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Complete list of essaysBiosphere and the Noösphere, The Supplementary essay: March 2004. Life on Earth can be thought of as two global spheres, the biosphere and noösphere. This essay reviews the development of these ideas and asks how the concepts are relevant to human society and politics. Controlled Change: The Politics of ICT and the Noösphere Feature essay: March 2004. Drew Whitworth's essay explores the question, "what is cyberspace"? It may seem self-evident but in fact the question is infrequently asked, and answers are usually too simplistic. Cyberspace can and should be seen as a particular interaction between the noösphere and computing technology. Two important works of "cyberculture" are analysed with reference to this model and found more-or-less wanting because they do not appreciate the continuities between cyberspace and other spheres of human existence, nor the dynamic nature of the space, with micro- and macro-scales interacting. Feature essay: January 2004. Gerry McAleavy, Tony Donegan and Celia O'Hagan review the interlinked ways in which communities face social exclusion. "Access" is an increasingly important factor, now bound up with provision of information technology. Poverty alleviation strategies that include awareness of where IT can help deprived communities are essential, along with educational approaches that depend upon the skills and needs identified by the community itself, rather than being imposed on it from outside. Supplementary essay: January 2004. A short introduction to the principles of electronic text handling, some of the technologies involved, and their consequences. Higher education and information technology: defining the relationship Feature essay: May 2005. Rajesh Kumar Sharma criticises the "excessive discourse" which has grown around the use of IT in HE. The relationship between the two needs careful pondering if the correct level of integration is to be achieved. Information literacy: empowering the learner "against all odds Feature essay: May 2005. Susie Andretta focuses on the challenges of implementing information literacy education within an HE institution in the UK. Effective teaching in this field entails certain conceptual, pedagogical and administrative shifts from the norm, and the impact of these shifts is presented through examples from information literacy practice employed within undergraduate and postgraduate courses run by the Information Management School, London Metropolitan University. IT Education and Democratic Practice Feature Essay: November 2003. Drew Whitworth considers the problems with the prevalent models of IT education in the UK. These are not only apparent at the level of the individual student, but have potential negative impacts on the democratic health of society. Language Engineering and Public Policy Feature essay: January 2004. Kevin Carey discusses the ways in which IT can enhance the provision of information from public bodies. Computing technology, particularly the improvements it delivers in our ability to process and connect texts, opens up the possibility of implementing hypertext systems which may have genuine impacts on democracy and the freedom of information. Carey discusses why this is necessary, and the technological and social developments which will assist such a project. Language, Knowledge and Exclusion Supplementary essay: January 2004. In what ways do language and knowledge become forms of exclusion, applied to deny people access to certain material and informational resources? Feature essay: May 2004. Asa Winstanley criticises assumptions made about the emancipatory benefits of free software. He details ways in which political issues such as deprivation, exclusion and inequality are simply beyond the remit of IT and the technology's democratising benefits are therefore limited. However, even if these limits are acknowledged there remain ways to use IT in expanding the autonomy of normally excluded people; initiatives such as "hacklabs" can be empowering here. Feature essay: May 2005. Allan Parsons describes necessary elements of a non-technical research agenda for "ubiquitous computing". An originator of this genre, Mark Weiser, called for interdisciplinary collaboration in this area but it remains undeveloped. Parsons considers the contributions of Weiser and other scholars such as Anne Galloway, Paul Dourish and Philip Agre, before describing what such an agenda may contain. Networking Democracy: IT and Radical Infrastructures Feature essay: May 2004. Drew Whitworth describes how an activist-oriented micropolitics would be aided by establishing a radical infrastructure, from which essential resources could be drawn to help "outbreaks of democracy" sustain themselves. However, though some prior democratic moments are still recorded in the structures of the global Internet, many opportunities to incorporate IT into these infrastructures were missed. Permeable Portals: Designing congenial web sites for the e-society Feature essay: Jan. 2005. Richard Coyne, John Lee and Martin Parker examine the nature of the web portal and its design, starting from the assumption that there is a conflict between the freedoms suggested by the web and the apparent need for access restrictions felt most keenly by corporations and institutions. They draw on their own work and that of their students in designing web portals. Their investigation demonstrates the utility for design in pursuing the sociality of the gift, and the observation of the web site as fetish object. The response to these issues of e-sociability is a designerly one, deploying design strategies as a way of exploring a problem domain. In this light encouraging and observing active usage over time emerges as a strategy for maintaining web security in low risk domains. Renewing Democracy with "E-Community Councils" Feature essay: Jan. 2005. Ann Macintosh and Andy McKay-Hubbard's paper examines action to address the growing political apathy facing many European countries through the possibility of renewing democracy at the local level using e-democracy. They describe the reasons why we need to develop e-democracy tools to support local decision-making and report on work in progress on a project to support wider democratic participation using ICT to support community councils. This project is developing a “community e-democracy model” supported by “community e-democracy tools” that will help to achieve the kind of dialogue and engagement between Community Councils and local communities that will support democratic decision making processes. The research work they are undertaking has the potential to provide a framework for e-democracy at local community, and in so doing contribute knowledge to a broad range of strategy and planning policies. Rural life and internet accessibility: a partnership of exclusion? Feature essay: Jan. 2005. Social exclusion is an issue that focuses mainly on conspicuous urban issues: homelessness, crime, poverty and lack of access to services are visible and 'real'. The 'green and pleasant land' of rural Britain is seldom associated with social exclusion. An important factor within social exclusion is that of a lack of access to the Internet, as e-citizenship is as fundamental a part of rural life as urban living. Lorraine Fiander's paper examines the factors contributing to rural social exclusion, including lack of adequate transport and limited access, highlighted by a snapshot example of a rural and an urban area in West Yorkshire: the result of a small, comparative research project. Supplementary essay: May 2004. James Black presents six interrelated observations on anarchism, and why it proves so troubling both to political theorists and established powers-that-be. The key point is its attempt to combat abstraction - the reduction of rational, conscious people to abstract "voters", "customers", "employees" and so on. Anarchism's challenge to established institutions comes about precisely because these institutions depend on this kind of abstraction to function efficiently. What's So Clever About Democracy? Supplementary essay: November 2003. Ricardo Blaug explores the deeper meaning of "democracy", asking why the term retains its potential to be used critically, despite so many attempts to subvert it to the service of established elites. Ke points include the importance of information, deliberation and debate to a truly active democratic sphere and the very real threat posed by considerations of "efficiency" and/or "technical fixes" for such practices. | |