[EAS] What Matters Now?

Tue May 4 22:09:39 EDT 2004

Subject:   What Matters Now?

Dear Colleagues -

Regular readers of EAS-INFO
<http://jove.eng.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/eas-info> will recall
that I often cited material by Phil Agre
<http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/index.html> at UCLA, a person
of unusually wide-ranging interests relevant to this list.  At least
weekly I would get mailings from Phil's RRE list
<http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/rre.html>.

Then nothing pretty much all last fall and early 2004. Then he wrote
on 3/24/04:

> RRE is ten years old.  I stopped sending out these links because a
> bunch of issues all got stale at once.  Like okay, you've probably
> got it about Enron, and Microsoft, and cyberspace, and conservative
> jargon, etc.  So what matters now?  We'll have to figure that out.

Something of an intellectual "mid-life crisis," one might say. If
only more of us thought that deeply in our age of "Whatever else you
do, don't stop talking. If you do, you'll cease to exist."

He sent some URLs that deal with issues at "the intersection of
information technology and more permanent things." All are
interesting, many strike me as important, and I reproduce them
below.

So, I would like to mirror in our EAS-INFO list Phil Agre's quest
for "What Matters?"  After all, EAS-INFO is about eight years old.
What matters most to you?

Please send me your thoughts at <peter.kindlmann at yale.edu>.

Don't put it off while waiting for that tranquil moment of
contemplation when you can give me a profound answer. In my
experience, life is seldom that kind. Rather, send me something
shorter sooner.

Thanks, and all best,  --PJK

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 3/24/04 7:05 PM
To: pjk
From: Phil Agre

RRE is ten years old.  I stopped sending out these links because a
bunch of issues all got stale at once.  Like okay, you've probably
got it about Enron, and Microsoft, and cyberspace, and conservative
jargon, etc.  So what matters now?  We'll have to figure that out.
As a first guess, here are some links that are mostly intelligent
academic discussions at the intersection of information technology
and more permanent things.  Do send links corresponding to your own
guesses.

RRE home page: http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/rre.html

Failure as an Endpoint
(anthropology of financial markets)
http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/international/asianlaw/content/rilespubFailureasanEndpoint.pdf

Liberal Democracy's Time
http://www.newschool.edu/gf/news/02-03/polsci_seminar/Scheuerman_paper_2003.pdf

Structural Transformation of the University
http://www.ssrc.org/programs/calhoun/publications/HigherEd.pdf

documents on the US alliance with Saddam in the 1980's
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/press.htm

A Handbook for Afghan Journalists
http://www.iwpr.net/development/resources/afghanhandbook_english.pdf

social aspects of computing

Information Technology and the International Public Sphere
http://www.ssrc.org/programs/calhoun/publications/infotechandpublicsphere.pdf

Social Theoretical Issues in the Design of Collaboratories
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~gbowker/collab.pdf

The History of Computing in the History of Technology
http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/mike/articles/hcht.pdf

Privacy, Economics, and Price Discrimination on the Internet
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/privacy.economics.pdf

Government Policy Toward Open Source Software
http://www.aei.brookings.org/publications/abstract.php?pid=296

intelligent discussion of the economics of Microsoft versus Linux
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/001190.html

technology

Reconfigurable Computing and Electronic Nanotechnology
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~mihaib/research/asap03.pdf

The Anatomy of the Grid
http://www.globus.org/research/papers/anatomy.pdf

The Physiology of the Grid
http://www.globus.org/research/papers/ogsa.pdf

Linux' Journey to the Mainstream Desktop
http://www.osafoundation.org/presos/desktop-linux-presentation.pdf

syllabus for a course on the semantic web
http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/is277.html

conferences

Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Chicago, 6-10 November 2004
http://www.acm.org/cscw2004/

Designing Interactive Systems, Cambridge, MA, 1-4 August 2004
http://turing.acm.org/sigs/sigchi/dis2004/

Designing Ubiquitous Information Environments, Cleveland, 1-3 August 2005
http://ifip2005.cwru.edu/

more papers by Paul David

New Intellectual Property Rights Threaten Global "Open Science"
http://www-econ.stanford.edu/faculty/workp/swp00016.pdf

Economic Fundamentals of the Knowledge Society
http://www-econ.stanford.edu/faculty/workp/swp02003.pdf

The Political Economy of Public Science
http://www-econ.stanford.edu/faculty/workp/swp99022.pdf

General Purpose Technologies and Surges in Productivity
http://www-econ.stanford.edu/faculty/workp/swp99026.pdf

research papers that might only work from .edu

IT and Organizational Change: An Institutionalist Perspective
http://fiordiliji.emeraldinsight.com/vl=697727/cl=100/nw=1/rpsv/cgi-bin/linker?ini=emerald&reqidx=/cw/mcb/09593845/v13n4/s1/p234

Institutional Design in Democratic Contexts
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1467-9760.00032/abs/

article on culture and globalization by Marshall Sahlins
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Q2F7227C7

Is Science a Public Good?
http://makeashorterlink.com/?C377227C7

ERP Systems and the University as a "Unique" Organisation
http://fiordiliji.emeraldinsight.com/vl=954971/cl=36/nw=1/rpsv/cgi-bin/linker?ini=emerald&reqidx=/cw/mcb/09593845/v17n1/s2/p31

Liberal Democracy and the Empire of Speed
http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/301/239/47244607w6/5!pdf_imm_a1

end

--------------------------------------
Date: 5/4/04 8:06 PM
To: pjk
From: Phil Agre

Here are some more URL's.  Thanks to everyone who contributed.

RRE home page: http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/rre.html

research

An Entrepreneurial Theory of the Firm
http://www.business.auc.dk/druid/conferences/summer1998/conf-papers/casson.pdf

The Revival of Economic Sociology
http://www.efpu.hr/fet/dokumenti/sociologija/ekonomska_sociologija/neweconomic_chpt1.pdf

The Economic Geography of Talent
http://www.creativeclass.org/acrobat/AAAG.pdf

Citizenship in the Age of the Internet and the Age of Global Capitalism
http://www.education.ucsb.edu/~bazerman/page3.html

The Anthropology of Online Communities
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~swilson/research/wilson_peterson.pdf

Modularity in Technology and Organization
http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~langlois/ModularJEBO.pdf

Architectural Innovation: The Reconfiguration of Product Technologies
http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~langlois/ARCHITECTURAL.htm

Is Science a Public Good?
(a better URL)
http://www.compilerpress.atfreeweb.com/Anno%20Callon%20&%20Bowkers%20Is%20Science%20a%20Public%20Good%20STHV%201994.htm

IT and Organizational Change: An Institutionalist Perspective
(a better URL)
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/rpsv/cw/mcb/09593845/v13n4/s1/p234

conferences

Open Source and Free Software, Toronto, 9-11 May 2004
http://osconf.kmdi.utoronto.ca/

Appliance Design, Bristol, UK, 11-13 May 2004
http://www.appliancedesign.org/2ad/

Semantics in Peer-to-Peer and Grid Computing, New York, 18 May 2004
http://www.isi.edu/~hongsuda/SemPGRID04/

Digital Libraries, Tucson, 7-11 June 2004
http://www.jcdl2004.org/

Participatory Design, Toronto, 27-31 July 2004
http://www.cpsr.org/conferences/pdc2004/

Location Privacy, Maine, 5-7 August 2004
http://locationprivacy.objectis.net/

Digital Libraries, Bath, UK, 12-16 September 2004
http://www.ecdl2004.org/

everything else

Semantic Blogging
http://dijest.com/aka/2003/08/23.html#a2584
http://jena.hpl.hp.com/~stecay/papers/xmleurope2004/040420_semblog_draft10.html

grid-based science in the UK
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22e+science%22

Bringing Design to Software (1996)
http://hci.stanford.edu/bds/

Philip Mirowski on the history of AI
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m2483/4_24/112314327/print.jhtml

The Role of Scientific and Technical Data and Information in the Public Domain
http://www.nap.edu/books/030908850X/html/

Directory of Open Access Journals
http://www.doaj.org/

American Historical Review
http://www.historycooperative.org/ahrindex.html

old photographs of Japan
http://oldphoto.lb.nagasaki-u.ac.jp/unive/

Project for Public Spaces
http://www.pps.org/

A Survey of Nomadic Design Practice
http://www.portablefx.com/

early video art journal now online
http://www.radicalsoftware.org/

why Los Angeles is a great city
http://laweekly.com/ink/04/12/counter-gold.php