Interesting Links Found By Surfing ALA Webpage for Week 8 Discussion

Policing Porn Is Not Part of Job Description
Montgomery Homeland Security Officers Reassigned After Library Incident
http://courses.gseis.ucla.edu/mod/resource/view.php?id=1703

City won’t appeal Nees ruling (w/court order)
Western student wins public records battle over e-mail list
http://www.kokomotribune.com/local/local_story_052161104.html

FEINGOLD BLASTS FAILURE TO INVESTIGATE DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM
http://feingold.senate.gov/~feingold/releases/06/02/20060216.html

Week Seven Weblog

Myspace.com, Facebook.com, and Surveillance

This week's readings take a significant turn in subject matter from the previous weeks. The topic covers surveillance and privacy in the information age. As written by Nissenbaum: "In contemporary, technologically advaced societies, it is commonplace for large sectors of populations to participate, in varying degrees, in electronically networked interactions" (p. 562). Two of these types of networks, Myspace and Facebook, are extremely popular--especially with teenagers and young adults. Both of these networks have been surveilled by outside agencies resulting in hiring rejections, arrests, and pranks to deceive police. I describe and give my opinion of each below:

Facebook Becomes Tool For Employers
http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=31948

In this article, there is a quote by Yale Undergraduate Career Services Director Philip Jones: "The Facebook issue is the latest in a string of 'invasions of privacy' that students would do well to guard against," Jones said. "Everything you do that is in prthe public domain may be used by an employer as a way of evaluating you." Facebook is used by students (either high school or college) to post personal information. By using pictures and blogs, students commonly (daily) update their activities--some of which are very revealing in the nature of their behavior for recreation. Pictures and descriptions of certain activities (such as heavy, habitual drinking) have led prospective employers to decide not to hire individuals who partake in them. Personally, I believe this type of surveillance is justified. Take for instance a situation where an individual in interviewed and then is later seen in public by the possible employers in a public bar, completely intoxicated and behaving in a very disconcerting manner. This might sway the decision to hire such a person. If this same individual is seen through Facebook instead in a public bar, the medium has only changed. On the other hand, assume that an employer finds out through Facebook that an interviewee is homosexual and then makes a decision not to hire them based on that information. There are already laws in place that prevent this and they would need to be applied in this case. I agree with Jones that students should be careful of how information they make available on networks like Facebook. In a more general sense, students should be careful not to behave in ways that might jeapardize their employment prospects in all public domains, whether in a night club, bar or in the ether world. As James Rachels is explained by Nissenbaum (p. 583), "In having the power to share information discriminately, people are able to define the nature and degree of intimacy of various relationships."

Web Site Helps Police Track Down Stoughton Vandals
http://cbs4boston.com/topstories/local_story_011133721.html

AND

MySpace Not Exactly Private
http://dailybeacon.utk.edu/showarticle.php?articleid=49522

These two articles describe how the Stoughton Police Department (Massachusetts) used the network Myspace to identify three teenagers who posted pictures of their grafitti on their profiles. In this case, a government agency has caught criminals through surveillance. There are probably many people who would argue that an advanced version of this technique of surveillance is being applied by Homeland Security and the Information Awareness Office (DARPA) to prevent terrorist attacks. The Patriot Act has given broad powers to agencies who use surveillance. In any case, I think the police were innovative in their pursuit of the criminals. Using Myspace is a far cry from tracking a person's Google search behavior to prevent a crime though. These police officers did not prevent anything. I think that Myspace falls in the category of a public domain. Much like the example in Nessenbaum's article of "red sweater," an individual can not suppress the information they make available in a public space. In my opinion, following the one I presented above, an individual must be selective of the type of behavior they make available in the public arena. If you want to make some type of information available--then be prepared to take responsibility for it and put it in context!

Also, I believe that if this type of surveillance is continued and the police come to rely on it, they should be very careful to do other types of research on the individuals before arresting them. I believe, to be completely ethical, the police should have engaged in further investigation/surveillance of the individuals they suspected of creating the graffiti. Only after catching the individuals in the act of the crime should they arrested them. This would allow for an assurance that the Myspace profiles were legitimately created and maintained by the criminals and not by a third party attempting to remain unknown to the authorities. This leads to the next article.

Guess Who's Looking on Facebook
http://www.advancetitan.com/story.asp?issue=11218&story=4633

This article covers the previous ones posted here, but I find it very interesting that a certain group of George Washington University (GWU) students planned an event that police came to only to find "no alcohol, just 40 students with cake and cookies decorated with the word 'beer.'" Aside from anything humorous, this deception is very revealing. The nature of networks like Myspace and Facebook are typically considered to be maintained only by individuals who create credible sources of information (and so this connects to our readings a few weeks ago). But obviously, this example shows explicitly that the information can be deceptive to authorities. GWU Police Cheif Mike Melland says (quoted in the article), "It’s a good source of intelligence for illegal activity...I am unaware of any law enforcement that doesn’t use it—it’s common knowledge.” In my opinion, Melland has been proven wrong. This opens the very disconcerting issue of the production of misinformation. It also demands that police not solely rely on these types of networks for their surveillance. I do think the police were innovative in their attempts to stop illegal consumption of alcohol, but I think there are more traditional methods such as random checks of places where these types of activities commonly occur (like fraternity houses and dorm halls). But maybe now police department budgets fund better internet connections rather than pay for officers to be active social beings in their communities.

Interesting Article on Blackberries

"Bunsow also pointed to a number of critical users who would not be exempted — including hospitals, large government contractors, energy companies and financial institutions. Over the years, he said, BlackBerry use has become so prevalent that the device has become part of the country's infrastructure."

From: (2/24/2006)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060224/ap_on_hi_te/blackberry_battle

Response Paper Two

Conscious Integration of Information Technologies

Cultures shape technologies and technologies shape cultures. This commutative property can be well shown by examining the recent advent of information technologies around the world, specifically the use of the internet/digital networks. In the United States, a rapid increase in public access to the internet was established by integrating the technology that provides it into public libraries. While the United States shaped the technology that provides access to the internet, it is in turn being shaped by it. The technology is used differently across communities and how each decides to incorporate and maintain access to it will determine what impact it will ultimately have. Elsewhere, the technology has been introduced and then used in ways that contrast even the most unique forms of use in the United States. In some cases, the technology does not become an integral part of a community at all. In others, it becomes essential in ways that if taken away could be considered criminal. The integration of information technologies is an ongoing development in all parts of the world today and further examination of how, and to what extent it will be, is of increasing importance.

In 1996, the "Digital Divide" was announced as a key issue to be dealt with in the United States. Policymakers made it an imperative that there be a "bridge" between haves and have-nots of the information technology that provides access to the internet. The internet was seen as the epitome of tools for establishing a foundation for the information society the United States had become (Shement, p. 120). Many citizens lacked access to the internet and therefore a problem faced the United States as a whole: How can the technology be provided for the the entire population? The public library was the answer. Already established as the hub for public access to information through the use of books, journals and newspapers, the library was the most logical place to plant the technology to access the internet. To date, 95% of all public libraries have this technology and 60% of patrons use the internet as part of their visits (Shement p. 119).

Interestingly, and perhaps as to be expected because of the level of diversity found in the United States, the use of the technology varies by community. According to a report by the Gates Foundation (Toward an Equality of Access), everyone from seniors to Native communities use the technology in different ways and for different reasons. Unfortunately, funding for maintaining the technology is not as available as it was to set it up, and this makes it difficult to assess the variance of use to create unique frameworks of interaction between a library and its community of users. Such frameworks would provide a fertile information society that can fully function under democratic ideals. While the United States was structured in such a way that allowed for the integration of information technology (and therefore the internet), it still has to grapple the challenge of recognizing that each unique community must be represented in a way that allows for their access to be utilized entirely.

Outside of the United States, there has been an attempt to transfer the concept of the "Digital Divide." Yet, as written by Mark Warshauer in Scientific American (August 2003), "the simple binary description of a divide fails to do justice to the complex reality of various people's differing access and usage of digital technology." Just as it is critical now in the United States to recognize this point for its own society, it is equally important to apply it to the world at large. The logic behind technological determinism, which is based in the idea that technologies shape societies and therefore the mere introduction of any technology will result in similar use as long as it is available, is flawed. The example given, by Warshauer (pp. 44-45), of outdoor internet kiosks set-up in 1999 by the municipal government of New Delhi with the National Institute of Information Technology in the poorest areas of New Delhi, is a perfect example of technological determinism's flawed logic. The technology did not become an integral part of the community at all, rather, it was even seen as detrimental (Warshauer, p.45). The kiosks were set up with no organization to teach or explain how the technology can be utilized.

In a different example given by Warshauer (pp. 45-46), again from India, the government set up a kiosk in villages in the poorest, rural area of the Madhya Pradesh. Each kiosk was interconnected in a network and "a small team hired by the government [created] content for the...intranet, based on the analysis of the people's social and economic needs" (Warshauer, p. 46). Users pay a kiosk "manager" a few cents to access information/communication they need, whether it is crop prices or to complain to government officials. According to Warshauer, government services and the local community have since improved. This is a perfect example of how a society can integrate information technologies in a unique and productive manner for a specific community. It is an example that should be heeded and encouraged in the United States and other places with access to information technologies to create frameworks of interaction between access providers (or "intensifiers" as Shement suggests (p. 124)) and the community of users.

In fact, there is some evidence of this approach being applied elsewhere. In the United States, the work of Ramesh Srinivasan in the development of Tribal Peace is an example. Srinivasan assisted four Native nations in 19 separate reservations develop an interconnected website that takes into respect their unique ontologies and cultural heritage. This website serves both as an archive and a shared space of representation and communication between the public, the tribal elders and even the state government (Srinivasan, p. 4). Another example from within the United States can be found in the attempt by the University of California and College Preparatory Initiative to use information technology to assist culturally diverse high school students take courses over the internet that would be counted toward their future college education (and help in their acceptance to such colleges). The initial attempts were modified by the feedback received by those involved (a community dialogue with the technology providers) to increase the success rate of students in future courses (Warshauer, pp. 46-47). While these examples are not coming from within the primary place of access (libraries), it is to their credit as "gaps in access still persist" and so there is an "importance of developing tools to increase the effectiveness of libraries beyond their doors" (Shement, p.124).

Beyond the United States' border, there is an upcoming research project in southern India called Co-Divine with which Srinivasan is involved. This research will "determine whether...two communities in question can articulate and develop their own visions through self-creation and sharing of visual information." Srinivasan hopes to support his hypothesis that "information development initiatives driven by community-created content may allow community members themselves to identify and pursue information access indicators that serve collective community needs." This will help supplant the residual and unproductive "Digital Divide" debate with a discussion of how specific interacting communities can cooperate and communicate by using information technology to stimulate their local society and society as a whole. The results of Srinivasan's research will be of great value to the entire world community because it will further the understanding of how to introduce/enhance the integration of information technology into varying communities based on socioeconomic and cultural characteristics, as separate studies have done also (Terrence Turners work with the Kayapo).

Overall, there seems to be evidence of a shift in understanding that the simple insertion of information technology is not enough to provide a strong foundation for the development of an information society. Instead the technology must be supplemented by a "social informatics" or "community informatics" approach. Social Informatics argues that "technology must be considered within a specific context that includes hardware, software, support resources, infrastructure, as well a people in various roles and relationships with one another an with other elements of the system" and Community Informatics "considers unique aspects of the particular culture into which technology is placed, so that communities can most effectively use that technology to achieve social, economic, political or cultural goals" (Warshauer, p. 45). These two concepts are the impetus for determining the future of integrating information technology both within and outside the United States. How well they are understood will determine how well information technology is shaped by and shapes the information age.

Week Six Weblog

It is amazing how the library has so quickly provided the public with access to online information resources since the "Digital Divide" entered popular discourse. Ten years after the coining of the phrase in a speech by Lloyd Morisette (former president of the Markel foundation (Schement, p. 119) ) 95% of all public libraries have computers for use to explore and participate in the digital world. This is in line with democratic ideals which support a multiplicity of voices within the forum of public discourse to thwart a tyranny of the majority. Unfortunately, once the technology was made available and the public showed avid use of it (60% of library users go online (Shement, p. 119)), the "digital divide" was considered "bridged." As a result, policymakers are allowing funding to dwindle. There is an argument that the funding should not become less available; it should shift priority from setting-up the system to maintaining the system. Libraries must provide data that can be used in related and ongoing policymakers' arguments which will result in financial maintenance support.

In the report by the Gates Foundation (Toward an Equality of Access), there are five areas that are in direct need of ongoing assistance (p. 28-30): 1) Hardware and Software Upgrades, 2) Internet Connectivity, 3) Keeping Systems Running, 4) Staff Training, and 5) Keeping Libraries Open. According to this report "severe budget crises have led to state cuts in funding for public libraries across the country" (p. 26). Identifying these key areas in need of continued funding is not enough to elicit policymakers' attention. Schement writes (p. 124), "Libraries...should rely on their continuing community dialogue as a basis for statistically assessing those information resources that potentially contribute to providing access." In other words, data needs to be provided for policymakers that can concretely be used to argue that funding is critical to sustain the system in place. Such data can come from librarians surveying the user community's opinions on specific issues (e.g. the five areas recognized by the Gates Foundation). Once such data is made available to policymakers, it can be interjected into their debates for social betterment and possibly result in a shift of funding back to the public library system.

Shement recognizes that "powerful, quantitative tools for assessing the information resources and needs of...communities" are required to provided such data (p. 124), but she does not explain what those tools are. Assessing a community's needs is a very complex and time consuming task. The range of diversity of communities is immense in the United States, as suggested by the Gates Foundation report (page side on pp. 8, 11, 14, 19, 20, 23, 24, & 30). Therefore, use of the simple catch phrase "Digital Divide" to promote continued funding will not suffice. Data taken from communities representing part of a synergistic whole can promote "digital sustainability." The work of librarians, ethnographers, sociologists and the community itself can provide this data and must do so soon to avoid a "digital disintegration."

Issues of Credibility

I decided to search for a particular topic with Google to come up with a selection of websites that would come up with a dramatic range of information. I chose the topic of the assassination of JFK because I knew it would provide hits to credible sources of information and hits that were absurdly un-credidble.

The first site I chose was a site with the suffix ".edu" (http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/) I assumed that having ".edu" it would be credible in that it is academic and perhaps would have links to papers written on the subject. This is based on Burbrules' first suggestion to recognizing credible sources: indentifying markers or "proxies." I then glanced at the overall layout and visual quality of the site. It did not strike me as very "academic" at all. The site has a grainy picture of Lee Harvey Oswald (who I could not recognize right away--perhaps because I was expecting a picture of JFK) and the text that does not provide much of a summary of the site's values. The first text is an index that provide links to do other kinds of searching (and therefore metadata?) and further down is a section that allows for futher searching through Newsgroup Archives and Google (which I had already searched!) This is a direct example of what Burbrules refers to as a "self-sustaining reference system." There is no indication of who created the site or who produced the information on it other than in the web address (who is mcadams?) nor any clear telling of what institution that this ".edu" is affiliated with. These are all problems and I would conclude that this site is a 5 on a scale of 0-10 of credibility.

The next site I chose was a site with a ".com" (http://www.jfk-online.com/home.html). This site was chosen at random to compare to the first and immediately, after examining the layout and visaul quality, I determined it to be slightly better than the first. First, it had a clear image of JFK. It did have an advertisement for amazon.com at the top (a common occurrence on a .com site?) and then a link to support the site monetarily suggesting that it is supported by companies and individuals. Then there are several links to the web pages that deal with the subject I was searching for (metadata?). After that are links to organizations that presumably support the site, including the History Channel of which the site claims to be a member in some way. This provides a user of the site to determine credibility based on what they think of supporting organizations. There is also a link on for a "Skeptic Ring" which is example of the a community of like-mided people who share common interest in this topic who, if joined, can be communicated with in order to determine credibility. Overall I give this site a 6 on a scale of 0-10 for credibility.

Week Five Weblog

Ethical Issues of Finding Past News Information on the Internet

After reading Burbules' Paradoxes of the Web: The Ethical Dimensions of Credibility I was reminded of the incident of the 13 trapped West Virginia miners in early January of this year. Specifically, I remembered the day I went to Yahoo! to check my email and saw a news headline announcing that 12 of the miners had been found alive. Then, later that day, while checking my email again, I saw a headline that reversed this claim. Apparently, a mistake had been made in the media. Consequently, there had been false information announced on TV and radio, printed in newspapers, and put online (covering orality, literacy and secondary orality) because of a miscommunication between rescuers and journalists.

This week's topic for class prompted me to search the Internet for the original articles stating this false information, secondary articles that discussed the reversed claim, and any articles that analyzed the repercussions of such an occurrence. This allowed me, for the purposes of this response paper, to explore Burbules' conditions that make the Internet a "different and challenging credibility context" (including some of his dimensions of defining credibility) with his four elements of credibility in mind (proxies of credibility, skepticism of all information found, determent of judgment to those we trust, online communities of common interest of concern).

My first attempt searching for articles was through Yahoo! and proved to be fruitless. There were so many hits about the coal miners in general, that finding ones that discussed the media mistake seemed nearly impossible. I immediately became a victim of "the illusion that whatever cannot be found must not be very important," as Burbules discusses in the comprehensiveness dimension of credibility (p. 449). It also is an example of Burbules' first factor that makes searching for information online a "different and challenging credibility context." This is that there is so much information out there (the "sheer volume") it becomes overwhelmingly difficult to find anything (p.442). I continued my search on Yahoo!, digging further into the list of hits and I came across this online article:

Coverage of Miners' Deaths Raises Questions (use link)
http://www.hcnonline.com/site/index.cfm?BRD=1574&dept_id=532224&newsid=15892618&PAG=461&rfi=9

This is an online article posted by Houston Community Newspapers Online for The Courier News of Montgomery County written by a weekly columnist. The writer describes how his particular newspaper (The Courier News) was careful not to print a headline that proclaimed the miners were alive but rather that family members were. He mentions how USA Today and The New York Post, in contrast, printed headlines that simply said, "Alive! Miners Beat Odds" and "Alive!", respectively. The writers last line of the The Courier article is, "It is easy to see how the wrong information could get out and it is amazing how far that information traveled in so little time." Here, he is tapping into Brubules' third factor that makes it complicated to search for credible information online: that the "speed of [information's] growth" and "rate of dispersion with which information can circulate" are enormous (p. 444). But if this information spread so far and wide, why was I having trouble finding it? This can be explained by Brubules' first factor of volume, and also by what I encountered by changing my search strategy which I detail below.

The difficulty of searching Yahoo! for much of the information I was seeking (especially original articles) led me to switch to Google. There, I was much more successful. I received more hits that pertained to my search (using the same word string as when I searched Yahoo!). I also discovered a feature Google has that solved another problem I was encountering. This problem was that many of the hits' links were giving me "error pages" that stated the article was no longer available. This occurred when searching for a copy of an original story stating the miners were alive from Newsday.com, and for two Yahoo! articles that were critical of the mistake. Luckily, Google had a "cached" link at the end of every hit that allowed me to view an archived "snapshot" of the missing articles. This solved my problem and suggests that Google takes a standpoint of seeing information in its original form as credible in the sense that it is "useful, relevant or interesting" (Brubules, p. 448). Certainly the original form was useful and relevant to my search.

"Unavailable" Original Newsday.com article (use link):
One Worker Found Dead In West Virginia Mine, But Hours Later Rest of Men Trapped By Explosion Rescued, As Family Celebrates
http://www.newsday.com/news/yahoo/ny-usaliv044574468jan04,0,2374147.story?coll=ny-newsaol-headlines

Google snapshot of above article (use link):
http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:ACUWuadYgQYJ:www.newsday.com/news/yahoo/ny-usaliv044574468jan04,0,2374147.story%3Fcoll%3Dny-newsaol-headlines+west+virginia+miners+12+cell+phone+found+alive+yahoo!+news&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2

Why Newsday.com and Yahoo! chose to remove their articles is a very important question. Perhaps these two news media decided, upon the timeliness notion of credibility (Brubules, p. 449), they were irrelevant. Or, maybe they decided to censor information to avoid being used as examples of this terrible mistake. Either way, without Google, I would not have found any these articles.

"Unavailable" Critical Yahoo! News article: (use link)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ep/20060109/en_bpiep/seriousquestionsonsourcinginminerescuestoryremain

Google snapshot of above article: (use link)
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:5zs8lzw__h4J:yahoo.reuters.com/financeQuoteCompanyNewsArticle.jhtml%3Fduid%3Dmtfh55304_2006-01-05_04-35-03_n04344797_newsml+west+virginia+miners+12+cell+phone+found+alive+yahoo!+news&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=9

"Unavailable" Critical Yahoo!/Reuters article: (use link)
http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?storyID=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20060105:MTFH55304_2006-01-05_04-35-03_N04344797&related=true

Google snapshot of above article: (use link)
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:5zs8lzw__h4J:yahoo.reuters.com/financeQuoteCompanyNewsArticle.jhtml%3Fduid%3Dmtfh55304_2006-01-05_04-35-03_n04344797_newsml+west+virginia+miners+12+cell+phone+found+alive+yahoo!+news&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=9

The response to the mistake took on various forms. There were high profile articles as shown directly above (Yahoo.Reuters.com and News.Yahoo.com) which were missing, and then there were lower profile, local articles that remain available to this day. Here is one of these from the Shelby County Reporter (Alabama):

Mine Tragedy Was a News Disaster (use link)
http://www.shelbycountyreporter.com/articles/2006/01/15/opinion/opin02.txt

In the article the writer asks some very relevant questions like, "When was accuracy replaced with speed?" and she quotes David P. Perlmutter: "Modern newscraft, addicted to technology, worships the god of speed. Laptops, satellites and cell phones make live-from ground-zero reporting alluring." In essence what is being discussed in the writer's article is the ethical aspect of reporting information in relation to advanced information technology. This bleeds into the ethical concerns we are considering in this week's topic: finding credible information as members of an information society.

Clifford Lynch writes in When Documents Deceive: Trust and Provenance as New Factors of Information Retrieval in a Tangled Web (p. 16), "...the tools are coming into place that let one determine the source of a metadata assertion...the identity of the person or organization that stands behind the assertion, and to establish a level of trust in this identity." Obviously, Lynch's paper is discussing a topic that covers more than just finding news and news groups, but the notions of trust and credibility are truly what are being examined here. I encountered not the problem of Yahoo! or Newsday.com printing false news information, but rather the difficulty of finding that information later as it pertained to my search. As Anton Vedder writes in Misinformation through the Internet, "In judging the reliability of information, we can use primary criteria of reliability...These are, for instance, requirements of consistency, coherence, accuracy, and accordance with observations." I feel that the Yahoo! and Newsday.com--along with any other news group that deleted similar articles--are behaving in an unethical manner. Google, on the other hand--along with any other web crawlers that use the snapshot principle or news groups that keep their information available despite its falsity--is helping to balance this unfortunate problem.

Other related sites in my search:
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA010406.survivor.EN.45ad0c7e.html

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1551589/posts

http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8EU1CPO8.html

Daily Bruin Articles of Interest

Today's Daily Bruin had an interesting article written by the Dean of the department our course is in. It mentions "media literacy" in a way that reflects some of the concepts we talked about this past week. In my opinion, this is a great article. I hope it gets students thinking about how important it is to be aware of some of the issues that are involved with living in an information society. I put the address below along with a few others of related articles from previous days.

From 2-9-2006:

Students Don't Have It That Easy Nowadays (by Dean of GSEIS)
www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=35826

Website Foster's Writing Skills
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=35833

From 2-7-2006:

A Closer Look: Lights, Camara, and Interaction?
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=35803

A Closer Look: Wireless acces a double-edged tool
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=35804

A Closer Look: More professors turn to technology to enhance instruction
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=35805

From 2-2-2006

New iTunes May Put Professors in the Palm of Your Hand
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=35733

Week Four Weblog

Common Orality

The suggestion that new media technologies can be of great benefit to certain populations, as suggested by Srinivasan in Indigenous and Ethnic Articulations of New Media, is hopeful. It seems with any new technology there is an undertone of chaos and apocalyptic imagery that emerges at the forefront of debate without enough patience to see how it might be applied to alleviate problems. This tendency exists, perhaps, because it is more difficult to understand the complicated and complex technologies and thereby easier to cast them as tools of control than figuring out a way they might be used as instruments of liberation. If a hammer is used as an analogy for new media technology, the opponents of its use would see it only capable of building a cage while the proponent would see it as the impetus for constructing a bridge.

Understanding how new media technology has transformed literate society provides a crucial insight as to why there are optimistic purveyors of it. Walter Ong claims that “electronic media has brought us into the age of ‘secondary orality.’” Ong continues by saying this new era of communication allows for the experience of a global village and for the individual to be “socially sensitive.” The concept of secondary orality does not suggest a strict return to the oral traditions of non-literate society. Rather, writing and print are still accepted as integral parts of communication. The main similarity, though, lies in its power of “fostering…a communal sense” and generating “a strong group sense.” This may help heal the fact that literate societies “prevent the individual from participating fully in the total cultural tradition to anything like the extent possible in non-literate societies” (Goody &Watt 334). New media technology has also been documented to advance awareness of “the kind of culture-conflict that has been held to produce anomie in oral societies” as a result of the advancing front of high literate society (Goody & Watt, pg. 335). These changes make it possible to receive information about largely ignored cultures in new and memorable ways.

Not only can new media technology expand literate societies’ notion of community, it can also compliment non-literate societies’ innate orality. It can be argued that electronic technology carries with it some inherent element of orality (Ong) because the oral cultures adopted the use of the new electronic media without difficulty (Srinivasan). In the article by Srinivasan, there are several examples of indigenous and ethnically variant groups which use new media technology (cameras, local video programs, the Web) to advance their concerns to powerful government authorities and to maintain connection of diasporas. Specifically, the use of computer-based networks by 19 Native reservations in southern California to create an "imagined community" in the form of an interactive website doubled as an archive, is an example of linking otherwise isolated groups for the purpose of invigorating their sense of culture and society. It was done in a way that put the decisions about how the site should be structured in their control and this resulted in a mutable medium that reflects their own oral traditions. This site is accessible to all who use the Web, but only changed by those who administer or participate in the site.

It is obvious that the foundations for a bridge are being laid by this shared orality to span the gap of the “digital divide.” While on hand we have the literate cultures evolving to secondary orality through their use of electronic media, on the other we have indigenous oral cultures expanding their medium of traditional orality. Meeting on this bridge, perhaps dominant civilizations will find the means to be culturally sensitive to indigenous populations as has never been experienced before. This will create a dialogue that may be of immense benefit to societies everywhere.

Online Libraries/Archives

Questia (www.questia.com)

This site is an Online Library that can access 60,000 scholarly books and over 1 million journals, magazines and newspaper articles. It the line of text that says this, each type of informtion (book, journals, etc) are hyperlinks to a page with a sorted list of titles that can be selected for viewing. When a title is selected this tool bar is found about the text:

Projects

Bookshelf

Bookmark

Add Note

Quote/Cite Bibliography Highlight

These are representative, action icons that allow for one to do types of thing one might do while reading a physical text.

This site allows a limited amount of public activity (previews of any book or article) but one must become a member to gain access to the information entirely. In this way it is a private digital library, supporting Miksa's idea that the new era of libraries will return to something like that before the "modern library," which "generally represented the private space of an individual or of a small group."

Internet Archive (www.archive.org)

From the site: "The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural aricfacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars and the general public."

The site hase a box with the option to look up inactive site address of the past called "Way Back Machine." It provides access to archived moving images, audio recordings, live music, and texts (which are photographed). It also has an active post board in which users talk about various topics related to what can be found or has been found on the site. You can use the site anonymously or as a member.

It would be interesting to find out how the site applies the "records life cycle" that O'Toole writes about which are creation, use, storage and dispostion. In particular, it would be good to know how the archivists for this site explain the creation stage given this is a new technology of creating a record.