Michael Zimmer.org

For the last 353 days, I’ve been part of a team planning Internet Research 10.0 – Internet: Critical, the 10th annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR). My life is about to get back to normal, as an interdisciplinary collection of nearly 400 scholars, researchers and graduate students interested in Internet and new media studies are descending on Milwaukee this week.
The conference program is fantastic, featuring keynote addresses by Siva Vaidhyanathan, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, and Megan Boler. I’ll be presenting an updated version of my paper, “But …

The Call for Papers for Internet Research 10.0 – Internet: Critical, the 10th annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), has been released:
Call for Papers
Internet Research 10.0 – Internet: Critical
The 10th Annual International and Interdisciplinary Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR)
October 7-11, 2009
Hilton Milwaukee City Center
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
http://ir10.aoir.org
As the Internet has become an increasingly ubiquitous and mundane medium, the analytical shortcomings of the division between the online and the offline have become evident. Shifting the focus to the fundamental intermeshing of online and offline spaces, networks, …

A collection of information and communication companies, advocacy groups, and academic centers have announced the formation of the Global Network Initiative, aimed at protecting free expression and privacy on the Internet on a global scale.
From the announcement:
In an effort to protect and advance the human rights of freedom of expression and privacy, a diverse coalition of leading information and communications companies, major human rights organizations, academics, investors and technology leaders today launched the Global Network Initiative.
From the Americas to Europe to the Middle East to Africa and Asia, companies in …

The 10th annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) will take place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin from October 7-11, 2009. The conference theme will be “Internet:Critical“, providing a space for interdisciplinary researchers to reflect on, describe, interrogate, challenge, and stake new claims to various critical Internet issues, including:
critical moments, elements, practices
critical theories, methods, constructs
critical voices, histories, texts
critical networks, junctures, spaces
critical technologies, artifacts, failures
critical ethics, interventions, alternatives
The program chair is Susanna Paasonen, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. The local organizing committee is comprised of Elizabeth Buchanan, UW-Milwaukee, Michael Zimmer, UW-Milwaukee, …

On the heels of the recent Pew study concerning cloud computing and privacy, Consume Reports has released a poll revealing that most Americans are very concerned about what is being done with their personal information online. Some highlights:

72% are concerned that their online behaviors were being tracked and profiled by companies
53% are uncomfortable with internet companies using their email content or browsing history to send relevant ads
54% are uncomfortable with third parties collecting information about their online behavior
93% of Americans think internet companies should always ask for permission before …

Similar to the Yale Information Society Project’s “9.5 Theses” and CFP’s “Letter to the Next President,” the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) has created an issue document targeted to the next President and Congress: “The Internet in Transition: A Platform to Keep the Internet Open, Innovative, and Free” (full PDF here)

From the abstract:
This document examines a broad range of issues the next President and Congress must address in order to keep the Internet a powerful engine for innovation, economic growth and democratization. The policies outlined in this paper describe …

I’m sitting in a hotel room in New Haven, trying to finish an article for First Monday, but then I received a call from my wife suggesting I turn on PBS, as Frontline is airing an amazing report on “Growing Up Online.” It is a thoughtful treatment of the topic that, in their words, “takes viewers inside the very public private worlds that kids are creating online, raising important questions about how the Internet is transforming childhood.”
The show’s website has some nice supporting material, including a discussion of how many …

Wired has posted the results of their survey of the major ISPs regarding their tracking and data retention policies. I’ve created a table summarizing the results:

How long do you retain records of the IP addresses assigned to customers?
Do you store URLs of the websites that people visit?
Do you allow marketers to see anonymized or partially anonymized clickstream data?
Have you been in contact or had discussions with the government about how long you should be keeping data?
Do you oppose data retention?

AOL

“limited period of time”
No
No
“No comment”
“Working with industry & Congress”

AT&T

varies but “within …

Is this the inevitable consequence of privatizing access to the NSFNet backbone? From Press Esc:
The average broadband download speed in the US is only 1.9 megabits per second, compared to 61 Mbps in Japan, 45 Mbps in South Korea, 18 Mbps in Sweden, 17 Mpbs in France, and 7 Mbps in Canada, according (PDF) to the Communication Workers of America.
CWA President Larry Cohen testified before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, in support of a discussion draft of the Broadband Census of America Act.
“Good data is the foundation …

With the dissertation completed (the defense still awaits), I can now turn my attention to a few other projects for the summer months. Primary among them is finishing up a book collecting various interdisciplinary research papers on Web search engines I’m editing with Amanda Spink.
Also on the summer agenda are two exciting workshops. First, I’ll be attending the “Surveillance Summer Seminar” hosted by the Surveillance Project at Queens University:
The Surveillance Summer Seminar provides an intensive, multi-disciplinary learning experience that addresses key issues of surveillance studies, and in ways that would …

Here’s a chilling first-person account of a university professor who was asked to stop using the anonymizing network software, Tor. University IT and campus security staffers came knocking on Prof. Paul Cesarini’s door asking why he was using Tor, and requested that not only he stop using it himself, but also that he not teach his students about it. While sensitive to the problems that a campus IT department faces, Cesarini correctly took a stand for academic freedom, and won’t let this kind of intimidation prevent him from discussing Tor …

Gaia Bernstein, an Associate Professor at Seton Hall University School of Law (and guest blogger over at Law & Technology Theory) has a thoughtful post about how particular diffusion characteristics made the Internet vulnerable to the establishment of what she calls “non-privacy norms.” She writes:
I believe two diffusion characteristics made the Internet vulnerable to this paradox and may make other technologies that share these qualities susceptible to the same paradox. First, the Internet is characterized by a critical mass point quality. This characteristic is prevalent among interactive technologies. A critical …

The FTC is holding a set of public hearings November 6-8 called Protecting Consumers in the Next Tech-ade, bringing together a diverse collection of scholars and practioners “to examine the key technological and business developments that will shape consumers’ core experiences in the coming ten years.”
The agenda is expansive, covering topics ranging from general Internet trends, social networking, user-generated content, RFIDs, marketing and communication trends, and user privacy. Presenters include Helen Nissenbaum (NYU; my dissertation advisor), Vint Cerf (Google), Ari Schwartz (CDT), danah boyd (SIMS-Berkeley), Esther Dyson (CNet), David Farber …

[I am one of the organizers the following graduate student symposium to be held this fall at NYU]
CALL FOR PAPERS
Identity and Identification in a Networked World:
A Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Symposium
When: September 29-30, 2006
Where: New York University
Submission deadline: July 5, 2006
Increasingly, who we are is represented by key bits of information scattered throughout the data-intensive, networked world. Online and off, these core identifiers mediate our sense of self, social interactions, movements through space, and access to …

Wired News reports that David Clark is beginning work (within academia and with the help of the NSF) on a new “clean slate” internet architecture:
Clark, who served as chief protocol architect for the government’s internet development initiative in the 1980s, wants researchers to re-imagine the infrastructure that connects computer users around the world.
The problem with today’s internet, according to Clark, is that its 30-year-old design, which allowed for the development of exciting new applications (the world wide web, e-commerce, file sharing, you name it), is now stifling further growth.
A new …