Blog

Tartu
We're now in the preliminary summary session for the second day at CATaC 2006. By the way, in the meantime the CATaC wiki has also been revived, with some additional materials on the presentations also posted up there. In terms of the session I chaired, I found the combination of theory and practice, and of development and definition of collaborative, productive online environments particularly interesting - the direct practical engagement of researchers in the tools and communities they study appears to have a number of benefits. Other session chairs right now seem to present more of a summary of their sessions - but for example, Laurel Dyson points once again to the importance of alternatives to traditional forms of copyright, as well as to the associated traditional view of content producers as individuals: perhaps there is a need for computer technology which also provides for multiple participants, similar to the way computer games already do. Anne Hewling notes the shift in e-learning from a technological to a cultural focus, and a recognition of learning environments as culturally complex and in need of further study.

Tartu
Mpine Qakisa Makoe is the first presenter of the post-lunch session. She presents on the ecology of South African distance learners. Usually e-learning studies focus on how it affects learners, but this offers only a limited perspective. Distance learning is especially important in South Africa as this enables universities to deal with a significant backlog of learners especially also in remote locations, who previously did not have access to formal education - and therefore it is also a priority area for government policy. Universities now have to deal with a three- or fourfold increase in students, and many white educators in universities are still coming from the apartheid era, so there are considerable pressures on the sector.

Tartu
The next session is kicked off by Jose Abdelnour Nocera, on the politics of technology culture. He notes that information technology has globalised, and has become increasingly affordable to small and medium enterprises. However, this also means that technology produced in one culture may be used in another, leading to a potential for intercultural misunderstandings. Users' cultural frameworks configure their understandings of the systems used, and these are likely to be different from those of the technology producers.

Interpretative flexibility is a key concept in theories of the social construction of technology: the character of technologies is not determined by their technological structure. The usefulness of a system, then, can be described as a social construct - and this is very different from the idea of usefulness as simply indicating (perceived) enhanced performance, or of usefulness as 'practical acceptability' rather than 'social acceptability'. Users 'construct' technology both symbolically in their reading of artefacts as well as literally in the articulation work that is essential before a generic software product can be used as an artefact supporting day-to-day business practices.

Tartu

The second morning at CATaC 2006 begins with a session I'm chairing, and my own paper is also in this session - so I'll try to blog the other three papers, and to post the slides and text for mine. Chris Newlon and Anthony Faiola are the first presenters, on mega-collaboration. They begin with a focus on Hurricane Katrina, which they describe as exhibiting a pattern of success and failure. The response to the hurricane was a spontaneous gathering and coordination of information resources by private-sector ICT organisations and individuals, but the government failed to effectively make use of this wealth of information. Of course, planning is usually for the expected, but not for the worst imaginable extreme - how, then, to plan for the unexpected? Chaos was the only response in the Katrina case, especially also because of cultural barriers between the different agencies and entities involved in the flood response. At the same time, the use of private ICT resources can be described as a success - socially connected information networks were in clear evidence here, including privately run missing persons databases, as well as blogs, lists, bulletin boards, etc. This builds on a small world principle where most individuals are connected, but where such connection depends on contextual information which points towards the most useful contacts to utilise.

Tartu
Finally today we're in a summary plenary which brings together all the CATaC 2006 sessions we've seen. I'm not completely sure whether this is particularly bloggable, but I'll give it a go. Lelia Green notes that her session was focussing on the relationship of knowledge and the Net - knowledge and bird flu; knowledge of how to attack Websites in the course of information warfare; knowledge of health practices in specific communities, but shared online; and knowledge of how to repair cars as it is shared locally and successfully in Burundi as opposed to knowledge introduced by welfare agencies without a full consideration of all implications.

Tartu
Wolter Pieters starts the post-lunch session at CATaC 2006. He describes current moves towards e-voting as they have happened here in Estonia and elsewhere: is Internet voting the future? Estonia was the first country to use e-voting in local elections, but in the Netherlands and elsewhere there still exist many questions around it. There are promises that e-voting would increase voter turnout, but the Estonian experience does not necessarily support this - here, e-voting was introduced for its ease rather than to increase participation.

Tartu
Next is Mary Morbey, speaking on the changes to museum representations through information and communication technologies. She focusses on two iconic national museums: the Louvre in Paris and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. This study is framed by concepts of cybercolonialism and cyberglocalism, and involved theoretical exploration as well as on-site observation and interviews. The key approaches to ICTs are the view of cyberculture as a new frontier in an American tradition, and a kind of techno-orientalism in which the Net replaces other objects so inscribed, and the two sites reflect these respective trends.

Tartu
The first session here at CATaC 2006 focusses on cultural diversity. Lori Kendall begins by showing a brief amateur-created online video from Japan set to a Romanian song sung by a Moldovan group; the video contains a broad range of cultural references. Many of the videos use Flash as a media form; this is part of a growing trend - but what cross-cultural references are being portrayed in such videos? Humour theory can be useful here (many jokes are about the pitfalls of intercultural exchange and/or employ cultural stereotypes), as well as Barrie Thorne's studies of 'borderwork' between boys and girls playing at school which maintains gender-cultural boundaries.

Tartu, Estonia
Well, after a brief few days visiting family in Germany we've now made it to the 100,000-strong university city of Tartu in southeastern Estonia (the country's second-largest city). I'm here for the CATaC 2006 (or Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication) conference, which will take place here over the next three days. This is actually my second time here in Estonia - ISEA2004 was in Tallinn, and the presence of such conferences is a clear sign of the keen interest of the Estonian university and government sector in embracing technological and intellectual advances. By now Estonia is one of the best-connected countries of the world, with WiFi hotspots virtually everywhere in the major centres.