Internet Technologies

Alex Halavais is next; he also presented at AoIR last year. He points out that a few years back hyperlinks rarely crossed national borders (other than into the US, I suppose), but this has been reducing over time. Language borders persist, of course, and continue to mean there is little linking across language borders.

Paul Koerbin from the National Library of Australia now speaks on issues of how to select content for an archive of Internet content (and whether selection is even necessary given that there are wholesale archivists like Internet Archive). The NLA has a specific statute which leads its PANDORA project towards archiving selected content, however.

My first day in Britain is spent at the meeting of the researchers' working group for the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC). This is within a couple of hours of stepping off the plane from Brisbane - and I can now also claim the privilege of having showered next door to the boardroom of the British Library, which is where we have now convened (the boardroom, not the shower).

We're on to the next keynote (which we've delayed through our question time in the previous panel). Wendy Hui Kyong Chun from Brown Univerity makes a start here. She talks of the tendency to take work at interface value - to fetishise new technology as cool rather than look beyond the interface itself. What conditions, what makes possible an experience of use?

We're on to the next session - with Richard Barbrook from the University of Westminster. His talk is about imaginary futures. The way we conceive of the future is actually an old idea, and some decades old - artificial intelligence is a good example, based as it remains on ideas like Asimov's work or even older concepts. Like communism, the arrival in such futures is always 10-20 years into the future.

Arriving in TallinnISEA has reached Tallinn. I'm blogging this live from the welcome session by the Estonian minister of culture. A fairly creative industries-inflected welcome, actually - obviously the Estonian government realises the value of these industries to its economy. (And I must say it's amazing to see the changes this place has gone through in the last 10-15 years.) Now we're on to Tapio Mäkelä's welcome.

Virtual Nation: The Internet in Australia, a book I've contributed to, is now available from UNSW Press. A preview of my chapter is also online in my publications section on this site.

This article in the Guardian was flagged on nettime: more evidence that filesharing does not impact CD sales in the way that the music industry claims it does. My favourite quote from the article is that the net effect of filesharing on sales is "indistinguishable from zero". Music industry ideologues take note.

This from Trevor Cook:

I've been busy organising this inaugural event to be held from 12 - 16 July

The purpose of the week is to focus on some key issues and attract attention to the emerging role of PR bloggers in developing and spreading knowledge about public relations. Often decried as a secretive profession we want to share our knowledge with everyone and encourage a better understanding of the contribution we make to our societies

I've long maintained that the Internet is not virtual. Now it turns out that the 'real' world is becoming hyperlinked...