Subject: 2nd International Conf. on Internet & Society (2)
Curt Priest (cpriest@juno.com)
Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 12:53:51 EDT
To: ROUNDTABLE@CNI.ORG Subject: 2nd International Conf. on Internet & Society (2) Message-Id: <19980529.125243.7807.10.cpriest@juno.com> From: cpriest@juno.com (Curt Priest) Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 12:53:51 EDT
Short trip report by W. Curtiss Priest, CITS
Please re-post where appropriate
Over 1000 people attended this event!
As Gary Chapman suggests in his recent Los Angeles Times
article: Monday, May 25, 1998, Digital Nation, Counterculture Is Over --
Is a Backlash Next?
.... one got the sinking feeling at this conference that cyberspace is
indeed fast becoming an "engine" for commerce, and, only, secondarily
will solve education problems and social inequities.
But, not that the organizers, especially the wry and wonderful
Charles Nesson, didn't try for balance and scope.
There was an "education" track of sessions, and that track was
most informative about applying the Internet to matters of education.
And there were several sessions that addressed equity issues -- but
Larry Irving (NTIA) came across loudly as saying just give the market
a chance to serve the under served when the prices drop; it is too early
to intervene.
And, let me illustrate the tension this way -- there was a session
on community networking called "Our Online Town" and while a presentation
about SeniorNet talked about how they are reaching 10's of thousands of
seniors across the country, the speaker admitted that they recently
had to add "banner ads" to their web page to keep pace with others who
were siphoning off older Americans to other pages.
And, the highlight of the presentation was by David Ellington, President
of NetNoir, who unabashedly said he was catering to the very upscale
black community that could afford access, exotic vacations, etc., and
then talked about the ways they attract traffic -- by providing
scheduled events, e.g. someone who is a "talk show host" like person
who involves the "community" in political discussions.
Fortunately, while the conference was expensive ($1300) -- it is
available for free on the Internet via text, and QuickTime video and
RealAudio audio.
The keynote speakers including Larry Ellison (Pres. Oracle), Lou
Gerstner (IBM), Scott McNealy (Sun), Steve Ballmer (Microsoft),
Esther Dyson (Release 2.1), and Kim Polese (creator of Java (Oak) and
CEO of Marimba.
Polese was particularly "nouveau" stating that we were in a new economic
era -- noting that the low inflation, low unemployment was a symbol
of this new era (some of us still think it is the beginning of a major
depression, instead).
The main web page is:
http://cybercon98.harvard.edu/
with links to --
http://www.events.broadcast.com/edu/harvard/conference/
W. Curtiss Priest, Director, CITS
Center for Information, Technology & Society
466 Pleasant St., Melrose, MA 02176
Voice: 781-662-4044 BMSLIB@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Fax: 781-662-6882 WWW: http://www.eff.org/pub/Groups/CITS
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