Blog Archive 2005

In Cultures in Orbit, Lisa Parks analyzes different uses of satellite television in order to rethink the meanings of and relations between television and “the global.” In the process, she shows that the many convergences between televisual and satellite technologies necessitate an expanded definition of “television”— one encompassing military monitoring, public education, and scientific observation as well as commercial entertainment and public broadcasting.

CITS welcomes Dr. Cathy Boggs as a new staff member, in the position of Research Communications Coordinator. Dr. Boggs, who joined CITS full-time on July 1, will be in charge of managing public information, media relations, and conference organizing.

Earlier this year Richard Sloven a sophomore at UCSB, majoring in political science conducted a study of student use of technology, and of attitudes regarding file-sharing and CD burning. Richard works as an intern at CITS.

A look into the changing face of student technology use, by David Pierucci a junior at UCSB, majoring in political science. He works as an intern at CITS.

CITS extends deep appreciation to Advisory Board Member David Toole for a contribution of $80,000 from the Dave and Diane Toole Foundation. His gift will go toward advancing CITS efforts at communicating research results publicly, and toward new initiatives dealing with technology and cultural transitions in the U.S and globally.

Transliteracies Conference 2005, June 17-18. CITS faculty participates in one-day conference exploring research in the technological, social, and cultural practices of online reading.

CITS Co-Sponsors AfroGEEKS Conference, May 19-21 exploring questions of global blackness and the digital public sphere.

Message from the Director Bruce Bimber

Recently I made my first contributions to Wikipedia, having been an avid reader of others’ donations to this open-edit encyclopedia for some time. As the rest of the Web grows faster than the capacity of search engines to make sense of things, it is refreshing to enter a term like “Tony Blair” in Wikipedia and receive a single, well vetted result rather than the nearly 6 million that Google produces.

In The Laws of Cool, Alan Liu reflects on these questions as he considers the emergence of new information technologies and their profound influence on the forms and practices of knowledge.

Geography is no longer just about maps of the earth’s surface, as UCSB Geography Professor Sara Fabrikant demonstrated in a recent CITS Research Lecture. Fabrikant discussed how geographical theories and mapping techniques can apply to data that scholars typically think of as non-spatial.