Philip Thangsombat’s post

"The Blacksburg Electronic Village" – Joseph A. Wiencko Jr.

Joseph Wiencko talks about how the town of Blacksburg, Virginia evolved by the use of  electronic telecommunications.  This event took place back in 1993 and was a blueprint for future area evolvement. The Blacksburg project exemplified 4 essential characteristics for a successful electronic village:

            1. Involve every citizen in order to achieve a critical mass of users.
            2. Instead of focusing on the technology you must first focus on the human interactions.
            3. Have each application tailored for each user, don’t make it too difficult for some and                         too simple for others.
            4. Distribute the project in a timely manner giving citizens enough time to adapt to the                         change.

Since this took place back in the early 90’s there was no wireless internet available. Instead they used high speed modems, direct ethernet ports, ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), and Datakit (a voice/data multiplexing service). With the introduction of new technology, citizens were able to gather more information, with that new ability there came a higher demand for information. The town of Blacksburg had to update their information regularly on their website in order to meet those demands. Service providers began popping up in the area once the demand increased. The Blacksburg project was a great idea that helped spread technology and give people less fortunate the same opportunities as the rest of us.

I didn’t even realize this type of ordeal was taking place back in the early 1990’s. I thought it was a great idea to create a way for these people to gain the same knowledge we can. After reading this article it made me realize how technology has advanced within a 10 year period. There was no wireless access anywhere to be found back then and now wireless access can be spread throughout an entire city. I do hope they are continuing this trend at a faster pace nowadays. The technology now, makes it easier to do these kind of things.

John Emrick’s Post

The article I chose to bring to the class was focused mainly on bringing internet access to rural or poor areas of the world. The piece gave both technical and opinion related information about numerous processes being used around the world. The author raised questions about whether it was really necessary or right to prioritize internet connection to areas that may not even have running water. She also highlight how expensive ISPs were in 3rd world countries, especially in comparisons to the average gross income of the citizens. I thought the class responded well to the questions raised in my reading piece. I wish I had created some sort of visual to go along with my article because it may have made the discussion more entertaining.

Ben Petrazzini,  Mugo Kibati. (1999). The Internet in developing countries. Association for Computing Machinery. Communications of the ACM, 42(6), 31-36. Retrieved , from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 42209844).

Subjects:	Internet access,  End users,  Internet service providers,  Telecommunications systems,  LDCs,  Pricing policies,  Competition,  Internet access,  End users,  Internet service providers,  Telecommunications systems,  Pricing policies,  Competition
Classification Codes	5250,  8330,  9180,  9190
Locations:	US
Author(s):	Ben Petrazzini,  Mugo Kibati
Document types:	Feature
Publication title:	Association for Computing Machinery. Communications of the ACM. New York: Jun 1999. Vol. 42, Iss.  6;  pg. 31, 6 pgs
Source type:	Periodical
ISSN/ISBN:	00010782
ProQuest document ID:	42209844
Text Word Count	2631
Document URL:	http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=42209844&Fmt=4&clientId=8991&RQT=309&VName=PQD

Loretta’s Discussion Leader Post (Group 3)

Robert Weissberg (2003). Technology evolution
and citizen activism: The Net and the rebirth of limited
government. Policy Studies
Journal, 31(3), 385-395. Retrieved

, from Research Library database. (Document
ID: 424737921).

Article URL:

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=424737921&Fmt=3&clientId=8991&RQT=309&VName=PQD
Presentation URL:
http://students.washington.edu/iengtak/ppt_example/activism.ppt

Weissberg’s essay is concerned about how technology shaped policy.  To make his point Weissberg illustrates a number of examples showing how political activists today uses internet to form virtual community and to empower themselves.  Technology significantly breaks down the geographical boundaries; decrease activities/conference’s cost; and increase the number of potential activists.  Thanks to the NET, now people from all over the world can easily involve in a poltical agenda, protest or simply giving feedback to a particular policy.  Weossberg illustrates the transformation with two examples: school politics (home-schooling) and tax avoidance. There are abundant cases (Anti-Iraq War, Anti-Bush adminstration, pro or anti- abortion, just to name a few) that will support Weissberg’s argument that technology and politics are closely interviewed.  It should be noted that technology not only indicates the Internet although virtual community empowerment is what Weissberg focuses on.  As Professor Gill suggests in class, mobile phone text message also plays a very important role in mobilization.  Current examples of this argument is how people from all over the world use Internet to gather information and develop protest strategy before they join protests against the World Trade Organization  which was held in Hong Kong last month.

Tracy’s Discussion Leader Post

The article I read was titled “Politicians Search For The Web Advantage”.  I found this article in Proquest and the website to find it again is:

http://proquest.umi.com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/pqdweb?index=0&did=948418681&SrchMode=1&sid=2&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1139557199&clientId=8991

This article was very interesting and gave a lot of insight to just how important the internet is for politicians and their campaigns.  This story in particular takes place in

Massachusetts

.  The main points in this article are that not only is blogging becoming a way for people to back their favorite candidate, but for the politician it is free advertisement.  These websites that are made for campaigns not only get hits from tons of users every month, but they also receive hits from government computers so that they are aware of what is being said about them.  Aside from blogs, most candidates will buy websites for their campaign and this is used primarily for a way to raise money.