Kapitan, T. (1990). In what way is abductive inference creative? Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, XXVI, 499-512. Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lyotard, J-F. (1979). The postmodern condition. G. Bennington & B. Massumi (Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Murphy, J.P. (1990). Pragmatism: From Peirce to Davidson. Boulder,CO: Westview Press. Peirce, C.S. (1955). Philosophical writings of Peirce. J. Buchler (Ed. & Introduction). New York: Dover. Pepper, S. C. (1942). World hypotheses. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Percy, W. (1957). Semiotic and a theory of knowledge. The Modern Schoolman, XXXIV, 225-246. Rorty, R. (1982). Consequences of pragmatism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Saussure, F. (1959). Course in general linguistics. New York: Philosophical Library. Sebeok, T. A. (1986). I think I am a verb. New York: Plenum. Sebeok, T. A. & Umiker-Sebeok, J. (1983). "You know my method": A juxtaposition of Charles S. Peirce and Sherlock Holmes. In T. A. Sebeok & U. Eco (Eds.), The sign of three. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Shank, G. (1992). Educational semiotics: Threat or menace? Educational Psychology Review, 4, 195-210. Shank, G. (1988). Three into two will go: The juxtapositional method of research in empirical semiotics. In J. Deely (Ed.), Semiotics: 1987 (pp. 123- 127). Washington, DC: University Press of America. Shank, G. (1987). Abductive strategies in educational research. American Journal of Semiotics, 5, 275-290. Trimbur, J. & Holt, M. (1992). Richard Rorty: Philosophy without foundations. In C. Sills & G.H. Jensen (Eds.), The philosophy of discourse: The rhetorical turn in twentieth-century thought, Volume 1 (pp. 70-94) Portsmouth, NH: Boyneton/Cook Heinemann. Tursman, R. (1987). Peirce's theory of scientific discovery. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Uexkull, J. von (1982). The theory of meaning. Semiotica, 42(1), 25-82. Vygotsky, L. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. _____ Articles and Sections of this issue of the _Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture_ may be retrieved bia anonymous ftp to byrd.mu.wvnet.edu or via e-mail message addressed to LISTSERV@KENTVM or LISTSERV@KENTVM.KENT.EDU (instructions below) Papers may be submitted at anytime by email or send/file to: Ermel Stepp - Editor-in-Chief, _Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture_ M034050@MARSHALL.WVNET.EDU _________________________________ *Copyright Declaration* Copyright of articles published by Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture is held by the author of a given article. 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Menlo Park, California: SRI International, 1992. ISBN 0-944604-15-3 $39 plus $5 shipping and handling Network Information Systems Center, EJ291, SRI International 333 Ravenswood Avenue, Menlo Park, CA 94025-3493 Telephone:(415) 859-6387; FAX (415) 859-6028 (2) REVIEWED BY: Ermel Stepp, Marshall University (3) TARGET AUDIENCE: beginning and experienced users. (4) RATING: **** (essential reading) (5) Number of lines in review: 99 (6) SUMMARY: _Internet: Getting Started_ is a general resource of 368 pages organized into two major parts on accessing and understanding the Internet, a bibliography, and eleven appendices. Selected networking resources are identified to facilitate getting started, learning, and connectivity (7) TEXT OF REVIEW: Part I defines the Internet and discusses types of access to the network and steps to initiate access to the networks. It gives information on providers/vendors of services for research, education, commerce, and individual use. Approximate costs are discussed in terms of such factors as services desired, hardware used, dedicated lines vs dialup, distance from host, frequency of use, peak vs non-peak charges, and telephone charges. Acceptable use is discussed, explained, and illustrated. The seven chapters in Part I are: - Introduction to the Internet (what it is, who is in charge, what is and is not a part of it, kinds of networks) - How to Join the Internet (MX, dialup, individual access, connecting networks) - Costs (determining factors, network and individual examples) - Service Providers (vendors of network connections, dialup vendors, providers of services within states) - Military Access (by each branch of the military) - NSFNET Acceptable Use Policy - Non-U.S. Sites (European cooperation and contacts, Baltic and Nordic countries, Caribbean Basin, the Pacific Rim, 30 specific countries, U.S. providers of international connections) Part II explains the concepts of the Internet, such as the hierarchial Domain Name System (DNS) and addressing, protocols (the TCP/IP suite, the telnet protocol, file transfer protocal (FTP), requests for comments (RFCs), for your information (FYI), and standards (STDs). The six chapters in Part II are: - The Internet--More Information (historical, physical, and growth) - Basic Internet Concepts (RFCs, FYIs, and STDs; security, protocols, addressing, the Domain Name System, directory services) - Applications (electronic mail, mailing lists and news groups, file transfer protocol, telnet, and information servers such as archie, Prospero, WWW, WAIS, and the Internet gopher) - Internet Organizations (network associations, network administrative organizations, administrative bodies, standards organizations, security response centers, network information centers, and user groups) - Internet Resources (NNSC internet resource guide, NNSC tour of the Internet, TCP/IP CD, network reading list, online libraries, network seminars, and supercomputer centers) - Further Reading (general introductory references, technical introductions, Domain Name System, network security, and some GOSIP documentation) The Bibliography and References contains 30 references and 27 bibliographic citations. The eleven appendices are: - Acronym List (six pages of acronyms from AARNet to YUNAC) - All Providers Alphabetically (24 pages, with postal addresses, telephone numbers, FAX numbers, electronic addresses, area served, and services) - SRI Network Information Systems Center (Internet Information Series, _Internet: Getting Started_ and Internet Mailing Lists; Internet Technology Handbook, TCP/IP CD, Internet Technology Series, hardcopy RFCs, RFC Subscription Service, FYI Collection - Registration Templates (IP Address Template, Domain Template, with retrieval instructions) - RFC Index (list of 365 RFCs, from 1365 to 1000 in 22 pages, with retrieval instructions) - FYI Index (list of 16 FYI, with retrieval instructions) - STD Index (list of 34 STDs, with retrieval instructions) - ISI's RFC Information Retrieval Information (list of 8 primary and 10 secondary sites from which RFCs may be retrieved, with instructions) - RFC Sets (topical list of related RFCs in six volumes) - International Connectivity (list of 107 entities with international connectivity via BITNET, Internet,UUCP, FIDONET, and/or OSI) - GOSIP Document Information (eight pages of information) _Internet: Getting Started_ is concerned with joining and understanding the Internet. It is neither a manual for particular systems and tools, nor a catalog of networking resources. NOTE: This review was previously posted on NETTRAIN as one of the series of book reviews directed by James Milles. [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] //////////////////////////////////////////// / NETWARE REVIEWS (systems/hw/sw/services) / //////////////////////////////////////////// SOFTWARE ~~~~~~~~ ELECTRONIC JOURNAL SYSTEM It seems obvious that electronic journals should be processed in libraries by electronic methods under automated program control. We have designed a message-based automated system for electronic journal management. We have implemented the system to provide fully automated end-user access to the electronic newsletter CHIP News. The system receives each daily issue, extracts the individual articles, "stamps" each article with issue-specific information, and then loads the articles into a keyword-indexed full-text database. (CHIP is published by the Chile Information Project, which in its) (three year existence has worked to inform concerned groups and ) (individuals outside of Chile about human rights and ) (democratization developments occurring within the country. More) (recently, CHIP's daily news summaries have been expanded to ) (include environmental and economic development trends in Chile. ) Routine processing of CHIP News is done without human intervention. The system sends informative messages to the bibliographer in charge of CHIP News to report on the success of the day's processing. If a problem occurs that does require human intervention, the system notifies the bibliographer and recommends appropriate action. Such problems can arise from software or hardware failures, or from text formatting problems in the incoming mail file. The CHIP News database system for end-users provides a full-screen search and display interface through which naive users can retrieve articles and read them online. The user does not need to learn any commands to use the system. All operations are controlled through a few function keys. An online help system provides instructions on using truncation characters and on formulating complex Boolean expressions. Libraries are searching for new ways to provide services to users of electronic publications. Some publications may be retrieved from remote archive servers on demand. Other publications may be acquired and stored locally. Acquisition for local storage may require the library to retrieve each article individually from a remote archive so that a complete issue may be assembled for local use. Whether stored online or printed for use, electronic publications often can be treated by analogy to print publications. CHIP News does not fit comfortably into any of these models. Issues of the newsletter are distributed daily by e-mail to subscribers around the world. Each issue contains upwards of one dozen articles. Back issues are not archived by the publisher. The publication is not indexed. It is up to the receiving library to devise a means of making the publication useful to users of the library. The system we have devised performs the following steps: 1. Checks daily for incoming e-mail from the CHIP News distribution site. 2. Receives the appropriate e-mail file. 3. Calls a file editor to perform some character conversion, in particular, to expand tab characters to spaces. 4. Calls a database management system which stores and indexes the issue by performing the following steps: a. Reads the mail file and extracts issue-specific information. b. Extracts each article from the mail file and "stamps" the article with issue specific information. c. Loads each article into the database for subsequent keyword indexing. 5. Calls procedures which evaluate the results of the preceding steps and which send appropriate messages to the bibliographer responsible for managing the title. The system runs on the campus mainframe under IBM's CMS. Processing is under control of an EXEC written in REXX. The system editor XEDIT is run under control of a short macro written in REXX. The SPIRES database management system is used for the public search and display system. Only the full-screen user interface requires more than a modicum (some 300 lines) of procedural code. CHIP News lends itself to automated loading as a database because of the cooperative efforts between the publishers of CHIP News and database specialists at Princeton University, where the first CHIP News database was implemented in 1990. We thank Stan Yates of Princeton for his helpful discussions and clarifications during the course of our development work. Harry M. Kriz Dave Beagle (kriz@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu) (beagle@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu) Assistant to the University Reference Librarian Librarian for Special Projects University Libraries Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA 24061. [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] SERVICES ~~~~~~~~ INTERNET TALK RADIO Internet Talk Radio Carl Malamud (carl@radio.com) Over the past few years, two trends have come together to present an opportunity for a new type of journalism. On the one hand, the trade press has focused on marketing and product reviews, leaving an ever-larger gap for a general-interest, technically-oriented publication focused on the Internet. At the same time, the Internet has made great progress in supporting multimedia communication, through standards such as IP multicasting and MIME messaging. Internet Talk Radio attempts to fuse these two trends and form a new type of publication: a news and information service about the Internet, distributed on the Internet. Internet Talk Radio is modeled on National Public Radio and has a goal of providing in-depth technical information to the Internet community. The service is made initially possible with support from Sun Microsystems and O'Reilly & Associates. Our goal is to provide a self-sufficient, financially viable public news service for the Internet community. Head: Flame of the Internet The product of Internet Talk Radio is an audio file, professionally produced and freely available on computer networks. To produce these files, we start with the raw data of any journalistic endeavor: speeches, conference presentations, interviews, and essays. This raw information is taped using professional-quality microphones, mixers, and DAT recorders. The information is then brought back to our studios, and edited and mixed with music, voice overs, and the other elements of a radio program. The "look and feel" we strive for is akin to "All Things Considered" or other programs that appeal to the general interest of the intelligent listener. Our goal is hit the topics that don't make it into the trade press. Instead of SNMP-compliant product announcements, we want to present descriptions of SNMP. Instead of articles on GOSIP, we want to describe the latest Internet Drafts and place them in perspective. Instead of executive promotions, we want to give summaries of mailing list activity and network stability. Instead of COMDEX, we want to cover the IETF. Head: Town Crier to the Global Village The result of Internet Talk Radio's journalistic activities is a series of audio files. The native format we start with is the Sun Microsystems .au format, closely related to the NeXT .snd format. This format consists of the CCITT Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) standard of 8 bits per sample and a sampling rate of 8000 samples per second, using the u-law [ed. use greek letter mu] encoding (a logarithmic encoding of 8 bit data equivalent to a 14 bit linear encoding). A half-hour program would thus consist of 64,000 bits per second or 15 Mbytes total. Programs are initially spool on UUNET, the central machines of the Alternet network. Files are then moved over to various regional networks for further distribution. For example, EUnet, a commercial network provider for Europe with service in 24 countries, will act as the central spooling area for the European region. The Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ) company will provide the same service for Japanese networks. The goal of coordinated distribution is to reduce the load on key links of the network. Transferring a 15 Mbyte file over a 64 kbps link does not make sense during peak times. On the other hand, a leased line has the attribute that a bit unused is a bit forever gone. Transferring large files at low priority in non- peak times has little or no incremental cost. Files thus move from the UUNET central spool area, to regional spools, to national and local networks. We anticipate most of this transfer to be done using the FTP protocols, but some networks are discussing the use of NNTP news groups and MIME-based distribution lists. It is important to note that Internet Talk Radio is the source of programming and does not control the distribution. These files are publicly available, subject only to the simple license restrictions of no derivative work and no commercial resale. Distribution is controlled, as with all other data, by the individual networks that make up the Internet. We intend to work closely with networks all over the world to ensure that there is some coordination of distribution activity, but ultimate control over this data is in the hands of those people who finance, manage, and use networks. We don't believe indiscriminate use of anonymous FTP is the proper method for distributing large archives. Previous experience with ITU standards, with RFC repositories, and with large software archives such as the X Windows System indicates that setting up a top-level distribution hierarchy goes a long way towards alleviating network load. Even with a top-level hierarchy, however, there will always be anonymous FTP sites and there will always be people that go to the wrong FTP server. This behavior is largely mitigated by setting up enough "local" servers and publicizing their existence. Like any large distributor of data, we are mindful of the load on the transcontinental and regional infrastructures and will take aggressive steps to help minimize that load. Head: Asynchronous Times, Asynchronous Radio Once files have made their way to a local or regional network, they are moved to the desktop and played. Once again the individual users of the network decide how to present data. We hope to see a wide variety of different ways of having our files played and only list a few of the more obvious methods. The simplest method to play a .au file on a Sparcstation is to type "play filename." If the file is placed on a Network File System (NFS) file system on a central server, the user simply mounts the file system and plays the file. Alternatively, the user copies the file to a local disk and plays it. More adventuresome playing of files uses multicasting. A simple multicast program called "radio" for a local Ethernet is available from CWI, the mathematics institute of the Netherlands. A more sophisticated approach, IP multicasting, allows a program to reach far beyond the confines of the Ethernet. IP multicasting might be used on a local basis, or can have a global reach. There is a consortium of regional networks that have formed the Multicast Backbone (MBONE), used for audio and video programming of key conferences such as the Internet Engineering Task Force. Internet Talk Radio does not assume use of the MBONE for playing files. Needless to say, the operators of the MBONE are free to play Internet Talk Radio files (and we would be delighted if this happens), but it is up to the local network affiliates to determine how and when they distribute this audio data. In many cases, people will want to play files on a wide variety of different platforms. The Sound Exchange (SOX) program is a publicly-available utility that easily transforms a file from one format to another. Using this utility, the Macintosh, Silicon Graphics, DECstation, PC, and many other platforms can play Internet Talk Radio files. Head: Geek of the Week In the spirit of dignified, conservative programming, the first production from Internet Talk Radio is dubbed Geek of the Week. Geek of the Week features technical interviews with key personalities on the Internet. Some of the people who have agreed to appear on Geek of the Week include Daniel Karrenberg of the RIPE NCC, Dr. Marshall T. Rose of Dover Beach Consulting, Milo Medin of the NASA Science Internet, and Daniel Lynch of Interop Company. Geek of the Week focuses on technical issues facing the Internet. This initial program is sponsored by Sun Microsystems and O'Reilly & Associates. Their support makes it possible for Geek of the Week to be produced professionally and then to be distributed at no charge. One of the issues that Internet Talk Radio faces are the vestiges of Appropriate Use Policies (AUPs) that linger from the original ARPANET days. While Sun Microsystems and O'Reilly & Associates view Internet Talk Radio in terms of an investigation of on-line publishing, of multicasting, and other engineering issues, we feel it important that our sponsors are given due credit in the programs. At first glance, this smacks of the crass and commercial. Indeed, it smacks of advertising. Jumping to that conclusion, however would be a simplistic mistake. The Appropriate Use Policies were formulated to guarantee that networks are used for the purposes envisioned by the funding agents. In the case of an AUP-constrained networks such as the NSFNET, this means that use of the network must benefit U.S. science and engineering. We feel that an in-depth interview with Internet architects clearly falls within the purview of all AUP policies. However, we understand that certain networks may not accept certain types of programming. For this reason, our central spool areas are carefully picked so they are AUP-free. This way, if a network feels the programming is inappropriate, they can simply inform their users not to obtain or play the files. It should be noted that one advantage of supporting the professional dissemination of news and information up-front is that the user is not directly charged. Somebody has to pay for information to be produced, and the sponsorship model means that copy protection, accounting, security, and all the other complications of a charging model are avoided and that high- quality news and information becomes increasingly available on the Internet. Head: The Medium is the Message While Geek of the Week is our flagship program, we intend to intersperse mini-features throughout. The Incidental Tourist, for example, will feature restaurant reviews and other travel information for sites throughout the world. The Internet Hall of Flame will highlight non-linear behavior on mailing lists, and we will have periodic book reviews by Dan Dorenberg, one of the founders of Computer Literacy Books. The logical extension to Geek of the Week is to begin coverage of industry functions. To date, we have received permission to tape for later rebroadcast sessions and presentations at the European RIPE meetings, the IETF, and at the INTEROP Conferences. We are negotiating with other industry forums to try and establish permission to cover additional conferences. Our hope is to begin providing news summaries of these key conferences. If you can't make it to the IETF, for example, Internet Talk Radio would like to provide a half-hour news summary describing what happened on each day. The next logical step is to begin producing analysis of key technical topics. Here, we look at in-depth (e.g., 15 minute) summaries of technical topics such as MIME, proposals for the next IP, SNMP v. 2, or the architecture of the Global Internet Exchange (GIX). We would also furnish analysis of political topics, such as the POISED effort to reorganize the Internet standards process, or the background of the IPv7 debate. Eventually, our hope is to combine all these reports together and form a daily news broadcast to the Internet. When you walk in and start reading your mail, you simply click on the "radio" icon and listen to Geek of the Week while deleting messages from the more hyperactive mailing lists. Head: Tomorrow is the Future The "radio" metaphor was carefully chosen. We wanted an alternative to plain ASCII files, yet did not feel that the Internet infrastructure was ready for regular video feeds. Production of video or true multimedia required an order-of- magnitude higher investment in production facilities. After all, we know bad TV since we see so much of it. Eventually, Internet Talk Radio wants to go beyond the confines of the simple radio metaphor. Already, we describe the service as asynchronous radio, recognizing that our listeners can start, stop, rewind, or otherwise control the operation of the radio station. As a multicasting infrastructure gets deployed throughout the Internet, we see the opportunity to expand the radio metaphor and begin the creation of a truly new news medium. Multicast groups and videoconferencing tools allow the creation of an Internet Town Hall, a moderated forum with a very wide reach or games shows like Name That Acronym where everybody gets to play. Because we are on the Internet, we can add a wide variety of different programming techniques. While listening to a series of interviews about MIME messaging, for example, you might also scroll through a series of Gopher menus that hold more information about the MIME standards, or search a WAIS database for a biography of the speakers. We hope that Internet Talk Radio will be the first of many such information services on the Internet, supplementing the random anarchy of news and mailing lists with professionally produced news and information. Indeed, we hope that Internet Talk Radio forms the first of many "desktop broadcasting" efforts. Internet Talk Radio debuts at the Columbus IETF at the end of March. Stay tuned for more information. Head: For More Information Guido van Rossum, FAQ: Audio File Formats, ftp.cwi.nl:/pub/AudioFormats2.10. An excellent introduction to audio formats, encoding, and other information about sound files on different platforms. This same site also has copies of the SoundExchange (SOX) program for translating files into different audio formats, and the Radio program for playing a sound file on an Ethernet. ===================================================================== Paper reprinted with permission from ConneXions, The Interoperability Report published monthly by: Interop Company 480 San Antonio Road, Suite 100 Mountain View, CA 94040 USA Phone: (415) 941-3399 FAX: (415) 949-1779 Toll-free (in USA): 1-800-INTEROP E-mail: connexions@interop.com Free sample issue and list of back issues available upon request Provided by: Bernard.A.Galler@um.cc.umich.edu [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] ///////////////////// / NETWARE TUTORIALS / ///////////////////// LISTSERV/LDBASE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The CMS/VM Listserv Lists and Database Program Bob Zenhausern This section of the Monitor will deal with the latest developments in the Listserv software developed by Eric Thomas and the use of the database functions of that software. The information on the software will be sporadic, peaking when new versions are released with relatively little activity between releases. The concentration will be on Listserv Database searches and the uses to which this can be put. This initial column will provide and introduction to this Listserv tool. Ldbase Exec and Ldbase Memo The Bitnet lists are based on the Listserv software that has been under constant development by Eric Thomas since 1986. There have been a large number of listserv software developed for the Internet, but most do not have the full range of capabilities available on Bitnet. The archives of a Bitnet list are usually kept in series of files that have the form: altlearn log9204; autism log9301a, etc. That is, the messages posted to the Altlearn List for April, 1992; the messages posted the Autism List for the first week of January, 1993, etc. These archives are available from the Listserv of the List node, but searching them for a particular reference can be tedious. There are two files available from any Bitnet listserv that can be used to simplify the search: Ldbase exec and Ldbase memo. Ldbase exec is a program that can be used on CMS mainframes (Ldbase com is available on VAX/VMS mainframes) that will allow interactive and batch searching of these archives. Individuals who are on nodes which are not part of Bitnet may search by using a mail query in batch mode. Searches may be made on the basis of date and author, as well as by search strings, using boolean logic. The output is an index of all messages that meet the criteria. The index can includes the message number, date, time, number of lines, author, and topic. All or selected messages can be retrieved by email. In the next few issues, actual searches and their outputs will be demonstrated as a model for other searches. >From a different perspective, the index can be used as a source of statistically oriented information on the list. For example, who are the regulars? What is the average number of lines for the list? for the regulars? Do postings to the list vary with the seasons? The analysis of these data can be facilitated by downloading them into PC database format for creating statistical reports. Lotus 1-2-3 templates (available by ftp) that parse and summarize the data are under development. The use of these templates will be used as a demonstation of the list statistics that can be developed. Getting More Information Both interactive and batch searching are well documented in the file ldbase memo which is available from most listservs on the Bitnet network. This documentation and the interactive program can be obtained by sending mail or an interactive message to: listserv@bitnic.bitnet with the lines info database send ldbase exec (or ldbase com) The second file is useful only for those on CMS/VM systems. [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] /////////////////////////////////////////// / MEETINGS/CONFERENCES/EXHIBITIONS/EVENTS / /////////////////////////////////////////// PROJECTS ~~~~~~~~ INVITATION TO JOIN ONGOING RESEARCH PROJECT ON THE USE OF ELECTRONIC MAIL DISCUSSION LISTS This is an invitation to join an exciting ongoing research project, on the use of electronic mail discussion lists. A large group of scholars, from numerous universities, is engaged in a collaborative study of discussion lists. This is a last-chance offer to jump on the bandwagon. For over eight months, a group of several dozen researchers has been discussing the state of computer-mediated discussion groups, and the state of research on such groups. We are now collaborating in a large, comparative survey of such groups. The method of choice is content analysis of a representative sample of messages, groups and discussion threads, across different networks. The project has produced, so far: * A unique research experience: A large group of previously unaffiliated researchers has undertaken (and is carrying out) a collaborative study. The research is run, so to speak, on stage. * A joint bibliography: Hundreds of citations about the subject matter have been collected and are shared. * Hypothesis list: A rather elaborate set of theories and hypotheses has been formulated regarding the experience, quality, longevity, nature structure and impact of computer-mediated groups, and their structural and social characteristics. * Policy deliberations: We have painstakingly developed treatments of such thorny issues as the ethics of studying online public lists, the ownership of data resulting from such collaboration, sampling procedures in the study of online groups,etc. * Some financial support from industry. * A pretested codebook. * Several conference papers. But the best is yet to come. We are about to begin the full-fledged data collection stage. Thus, now is probably the latest oppportunity to join in. Take part in the data collection and analysis phases. If the computer-mediated exchange of ideas is a process that intrigues you, if you have ideas about what makes online groups tick (or sick), if you think this is a topic ripe for empirical, content-analysis comparative study, and if you would like to join work in this project, please contact one of us: Sheizaf Rafaeli Fay Sudweeks Hebrew University of Jerusalem University of Sydney sheizafr@shum.cc.huji.ac.il fays@archsci.arch.su.edu.au [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] CALL FOR PAPERS/PARTICIPATION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY 1993 CALL FOR PAPERS THE IEEE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF TECHNOLOGY SOCIETY THE IEEE TECHNICAL POLICY CONFERENCE COMMITTEE THE IEEE NATIONAL CAPITAL AREA COUNCIL INVITE CONTRIBUTIONS FOR AN INTERDISCIPLINARY International Symposium on Technology and Society 1993 (ISTAS '93) Washington DC October 22-23, 1993 on the theme TECHNOLOGY: WHOSE COSTS?..WHOSE BENEFITS? Technology is constantly changing the our world. New ways of doing things bring benefits undreamed-of just a few years ago. These technologies also have their price. The costs can be financial, or increased risks, or a less pleasant way of life. How do we balance benefits and costs? Do those who enjoy the benefits bear their fair share of the costs? How can we determine a fair share? If we can, and don't like the results, what do we change? Is the Government always the best way to change things? ISTAS '93 will explore these and related questions, concentrating on three exemplary areas of technology: Computers and Communications Health Care Energy and the Environment ISTAS '93 invites significant contributions on these issues from a wide spectrum of scholarly and concerned individuals. The contributions can be papers, proposals for a session or panel of invited experts, or proposals for "poster" or discussion sessions. Please send an extended (two page) abstract for papers or a two page proposal for sessions, to the General Chair Dr. William J. Kelly Attn IEEE MITRE Corporation 7525 Colshire Drive McLean, VA 22102 DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: FEBRUARY 28, 1993 Notification of Acceptance: March 31, 1993 Camera Ready Copy: June 30, 1993 In the tradition of the Carnahan Conferences "Technics: A Delicate Balance" in Los Angeles1989 "Preparing for a Sustainable Society" in.Toronto1991 ISTAS '93 invites contributors from many disciplines to illuminate the problems and choices that face us all. [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] SECOND CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS: 16th IRIS (INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH SEMINAR IN SCANDINAVIA) SECOND CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS 16th IRIS Information Systems Research Seminar in Scandinavia 7 - 10 August 1993 Copenhagen, Denmark Information Systems Research Seminar in Scandinavia (IRIS) IRIS is an annual working conference for Scandinavian researchers within Information Systems. All participants have to contribute with a paper, participate in a panel or arrange a workshop. The conference will focus on 5 topics which were proposed by the participants of the 15th IRIS in 1992. Each topic will be discussed in working groups consisting of 6-8 persons. Position papers should not exceed 4-5 pages (1.500 words), and full papers should not exceed 15 pages (5.000 words), everything included. The conference topics are: Open Systems, Flexibility and Tailorability The apparently growing supply of, and market for, standard or semi-standard computer systems raises a number of questions: Is it at all possible to build flexible standard computer systems? What are the experiences of adapting, maintaining and using a standard computer system in an organisation? Does the situation call for new methods in systems development? Are we facing a reorganisation of the software industry, where new computer systems are developed in software houses, while "in-house" systems departments become responsible for adaptation, installation and maintenance? Empirical Studies of Design Practice If we want to improve design practice we must, first of all, acquire a more comprehensive understanding of the work processes of real-life design and programming. How is systems development organized and how do systems designers actually use methods and tools? How important are the designer's skill and know how and what role does communication and collaboration play? What are the differences between different development contexts? Scandinavian Approaches In recent years many ideas for design and implementation of computer based systems originally presented under the headings "The Collective Resource Approach" or the "Scandinavian Approach" have been proposed in a new context, that of "participatory design" or "cooperative design". Are the approaches alike, or are there fundamental differences in underlying motive, operative context of the application of the ideas, etc. that need to be reconciled? One can also ask: Do the Scandinavian approaches have any future? And if so, in which context? System development education Teaching system development is not a trivial task. Theories and methods are often difficult to relate to without "real life" experience, and industrial size problems become elusive when shrunk to classroom scale. What to teach and how? How to bring "real life" problems into the classroom? How to balance theories versus methods? Presentations and evaluations of curricula. Success and horror stories. Professional Code of Ethics The ethical dimension of our profession is important, but do we pay attention to it? How can we research into this area? How can and should we teach ethical issues to computer professionals? ACM has proposed a set of ethical rules for computer professionals, and the rules have recently been changed. How do we as Scandinavian researchers evaluate these rules? What are the alternatives? NOTE: For those of you who feel unable to submit a contribution on any of the above mentioned themes, but who would like to participate in the Conference, it is still possible to make a contribution on more general topics in Informations Systems Research. Such miscellaneous contributions will be collated into a sixth RopenS working group category at the Conference. Please note that your contribution will be evaluated by the editors of the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems. If you do not want such an evaluation, please inform the organizing committee beforehand. The Scandinavian Journal is interested in other Scandinavian contributions than those presented at this yearUs seminar. You are invited to submit your contribution to the following address: The Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Aalborg, Frederiks Bajers Vej 7, DK- 9220 Aalborg /, Denmark. Key Dates 1st of February: Deadline for submission of abstracts or proposals for a panel session, workshop or other activity together with a letter of interest (preferable by e-mail). 1st of March: Notification of acceptance. 1st of June: Deadline for submission of papers, registration, and payment. 1st of July: The proceedings will be mailed. 7th-10th of August: 16th IRIS at Schaeffergaarden, at the edge of the woods north of Copenhagen. Submissions Please send your abstract and letter of interest to the following address of the programme and organizing committee before the 1st of February. If possible, please send it by e-mail. 16th IRIS, Department of Computer Science, Copenhagen University, Universitetsparken 1, DK-2100 Copenhagen O. Phone: +45 3532 1453, e-mail: iris16@diku.dk, fax: +45 3532 1401 Conference Fee The conference fee covers hotel accommodation, all meals and a copy of the proceedings. The fee is estimated to DKR 2.700 for non-Ph.D. students and DKR 1.200 for Ph.D. students. Programme and organizing committee Joergen P. Bansler and Jacob Noerbjerg, Department of Computer Science, Copenhagen University, Keld Boedker and Finn Kensing, Department of Computer Science, Roskilde University, Jan Pries-Heje, Institute of Computer and Systems Science, Copenhagen Business School. -------------------------------------- LETTER OF INTEREST If you are sending your abstract and letter of interest by e-mail, please include the following information. I like to participate in the 16th IRIS. Enclosed please find the abstract of my planned contribution. The paper addresses the following topic (please mark only one): __ Open Systems, Flexibility and Tailorability __ Empirical Studies of Design Practice __ Scandinavian Approaches __ System development education __ Professional Code of Ethics __ Miscellaneous I would prefer the following form of presentation: __ Discussion in a working group __ A panel __ A workshop __ Other, please indicate type: Name: First name: Affiliation: Address: e-mail: [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] RUSSIAN FORUM/SEMINAR Dear Sir ! We are asking You and Your collegues to look for an opportunity of participation in a special seminar "European Research Networks", which will be held together with the 3rd International Russian Forum on "ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY for the 90's" in Moscow, June 27 - July 2, 1993. Co-heads of Seminar Dr. Juriy Znamenskiy, Dr. Nicolay Repin Institute of Cybernetics Problems Information and Publishing Department of Russian Academy of Sciences of the Mathematical Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences E-mail: yz@znam.ac.msk.su repin@ips.ac.msk.su *************************************************************- CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ---------------------------------------------------------- ECT'93 CONFERENCE EXHIBITION PRODUCT REVIEWS TUTORIALS WORKSHOPS 3rd International Russian Forum on ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY for the 90's June 28 to July 2, 1993 Academy of National Economy, Moscow, Russia Sponsored by * Russian Ministry of Posts & Telecommunications * Concern Telecom of Russia * Academy of National Economy * Russian-American JV "Eco-Trends" * International Centre for Scientific and Technical Information The purpose of the meeting is to provide an international forum for the exchange of information on the technical, economic and social impacts and experiences with communication technology, architectures and distributes applications. Russia is now vastly increasing its spending on telecommunications and computer networks. Russia is determined to meet its computer network expansion goals and will spend over 80 billion rubles to expand its telecommunications to 110 million phones by the year 2000 and add over 25 million PCs to modernize key economic sectors in education, transportation and industry. The forum format will be three days of conference paper presentations combined with five days exhibition "Telecommunication systems and services" and two days of tutorials and workshops. Papers are desired in - but not restricted to - the following topic areas: * Organisational structures for the provision of international data communication services * Expanding national networks to global environment * Management and operation of international and national telecommunication networks * GlobaL WAN architecture for the 90's * Transition to OSI and new standards * EDI, EDIFACT, electronic information market * Application and services: X.400, X.500, ODA/ODIF, virtual terminals, database access * Developing the infrastructure * Funding and policy * Design, implementation, and experience with distributed applications * High performance strategies and techniques * Security for open communication * Intelligent networks and their applications * Interconnecting local area networks * Workstations in telecomm environment * Protocol interworking techniques * Mobile communications * Very high speed networking Deadlines April 1, 1993 Full version of papers due for review (or e-mail copy for review) April 15, 1993 Notification of acceptance/rejection May 15, 1993 Camera-ready manuscript due Language: The written and spoken language of ECT'93 is English for an international audience. Special help with language is also available from ECT'93 Translation service. Please submit two copies of your paper to the program Co-Chair: Dr. Juri Gornostaev Computer Department International Centre for Scientific and Technical Information 125252, Moscow, Russia, Kuusinen Str., 21-B Telephone: 7(095)198-7691 Facsimile: 7(095)943-0089 Internet: enir@ccic.icsti.msk.su Invited are: policy makers, representatives of funding bodies, advanced user groups and standards organisations, computer and telecomm engineers, technical/managerial staft from telecomm companies, businessmen and PTT people. For more information on the Exhibition, Product reviews, Conference, Tutorials and Workshops, and preliminary programmee, please contact: Juri Gornostaev ECT'93 Program Committee 125252, Moscow, Russia, Kuusinen Str. 21-B, ICSTI Fax: 7(095)943-0089 Tel.: 7(095)198-7041 e-mail: enir@ccic.icsti.msk.su For participation in Exhibition/Tutorial, please fill in application form ------------------------------------------------------------- APPLICATION FORM ---------------------------------------------------- Name Organization Department Address PostCode Country E-mail Exhibitors ---------- I am interested in exhibiting I need exhibiting conditions: Block 5x3 m2 Block 3x3 m2 Telephone channel IBM PC/XT/AT Refrigeration Advertising: full page half page Please send me further details on following conditions Tutorial instructors: I am interested in giving tutorial Tutoral topic Submit a tutorial proposal: Summary of tutorial contents Intended audience and level of tutorial Background of instructor A specification of the tutorial (objectives, style, duration) as a 2-4 page tutorial outline Request for computer support, A/V Any restrictions or conditions on offering the tutorial ----------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ECT'93 CONFERENCE EXHIBITION PRODUCT REVIEWS TUTORIALS WORKSHOPS 3rd International Russian Forum on ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY for the 90's June 28 to July 2, 1993 Academy of National Economy, Moscow, Russia Organizers * Academy of National Economy * Russian-American JV "Eco-Trends" * International Centre for Scientific and Technical Information The Russian ECT'93 Product file: Computer Networks Telecommunications * Wide area networks (WANs) * Public and private telecomm networks * Local area networks (LANs) * Sattelite technology * OSI products and technology * Integrated communication systems * Gateways, routers, bridges * Radio communications * Distributed operating systems * Switching and cable based technology * Voice, data, text and visual communications Mobile communications Telecomm and Information Systems * Cellular radio * Distributed information * Mobile telephony systems * Carphones and portable phones * Workstations, telecomm * Paging control systems extensions units, adaptors * Remote control systems * Network nodes, PADs, modems * Satellite based systems * ISDN products * VSAT * Communication equipment Telecomm Software Data communications * Operating systems * Modems * OSI application software * Multiplexes * X.400, X500 products * Cabling systems * TCP/IP and interworking * Network components * PC communication software * Test and measurement systems * Workstation environment * Data storage systems * Distributed databases * Data broadcasting EXHIBITOR OPTIONS Exhibitors have two options for purchasing space at Russian ECT'93. There are: Option #1 - Package Space/Complete Shell Stand Package space is available in 3m x 4m units at US$ 2.900 per unit. Multiple units are available. Package includes: Full equipped exhibition stand (carpeted floor, walls on three sides, two chairs, two tables or information contours, sign panel in English, wastepaper basket and ashtray, three electrical outlets, two flouryscent lights. We require ........... units Option #2 - Raw Exhibit Space The minimum unit of raw exhibit space is 18 square meters at a rental fee of US$ 150 per square meter (US$ 2.700 for minimum unit). Additional raw exhibit space is available at the same rate. We require ............. sgm. Exhibitor service package is designed to meet the particular requirements of the Russian market and Moscow environment. This package offers necessary support services to all exhibitors as follows: Marketing Orgcomm will arrange meetings between exhibitors and appropriate Russian businessmen, purchagers and end-users. Company seminar/presentation You could arrange also special company/product presentations in exhibition hall. Orgcomm will provide relevant audience and all required presentation services. Exhibitors presenting ordered seminar/presentations will contribute US$ 450 for four hours equipment room and interpreter. Exhibition Catalog Your company/product information and adds will be published in English, German, French and Russian (languages by your choice) Shipping Assistance Exhibition freight service will offer a package for scheduling of exhibitor freight to and from exhibit site, transport from/to Sheremetievo Airport in Moscow and all necessary shipping and disposal data. Translation Assistance Translation and referral services for the speech/written translation of papers, product literatures and talks into Russian will be available. For ordering interpreters and explainers, please submit your enquiries. Business and technical visits The programme of Technical visits intended to complement the general ECT'93 program by offering a reasonable sample view of activities on Russian telecomm market. All visits are sponsored by Russian companies, research institutes and telecomm enterprises. Transportation, refreshments and lunch are offered by the host companies. Travel Assistance Travel agents will offer the rich package of social and cultural events. The visas support, hotel accommodations, arrival/departures services, personal travel planning and tours in Russia will be provided. Security Round the clock exhibit hall security will be provided. Cleaning Daily cleaning of hall and exhibits. --------------------------------------------------------------- The conference and workshop (seminar) will be separate events which take 3 days each. The seminar "European Research Networks" will take 1 day. From total 6 workshops on ECT'92 only one was on LAN and the rest were dedicated to application of global communication networks (Internet, SWIFT, Russian network Relcom, distributed information systems) and user applications. All participants were given a set of material consisting of 16 volumes with total number of pages 2400. They include research and review, technology, software, standards and regulation, economics in connection to creation and application of computer communication system. -------------------------------------------------------------- On the Seminar we plan to publish appliances for russian specialists "European Research Networks", which will contain the following documents and articles: 1. (Translated into Russian): RARE. Technical Report 4 "State of the Union", 1st Edition, October 1992 2. The full copy in English 2.1. RTR1. User Support and Information Services in the RARE Community, 1st Edition, March 1992 2.2. RTR2. Mapping between X.400 (1988)/ISO 10021 and RFC822, May 1882 3. Peter Kaufmann, Juergen Rauschenbach (DFN, Germany) DEUTSCHES FORSCHUNGSNETZ - DFN - A BRIEF DESCRIPTION (translated into Russian) 4. Translated into Russian: EARN. Annual Report 1991-1992 5. N.N.Repin. RELARN (Russia) 6. Reference-Book of Network DFN addresses --------------------------------------------------------------- If it is possible to send us (by E-mail) for publication your the texts of your lecture, we would enclose it with pleasure in the book. Taking into consideration the technical conditions of our publishing machine the Organizing Commitee we put such limit of time when we receive texts in English: April 1, 1993 Full version of papers due for review (or e-mail copy for review) April 15, 1993 Notification of acceptance/rejection May 15, 1993 Camera-ready manuscript due Language: The written and spoken language of ECT'93 is English for an international audience. Special help with language is also available from ECT'93 Translation service. ************************************** The Cost of registration is 300 $. The price of one place per 24 hours in a hotel or a special flat is the following: 25 $ - a separate room in a 2 or 3-room flat with a common bathroom and kitchen 80 $ - Hotel (***) 2-beds room 60 $ - Hotel (***) 1-bed room 120 $ - Hotel (****) 1-bed room Co-headers of Seminar Dr. Juriy Znamensky, Dr. Nicolay Repin E-mail: yz@znam.ac.msk.su repin@ipc.ac.msk.su [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] NSC93: THE NETWORK SERVICES CONFERENCE First Call for Participation / Call for Papers NSC'93 The Network Services Conference 1993 Warsaw, Poland, 12-14 October 1993 Overview Networking in the academic and research environment has evolved into an important tool for researchers in all disciplines. High quality network services and tools are essential parts of the research infrastructure. Building on the success of the first Network Services Conference in Pisa Italy, NSC'93 will focus on the issue of providing services to customers, with special attention paid to the exciting developments in new global high-level tools. We will address the impact of the new global tools on service development and support, the changing function of traditional tools and services (such as archives), new services (such as multi-media communications), the future role of the library and the effects of commercialization of networks and network services. Customer support at the institutional and campus level, and the role of support in accessing global services, will also be covered. Talks, tutorials, demonstrations and other conference activities will address the needs of the research, academic, educational, governmental, industrial, and commercial network communities. NSC'93 is being organized by EARN in conjunction with EUnet/EurOpen, NORDUnet, RARE, and RIPE. Conference Venue Warsaw, the capital of Poland, lies in the center of the country on the Mazovian Lowland. Located on the banks of the Vistula River, it has a population of 1,700,000. Legends speak of Warsaw's past. One of them tells of a mermaid swimming in the waves of the blue Vistula before Mazovian fishermen and foretelling of the founding of an indestructible city. Another account speaks of the founders of the city, Wars and Sawa, lovers whose names were combined to give the city its name. Today, Warsaw is an important administrative, scientific, cultural and communication center. The city, destroyed during World War II, has been faithfully rebuilt and almost all historic buildings have been restored. The conference will be held at the Victoria Intercontinental Hotel, situated in the heart of the city's business and professional center, within walking distance of Warsaw University and just a minute away from the Opera House, Royal Castle and the Old Town of Warsaw. Conference Information Dates to remember: Deadline for papers - 8 May 1993 Deadline for demonstrations - 3 August 1993 NSC'93 - Tuesday, 12 October 1993 - Thursday, 14 October 1993 Location: Hotel Victoria Inter Continental, ul. Krolewska 11, Warsaw, Poland Accommodations: Rooms will be reserved for conference participants at the Victoria Inter Continental, and at other nearby hotels. Transportation: LOT Polish Airlines is the official carrier for NSC'93. LOT is offering a 50% discount off published IATA fares for conference participants. Language: The official language of the conference will be English. Conference fee: covers entry to all conference sessions, tutorials and demonstrations, conference material, coffee breaks, lunches and social events: EARLY Registration by 15 August 590 DeutschMark LATE Registration by 30 September 650 DM DESK Registration 710 DM Tutorials, Demonstrations and Posters There will be tutorial sessions on specific network services as part of the regular conference program. A room will be available for workstations and PCs to be used for demonstrations throughout the conference. Proposals for tutorial sessions and demonstrations are welcome. See the section "Call for papers" of this announcement for details. A poster wall will be available to participants for the display of their posters and projects. Terminals with connectivity to EARN and the Internet will be available to delegates. Further Information and General Inquiry Further information will be available through the conference mailing list, NSC93-L@FRORS12.BITNET (or NSC93-L@FRORS12.CIRCE.FR). If you want to make sure you receive registration information as well as the preliminary program and other information of interest to conference participants, join the list by sending e-mail to: LISTSERV@FRORS12.BITNET (or LISTSERV@FRORS12.CIRCE.FR) with the line: SUB NSC93-L Your Name If you have any questions or require any assistance, you can contact the conference organizers at: NSC'93 EARN Office c/o CIRCE BP 167 F-91403 Orsay France Tel: +33 1 6982 3973 Fax: +33 1 6928 5273 E-mail: NSC93@FRORS12.BITNET or NSC93@FRORS12.CIRCE.FR Program and Organizing Committees Program Committee Hans Deckers, France (Chair); Daniel Jozef Bem, Poland; Howard Bilofsky, Germany; Klaus Birkenbihl, Germany; Rob Blokzijl, The Netherlands; Daniele Bovio, France; Paul Bryant, United Kingdom; Vasco Freitas, Portugal; Tomasz Hofmokl, Poland; Dennis Jennings, Ireland; Glenn Kowack, The Netherlands; David Sitman, Israel; Marco Sommani, Italy; Iain Stinson, United Kingdom. Organizing Committee Frode Greisen, Denmark (Chair); Paul Bryant, United Kingdom; Hans Deckers, France; Nadine Grange, France; Tomasz Hofmokl, Poland; Tadeusz Wegrzynowski, Poland. Call for Papers The Program Committee for NSC'93 is soliciting proposals for papers, tutorials and demonstrations in all fields related to network services. Subject areas for presentations include, but are not limited to, the following: - Network resource tools - Network directory services - Multimedia Communications - Electronic Publishing - Libraries and Networking - Special Interest Communities - Groupware, Cooperative Work over the Network - Networking for Schools - User Support - Delivering Services to the Desktop - Commercialization of Network Services - Networking in Eastern and Central Europe Speakers will be entitled to a 25% discount on the registration fee. There will be a reception for speakers on the evening before the conference. Proposals for presentations, tutorials and demonstrations, including a short biography and an abstract should be sent by mail, fax or PREFERABLY e-mail, to: NSC'93 EARN Office c/o CIRCE BP 167 F-91403 Orsay France Tel: +33 1 6982 3973 Fax: +33 1 6928 5273 E-mail: NSC93@FRORS12.BITNET or NSC93@FRORS12.CIRCE.FR Please use the form appended below for proposals. Proposals for papers and tutorials should be sent not later than 8 May 1993. Notification of acceptance will be sent by 8 June 1993. Proposals for demonstrations should be sent not later than 3 August 1993. Notification of acceptance of demonstrations will be sent by 17 August 1993. ------------------------------ cut here -------------------------------- The Network Services Conference 1993 Proposal for Presentation Name(s): Affiliation(s): E-mail address(es): Postal address(es): Title of presentation: Type of presentation (paper, demo, tutorial): Biographical sketch (5-10 lines): Abstract (25-40 lines): Equipment required: [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] INTERNATIONAL INFORMATICS ACCESS '93 International Informatics Access '93 May 3-6 Balatonfured, Hungary Conference Focus: The second conference on International Informatics Access considers Informatics as a broad topic, but in its most simple form, refers to the process of information creation, gathering, processing transmission. Information and access to it at the basis of decision making throughout free market economies. IIA '93 considers the role of informatics as: (a) a source of productivity growth throughout the economy, and (b) as an economic sector that supplies goods and services. IIA '93 is being organized to consider both approaches, with particular focus on Eastern Europe. Major topics of the program include: Information Economy: Trends and Directions Key information policy drivers for the 90's National informatics policy implementation strategies Developing modern information infrastructures Emerging information and communications technologies Emergence of intelligent cities Wireless telecommunications Any place-any time computing in the 90's Diffusion of information technologies Distributed systems and organizational memory Computer supported collaboration and coordination Multi-media and enterprise network integration Innovative informatics applications in health and education sectors Invited speakers are major policy makers from the government sector, industry leaders, and recognized academic researchers from around the world. All the presentations at IIA '93 are by invitation only. In addition to the topics listed, we are planning on having a Vision Movie Festival on the evening of May 4, 1993. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ REGISTRATION FORM International Informatics Access '93 3-6 May 1993 Balatonfured, Hungary Please complete this form and mail/fax this form with payment, to Congrex (USA) Inc. at IIA'93 c/o Congrex (USA) Inc. 7315 Wisconsin Ave., Suite 606 West Bethesda, MD 20814 USA Tel: (301) 469-3355 Fax: (301) 469-3360 NAME:____________________________TITLE:___________________ COMPANY/ORGANIZATION:_____________________________________ ADDRESS:__________________________________________________ CITY:_______________STATE:___________POSTAL CODE__________ COUNTRY:___________________ TELEPHONE:_________________FAX:___________________________ E-MAIL:____________________ Registration fee includes Welcome Reception, lunch and coffee service daily, Banquet,and all conference materials) Regular international registration fee: USD 495 ___ _____ Credit card: __Visa/__American Express/__Master Card/Eurocard Card No.__________________________________ Expiration Date___________________________ Signature_________________________________ Please contact IIA office for CIS and host country, registration fee. Hotel and Air Package information will be sent to you by Congrex (USA) Inc. upon receipt of your registration. The cost of 5 nights single accommodations is US Dollars: 270 Cancellation Policy (All requests must be sent in writing to the Secretariat.) Postmarked on or before 1 April 1993 Full Refund Postmarked on or before 9 April 1993 50% Refund Postmarked on or after 16 April 1993 No Refund Please confirm your participation by completing this registration form and returning it to: IIA'93 c/o Congrex (USA) Inc. 7315 Wisconsin Ave., Suite 606 West Bethesda, MD 20814 USA Tel: (301) 469-3355 Fax: (301) 469-3360 E-Mail: 5210714@mcimail.com [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] CALL FOR STORIES ABOUT U.S. NATIONAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE Please circulate this announcement to any person or list you think would be interested in responding. We're looking forward to hearing your stories! With thanks, Laura Breeden Executive Director FARNET =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CALL FOR STORIES: 51 Reasons to Invest in the National Information Infrastructure FARNET (the Federation of American Research Networks) is launching a national search for good stories about how and why people use the Internet in education, research, health care, libraries and manufacturing. Right now, Congress is considering ways to expand and build upon the successes of the Internet. The stage is being set for the creation of a 'national information infrastructure' computer and communications sytems that will make it possible for Americans to access and use all kinds of electronic information in the 21st century. Your stories will help set the agenda for the national information infrastructure. We must receive your story submission by March 31, 1993. Because critical information policy issues are already being debated, the timetable for the first round of the project is short. This summer a collection of the stories including at least one from each state and the District of Columbia will be published in an illustrated booklet and delivered to members of Congress, other elected officials, and project participants. Every story submitted that satisfies the criteria for publication will be included in a public database, accessible from the Internet and indexed so that it is easy to retrieve all stories from a particular region or about a particular topic. WHAT to Submit Each story should focus on only one use of the Internet, or one network-supported project. For instance, it might describe a collaboration between bilingual eighth-grade classes in different states, or a rural health-information delivery system. The story should be short (600 words or fewer) and should describe the use of the network and explain how the ability to use the network was of direct benefit to the activity supported. Specific details, examples and quotations will make the story more readable. Do not include material that does not support the narrative. Photographs and illustrations will be included in the printed booklet but not in the story database (for the first round). To submit a graphic, please mail camera-ready artwork (for charts, illustrations, or graphs) or photographic prints (any size, in black and white or color) to the address below. We welcome submissions of videos, software, computer graphics, documentation, and other supporting information and will index these as part of the story database. WHO Should Submit Anyone may submit a story for consideration. HOW to Submit We prefer that you submit stories electronically to the Internet address below. You may also submit them by fax or postal mail. You must use the Story Submission Form at the end of this announcement so that we can readily enter the stories into the database. FARNET's address is: Email: stories@farnet.org Postal mail: FARNET, 100 Fifth Avenue, Waltham, MA 02154 Phone: (800) 72-FARNET Fax: (617) 890-5117 CRITERIA for Publication To be included in the database, stories must describe how access to or use of the Internet for education, research, health care, libraries or manufacturing resulted in one or more of the following: Innovative or improved ways of doing things More equitable access to technology or electronic information Creation of new ideas, products, or services Technology transfer Local investment in, commitment to, and control of network-based activities Leverage of public funding Volunteer contributions of time and energy Partnerships between public sector and private sector organizations Other social, economic or educational benefits THE PANEL of Reviewers The review panel for the stories to be included in the booklet will consist of eight people representing key public sector interests in networking, including libraries, education, health care, and economic development. One of these representatives will be named by FARNET. The others will be named by other national organizations, including the Coalition for Networked Information, the Consortium for School Networking, Educom's NTTF, and the Science and Technology Council of the States. NOTIFICATION of Acceptance All submissions will be acknowledged upon receipt. If a submission is incomplete, the author will receive a comment sheet and will have the opportunity to amend the submission for inclusion in the database. COPYRIGHT The Story Submission Form requires each author to grant FARNET a non-exclusive, royalty-free copyright license to use his or her story for the purposes described in this Call for Stories. All stories must be original with the author, and the author must have obtained permission to use the names of any person or organization identified in the story. WHAT is FARNET? FARNET is a national non-profit association dedicated to advancing the use of computer networks for research and education. Its members are network service providers and other organizations that support its mission. PROJECT Underwriters (to date) Coalition for Networked Information Interop, Inc. National Science Foundation --------------------------------cut here-------------------------------- Story Submission Form 1. Your name Title: Department: Organization: Street address: City, State, ZIP: Phone: Fax : Email: 2. Person to contact for more information, if different from above Name: Title: Department: Organization: Street address: City, State, ZIP: Phone: Fax : Email: 3. Put an "X" before the category of use or user that this story focuses on: .......Education, K12 .......Education, higher .......Education, continuing or distance .......Research, academic .......Research, government .......Research, commercial .......Economic development .......Health care/health services .......Manufacturing technology .......Opportunities for people with disabilities .......Library .......Museums, arts .......Other 4. Put an "X" before all the criteria that you believe this story addresses: .......Innovative or improved ways of doing things .......More equitable access to technology or electronic information .......Creation of new ideas, products, or services .......Technology transfer .......Local commitment to network-based activities .......Leverage of public funding .......Volunteer contributions of time and energy .......Partnerships between public and private sector 5. Story text (600 word maximum): Please include the organization(s) involved, the objectives of the project and the benefits. Use full names of people, places and organizations. Don't forget to address at least one of the areas listed above in the criteria for inclusion. 6. Put an "X" in front of all categories of supporting information available: .......Video .......Software .......Documentation .......Slides/photographs .......Audio recordings .......Computer graphic images, such as GIF files .......CD/ROM .......Other 7. Story site if different from contact information: Town or City: State: 8. COPYRIGHT LICENSE AND WARRANTY I, the author listed below, hereby grant to FARNET, Inc., and its sublicensees, the following non-exclusive, royalty-free irrevocable licenses with respect to the enclosed story (the "Story") submitted in response to FARNET's solicitation dated February 12, 1993 entitled "51 Reasons to Build the National Information Infrastructure:" To edit, copy, distribute, and make the Story generally accessible through one or more free public databases; and, (At FARNET's option) to edit, copy, and distribute the Story in one or more printed collections of stories for non-commercial use consistent with FARNET's organizational purposes. My grant of these rights is in consideration of FARNET's agreement to make the Story available on a public database as described in the first subparagraph above if the Story meets FARNET's criteria. I will retain copyright in the Story. (It is understood that FARNET's right to modify the Story is limited to non-substantive editorial modifications.) FARNET will, through appropriate copyright notices and other legends, reasonably attempt to restrict any commercial use of the Story, but FARNET will not be liable to me if another party does not abide by these attempted restrictions. FARNET may grant to other noncommercial organizations sublicenses to any of the rights granted by me to FARNET. I acknowledge and warrant to FARNET and its sublicensees that Story is original with me, and that I have permission to use the names and/or descriptions of any individuals or organizations which are identified in the Story. I give FARNET and its sublicensees permission to use my name in connection with the rights granted above. I HAVE READ AND AGREE TO THE ABOVE COPYRIGHT LICENSE AND WARRANTY. ................................. (Sign name, if submitting by postal mail; otherwise, typing your name for Email transmission constitutes the equivalent of your signature) FARNET's address is: Email: stories@farnet.org Mail: FARNET, 100 Fifth Avenue, Waltham, MA 02154 Phone: (800) 72-FARNET Fax: (617) 890-5117 [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] THE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION/ LA REVUE ELECTRONIQUE DE COMMUNICATION Call for Papers THE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION/ LA REVUE ELECTRONIQUE DE COMMUNICATION (EJC/REC) Submitted by: Bill Ticehurst B.Ticehurst@uts.EDU.AU CONTEMPORARY ISSUES AND PERSPECTIVES IN AUSTRALIAN COMMUNICATION A forthcoming special issue of the THE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION/ LA REVUE ELECTRONIQUE DE COMMUNICATION (Vol. 3 (4)) will focus on contemporary issues and perspectives in Australian communication studies. Papers are invited from scholars and practitioners who are concerned with the study of communication theory, research, practice and policy in Australia. Since the EJC/REC has a wide international readership it is intended that this edition will provide a representative overview of communication scholarship in Australia. Consequently, articles dealing with any aspect of the field, or review articles, will be welcome. Manuscripts should be of reasonable length; 3000-5000 words may be taken as a guide. All contributions will be peer reviewed and the author should not be identified in the body of the paper. The special editor for this issue is Bill Ticehurst of the University of Technology, Sydney; Bill is the immediate Past President of the Australian Communication Association. Papers will be accepted on IBM or Macintosh disks in ASCII format, or via electronic mail, as detailed in the Instructions for Authors. The closing date for papers is Friday 16th, July 1993. Proposed papers should be forwarded to: Associate Professor Bill Ticehurst School of Management, University of Technology, Sydney PO Box 222, Lindfield 2070 Australia Phone (61) (2) 330 5472 (Voice mail available for messages) FAX (61) (2) 330 5583 Internet: B.Ticehurst@uts.EDU.AU For a copy of the Instructions to Authors, send the following command to Comserve@Rpitsvm (Bitnet) or Comserve@Vm.Its.Rpi.Edu (Internet): Send Author Guide [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] NEW EJC ISSUE AVAILABLE FROM COMSERVE The Electronic Journal of Communication / La Revue Electronique de Communication New Issue Available From Comserve EJC/REC, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1993 To receive the entire table of contents file (including an introduction by the special editors and article abstracts) for this issue of EJC/REC, send the following command to Comserve@rpitsvm (bitnet) or Comserve@vm.its.rpi.edu (internet): Send EJCTOC V3N193 To receive files containing the text of each article, use the "send" command and the name of the file following the article of interest in the Table of Contents below, as in: Send Robinson V3N193 The Electronic Journal of Communication/ La revue electronique de communication (EJC/REC) ------------------------------------------------------------ Volume 3 February 1993 Number 1 ------------------------------------------------------------ WOMEN AND MEDIA IN CANADA: A FEMINIST SAMPLER LES FEMMES ET LES MEDIAS AU CANADA: UN ECHANTILLON FEMINISTE Co-editors/Co-redactrices: Debra Clarke, Trent University Liss Jeffrey, McGill University ------------------------------- Table of Contents Table des Matieres ------------------------------- Introduction/Introduction. Liss Jeffrey McGill University SECTION I: PERSPECTIVES ON WOMEN AND MEDIA PREMIERE PARTIE: PERSPECTIVES SUR LES FEMMES ET LES MEDIAS Women Politicians and Their Media Coverage: A Generational Analysis/Les politiciennes et la couverture que leur accordent les medias: Une Analyse generationnelle Gertrude J. Robinson and Armande Saint-Jean (with the assistance of Christine Rioux) McGill University Comserve filename: Robinson V3N193 Women and the Media in Canada: A Question of Cultural Authority/Les femmes et les medias au Canada: Une question d'autorite culturelle Liss Jeffrey McGill University Comserve filename: Jeffrey V3N193 Women's Access to On-Line Discussions about Feminism/L'Acces feminin aux discussions en direct sur le feminisme Ellen Balka Memorial University of Newfoundland Comserve filename: Balka V3N193 SECTION II: DISSERTATION RESEARCH REPORTS DEUXIEME PARTIE: RAPPORTS SUR LA RECHERCHE DOCTORALE Feminists and the Toronto Press/Les feministes et la presse torontoise Sharon Dale Stone York University Comserve filename: Stone V3N193 Heroes Versus Villains in Five Canadian-Produced Television Programs/Les bons et les mechants dans cinq emissions de television produites au Canada Deborah K. Phillips Southeastern Louisiana University Comserve filename: Phillips V3N193 SECTION III: VOICES FROM WOMEN IN MEDIA TROISIEME PARTIE: VOIX DE FEMMES DANS LES MEDIAS "Wielding Political Clout: A Panel Discussion"/"Exercer son pouvoir politique: Une reunion-debat" (edited by Debra Clarke, transcribed by Marisa Haensel) Mary Ambrose, "MediaWatch: A Report on Recent Actions"/ "Evaluation-Medias: Un rapport sur les actions recentes" Annette Ruitenbeek, "Reflections on the Second Annual 'Women in the Media' Conference"/"Reflexions sur la deuxieme conference annuelle, 'Les Femmes dans les medias'" Comserve filename: Voices V3N193 SECTION IV: SOURCES AND RESOURCES QUATRIEME PARTIE: SOURCES ET RESSOURCES Compiled by Debra Clarke Une compilation de Debra Clarke Trent University Comserve filename: Clarke V3N193 _____ Articles and Sections of this issue of the _Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture_ may be retrieved bia anonymous ftp to byrd.mu.wvnet.edu or via e-mail message addressed to LISTSERV@KENTVM or LISTSERV@KENTVM.KENT.EDU (instructions below) Papers may be submitted at anytime by email or send/file to: Ermel Stepp - Editor-in-Chief, _Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture_ M034050@MARSHALL.WVNET.EDU _________________________________ *Copyright Declaration* Copyright of articles published by Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture is held by the author of a given article. 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