The conference was enriched by a strong international presence. In addition to many presenters from Canada, speakers represented institutions in Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan, Sweden, Singapore, Finland, France, Australia, Greece, Israel, Italy, Brazil, Taiwan, Scotland, and Germany, and included other international researchers currently at U.S. and Canadian universities.

The program had some decided tracks that were created by clusters of interest rather than by location or label. By far the largest cluster, with 11 sessions, revolvedaround the study of virtual communities, online relationships, and interaction. There were seven sessions each on research methodology; legal issues, such as privacy, security, and intellectual property; and gender, sex, and gay/lesbian/transgender perspectives. Six large panel sessions and a buzz group discussed the digital divide in North America and around the world. All of these topics reflected the attendees' concern aboutthe impact of technology on society. E-commerce, education, software design, library and publishing issues, and health and medicine generated somewhat less, but still notable, interest.
 

Keynotes
Each day, keynote speakers addressed high-profile questions that challenged commonly held assumptions: whether the privacy and child-protection legislation accomplishes its goals, which Internet research methodologies are most useful in the long term, what role international and racial identity plays in the Internet's image and practice, what limitations exist in the public debate on artificial intelligence (AI), and whether the field of "Internet research" is indeed a field.

Privacy specialist Anita Allen, visiting professor of law at Yale University and professor of law and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, started the conference on a critical note by discussing the inconsistencies in the current laws and statutes related to privacy. Specifically, she raised questions about the required parental involvement in approving young teens' use of certain Internet programming by pointing out that the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which went into effect in April 2000, may in fact serve as a barrier to some young people when using sites designed for them. In Allen's opinion, these requirements single out the Internet since there are no comparable restrictions or mandated gatekeepers on teens' use of other media. You can find her books and papers at http://www.law.upenn.edu/fac/aallen/cv.pdf.

The next day's keynote speaker was Sheizaf Rafaeli, co-founder of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communications, head of the Center for the Study of the Information Society, and a professor in the Graduate School of Business Administration at Haifa University in Israel. Rafaeli urged researchers to move away from commonly researched subjects such as disintermediation, reintermediation (now on the rise), the digital divide (an overdone topic, in his opinion), technological determinism, content as king, the Internet stock bubble, individual effects (such as addiction, alienation, or loneliness), online journalism, push vs. pull, and the bandwidth gold rush. These "boom-or-bust" topics represent "old orthodoxies," he said.

In one of many references at this conference to Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone, Rafaeli urged attendees to seek out and research stable, long-standing theoretical constructs as dimensions for calibrating research. He enumerated eight ongoing dimensions of online communications as worthy of continued academic examination: 1) the multimedia and multisensory nature of Internet communications, 2) gatekeeping in an orderly anarchic medium, 3) the elasticity of synchronicity, 4) the underutilized potential of hypertext, 5) interpersonal reactions to interactivity, 6) the use of logs and records, 7) greater use of simulation and immersion, and 8) the subjective value of information. Rafaeli's work can be found at http://gsb.haifa.ac.il/~sheizaf.

The Saturday morning keynote speaker was Lisa Nakamura, an English professor at Sonoma State University in California. She addressed discrepancies between the marketing of the Internet and the realities of the Internet experience. In the high-impact television ads she played for the audience, she demonstrated how the Internet is marketed as a space in which race and ethnicity are no longer problems. The reality, however, is not only the digital divide,but the presence of stereotypes in role-playing on the Net and general findings in cultural studies that "race matters" in Internet discourse.

In Nakamura's opinion, Cisco's memorable series of "Are You Ready?" television ads that showed children of many cultures worldwide (none of them using computers) citing factoids about the universality of the Internet are post-colonial era, utopian images of happy children in native settings all speaking accented English and communicating uplifting messages. These ads both allay the fears of American audiences about racism and convey the Internet as a culture one joins rather than a service one purchases. These ads are not racist in themselves, she said, but still deal with race in a colonial way. Nakamura's latest book, Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity and Identity on the Internet, will be published next spring. Two of her papers available online are "Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet" (http://maple.grove.iup.edu/- en/workdays/Nakamura.html) and "Keeping it (Virtally) Real: The Discourse of Cyberspace as an Object of Knowledge"(http://epsilon3.georgetown.edu/~coventrm/asa2000/panel4/nakamura.html).

Rhetorical theoretician Barbara Warnick (http://depts.washington.edu/spcom/fac-bw.htm), author of the forthcoming Critical Literacy in a Digital Era: Technology, Rhetoric, and The Public Interest and professor of speech communication at the University of Washington, focused her Saturday afternoon presentation on the debate among the techno-elite about the future of artificial intelligence. Using her stated standards for public discourse as a guide, she severely critiqued Ray Kurzweil's speculation in The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999) that human intelligence will be surpassed by machine intelligence in the 21st century. She contrasted his approach to that of the more cautious Bill Joy in his April 2000 response in Wired, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html). Warnick's presentation ended with a response from Ramona, a talking avatar who is Kurzweil's online alter ego, projected from a large overhead screen. Warnick referred those interested in engaging in the continuing debate on AI to Wired 8.07 Rants and Raves (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/rants.html), the cyber-elite discussions at John Brockman's Edge (http://www.edge.org), and Kurzweil's own site (http://www.kurzweilAI.net), where one may converse with Ramona.

In the final keynote, titled "Internet Research: For and Against," Phil Agre (http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre), an associate professor of information studies at UCLA, analyzed the parameters of the "Internet research" field and provided career advice to practitioners. Acknowledging that Internet research is not a "field"in the traditional academic sense and is more than a "trading zone" among fields, he said it was something more important: a crossroads at the boundary of the technological and the non-technological that comprises individuals with unique trajectories who can combine diverse elements in new ways.

The field of Internet research, Agre argued, ought to be a networking system for these "unique hybrids" that develop relationships with many fields and specialties. He urged individual participants to see themselves as hubs of their own wheels, and to pursue spokes in many directions, thereby developing relationships with several fields and specialties. He urged institutions to find ways to support and accept this new reality. Agre's popular newsletter, The Red Rock Eater News Service (http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/rre.html), focuses on the social and political aspects of networking and computing. His thoughts in "Networking on the Network" (http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/network.html) and his incisive, entertaining, and slightly tongue-in-cheek "How To Be a Leader in Your Field" (http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/leader.html) are must-reads for 21st-century professionals on or off the Net.
 

Workshops
As if these highly charged, challenging, and intensive presentations didn't create enough overload in and of themselves, they were only the tip of the iceberg. Of the 400 attendees, 247 were speakers, some of them presenting two or more papers. The following are some highlights and findings that interested me:

• The data on young people's use of the Internet was striking. A survey and focus-group study of 1,500 teens and their parents—reported by a member of the Pew Internet & American Life Project—found that the Internet and especially instant messaging play a pivotal role in teenage life, that teens are savvy managers of their online identities, and that their schoolwork has changed as a result of the Net. Just a few interesting figures: 73 percent of teens areonline; 74 percent of them use instant messaging; 48 percent say the Net improves relationships with their friends; and 37 percent have used the Internet to say something they would not have said in person.

 
• The impact of the above behavior is already seen among college students. At another session that featured research about libraries, attendees learned that college students spend, on average, more than 14 hours a week instant messaging, 8 hours surfing the Internet, and only 15 hours studying. Another study, conducted in 1999 by AOL/Roper Starch, found that 55 percent of those surveyed said they preferred the Internet to libraries, and 37 percent found reading online comparable to reading a book. Initiatives to customize library services and make them more convenient and relevant to course work seem to be the direction in which college libraries are moving.

 
• A good deal of the interest at this conference was on the interactive, rather than informational, aspects of the Net: chat, instant messaging, e-groups, e-mail, and collaborative art. These functions relate most directly to cultures and cultural change. A remarkable 84 percent of all Internet users are reported to have gone to an online community. A major Pew study on how Americans use all kinds of e-groups will be issued soon.

 
• Some of the presenters were involved with The Pew Internet & American Life Project, the largest and longest-term research effort that attempts to understand the impact of the Internet. A massive amount of Pew findings is available online (http://www.pewinternet.org). Generally, the Pew results indicate the positive impacts of Net use, such as broadening users' social world, improving communications with family and friends, providing more frequent contacts among users, and offering an "experience effect"—documentation that experienced users are 5 times more likely to say they keep in touch with more people. Pew has an Open Research Initiative (http://www.pewinternet.org/ori/index.asp) that makes data available to scholars, funds scholarly writing, encourages scholars to collaborate with Pew, and issues e-bulletins (http://www.pewinternet.org/signup.asp).

 
• Studies cited in a session that explored the Internet's effect on social capital showed considerable increases in all kinds of social contacts and sustained participation over time—even among people who are not usually "joiners"—in two "wired" geographic neighborhoods. There was, however, no measurable increase or decrease in social relationships due to the Internet among other people simply engaging in synchronous and asynchronous communications on the Net. Internet use, especially e-mail, is seen as an "add-on" method of overcoming distance with existing kin and friends and gives those involved in political issues a new medium for expressing their interests.

 
• In a session on the digital divide, Susan B. Kretchmer, a researcher affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, cited research that goes beyond conventional economic assumptions about why the gap exists. One study of African-Americans who were not Internet users showed that some had given the medium considerable thought, had strongviews on it, and had determined that the Internet did not "fit" their needs, either because they had no reason to use it, the services that existed did not meet their needs, or because media images relating to Internet success models were not as appealing as others. Kretchmer urged researchers to look beyond demographics to examine the symbolic underpinnings of Net usage: what drives usage, what position the Net plays in people's lives, and what meanings people give to the Internet. "We know who uses it," she said, "but not why." Kretchmer is co-chair of the National Communication Association Task Force on the Digital Divide (http://www.natcom.org), a multidisciplinary project designed to bridge the current gap between research, policy, and practice. It's creating a clearinghouse of success stories and best practices that should become an important new global resource.

 
• In a session on fringe groups on the Net, Todd Frobish, an assistant professor in speech communications at Iona College, attributed the success of a fee-based pornography service not to the content itself—which is similar to other content available free on the Net—but to the very astute use of promotional language and the creation of an ethos that appeals to the user's desire for confidence, control over others, notoriety, community, and status. Others in the Internet business could learn how close attunement of rhetoric to an audience can pay off, he advised. With 60,000 Web sites, the Internet sex industry is the most prolific, controversial movement online, Frobish said, and accounts for 20 percent of total online revenues.

 
• Illustrating how the "old guard" can prevail in a new publishing environment, a session on scholarly publishing included a presentation that explained how PubMed Central (http://www.nih.gov/about/director/pubmedcentral/pubmedcentral.htm), a closed electronic publishing system controlled by scholarly societies and publishers in the biomedical field, evolved from E-biomed, a proposal for a more open system modeled on arXiv.org, which is used successfully in the physics and mathematics fields and was preferred by the scientists themselves. This session also included an interesting analysis by Ewa Callahan of Indiana University (http://www.indiana.edu/scit/publications.html) of findings on comparisons and scholarly perceptions of electronic and print research journals. (See the working paper at http://www.slis.indian.edu/csi/wp01-04.html.)

An Important Emerging Resource
Almost without exception, even among those with narrow research interests, Internet researchers exhibited a "big picture" understanding of the Net. This conference and AoIR encourage a rich, multifaceted discussion, and are excellent vantage points for learning about experimentation with the aspects of this medium and the many creative projects that attempt to address inequities brought about by its adoption.

Attitudes ranged from the obvious animosity of a few toward the "big business" aspects of Internet commercialization to a genuine understanding for the role that large enterprises play in advancing this medium.

The AoIR is positioning itself as a center for the exchange of findings and methods for academic researchers. With the exception of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, there seems to be little overlap between this body of work and that normally quoted in commercial and trade press coverage of Internet research.

It was a pleasure to participate in a conference at which there was virtually no hype or promotion of new commercial products. I emerged from 4 information-packed days with a much clearer picture of the Internet as a cultural phenomenon. I gained many new prisms through which to focus my own observation of current and future developments and a reassuring confidence that hundreds of bright, well-informed researchers have correctly assessed the power of the Internet, are documenting its progress, and are pinpointing societal concerns that arise from its use.
 
 

Wallys W. Conhaim, an information industry strategic planner and futurist, writes the Internet column for Link-Up. Her e-mail address is wconhaim@conhaim.com.