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This dissertation examines the impacts of shifting federal and state regulation on localities and on their efforts to extend public access to new technologies by exploring how libraries, diverse community sites and commercial hotspots have configured their services and programs in Austin, Texas in the last decade. Historically, regulation to ensure public access to communication and information systems have been regarded in the United States as an expression of government's concerns about preserving the public interest in the media. Since the early 1990s, diverse policy initiatives promoting public access to information and communication technology (ICT) sought to fulfill ideals of equity and democracy in the information age. However, an increasing preponderance of neoliberal ideology in current policy discourses, coupled with the explosive growth of high-speed, mobile networks, and individual-based, social software applications are challenging traditional notions of public access in communication policy. Since 2002, federal and state governments have ended a decade of direct government support to local, non-profit and community-based programs that facilitated public access to ICT. Over the same period, they have increasingly pursued a market-oriented approach to broadband access through the unlicensed spectrum, encouraging private enterprises to provider WiFi and wireless services to consumers in restaurants, airports, and other public places. Such changes bear significant implications for issues of governance, participatory democracy and equity in the information age. The comparative case study of Internet access initiatives in Austin seeks to answer three interrelated questions. First, how has public policy facilitating the transition toward convergent media environments framed public access to information and communication technologies (ICT)? A framing analysis of federal, state and local regulation of public ICT access indicates increasing fragmentation of policy discourses on access. Second, what are the main characteristics of the field of public access to ICT in an American technopolis? Austin, a modern American Technopolis and pioneer of Internet access in the country serves as a site to assess the impact of fragmented regulation on public ICT access. Third, how has public access to new technology through the unlicensed spectrum been conceptualized by different access cultures in a shifting regulatory environment? A survey of Wi-Fi hotspots in Austin, interviews with stakeholders and secondary data are employed in analyzing how non-profits, private firms and the local government are configuring high-speed Internet access through the unlicensed spectrum.

An examination of Mary Austin's works and how she contributed to the culture of the Southwest.

One purpose of the national Model Cities Program was to reduce the incidence of crime and delinquency in poverty blighted areas to levels prevailing in the remainder of the community. A measurable goal projected by the Austin program was to reduce crime in its Model City Area (in comparison to the rest of the city) by at least 8.73 per cent during the operational years of the program. The central problem of the study was to examine the relationships between official crime rates in the Austin Model City Area in comparison to residual areas of the city. Robbery, burglary, and auto theft rates were singled out for intensive study over the six year operational period of the program to see if they were converging with comparable rates in the rest of the city. Ultimate implication: the Model Cities Program was probably a contributing factor in the reduction of selected crimes in the Model Neighborhood and census tracts containing it.

Senator Warren Robison Austin (R-VT) was appointed by President Harry S. Truman to be the US Representative to the United Nations in June 1946. While a member of the US Senate, Austin had been a great advocate for internationalism and the United Nations. His tenure as Representative lasted until January 1953. The growing pains of the new organization were complicated by myriad contentious problems, not the least of which was the dawning of the Cold War. Austin was caught between the Soviet delegation, who were bent on opposing virtually all US initiatives at the UN, and members of the Truman Administration who were adamantly anti-communist/anti-Soviet. This thesis examines the role that anti-communism played in establishing an atmosphere of distrust leading, at least partly, to the Cold War; and Austin’s role at the United Nations as regards three representative issues that confronted the international organization during his tenure. The first issue was how the Soviets and the Western Powers disagreed over the question of unanimity of the permanent five members in the Security Council. Next, I will show how irreconcilable differences between the United States and the Soviets thwarted the functioning of the Atomic Energy Commission of the Security Council. Lastly, the Korean War is examined as the first use of a military response by the United Nations to international aggression. Austin dutifully represented the administration at the United Nations, but often expressed his own less confrontational views in meetings, speeches outside the UN, and in letters to friends and loved ones. He held the United Nations to be a positive force for peace, while other members of the administration were stridently anti-Soviet and found the United Nations to be the perfect ideological battleground while acting unilaterally outside the organization. I will show how Austin had an idealistic view of the United Nations and maintained that it was the best vehicle for the maintenance of peace. Also how he was, initially, more even-handed in dealing with the Soviet delegation than his overseers in the Truman administration. He eventually grew weary of Soviet tactics and their alleged aggression in Korea leading him to harden his outlook.

Demographic and Demand Characteristics of Carsharing: A Case Study of Austin, Texas explores the use of geospatial analysis in order to understand the demand characteristics and market for carsharing services. A literature review was performed and the demographic characteristics of typical users of carsharing were established. A series of maps was created to geospatially identify concentrations of typical users and their location and access in reference to carsharing vehicle locations. The greater urbanized area of Austin, Texas located within Travis County was used as a case study for this analysis. The report demonstrates that geospatial analysis is a valuable tool to understand the spatial relationship between typical carshare users, nontypical carshare users and the placement of carshare vehicles. / text

Anthropological research discusses the potential of light to act as a social agent, influence culture and substantially effect the ways that people interact. To enrich this scholarship with ethnographic engagement the following analysis applies and expands upon these concepts while discussing a database documentary about the moonlight towers of Austin, Texas. Moonlight towers are historic street lights dating from the late 19th century that are no longer necessary to light the city and yet they remain as fine engineered sentinels, shedding mercury vapor luminance over the city. This is a meditative inquiry into the types of agency light has in particular spaces referred to in this work as the ruminating concept of lightspace. As a concept, lightspace refers to the experience of light in space and is concerned with how light illuminates and shapes the everyday, tracing fissures between inclusion and exclusion. This work acknowledges the existence of lightspace in order to show there are ways that light shapes our experiences of which we are only partially aware. In the midst of this attunement to the experience of light are valid ideas about how people in Austin, Texas relate to space and to each other. The work of Henri Lefebvre is used as a point of departure to develop the concept of lightspace. In The Production of Space, Lefebvre arrives at the conclusion that the experience of geographical space is fundamentally social by making connections between perceived space and conceived space to create lived space of the imagination (1978: 70). In this philosophy, perceived space as constitutes our lived, everyday experience of space, while conceived space is a translation of perceived space using knowledge, signs, and codes, such as a map. Lived space then is our own unique, individual negotiation of perceived space using conceived space. This introduction to lightspace shows how connecting perceived and conceived lightspace in Austin reveals a lived experience of light in the imagination. / text

This study was developed to identify the dynamics of family decision-making processes when purchasing a youth sport camps. Family decision-making has been an interesting subject in consumer behavior for many years but youth sport programs have not been widely studied. To examine the family decision process, both parents and children were asked to complete a web-based questionnaire in which they reported their perceptions of the relative influence of mother, father and child at each decision stage. Family members' influence in the purchase decision was analyzed using a three-phase decision stage model; problem initiation stage, information search stage, and final purchase decision. Both parents and children perceived parents to have the most influence at each stage. Parents perceived that between the husband and wife, decisions were mostly made jointly. Children had the most influence at the problem initiation stage which was consistent with previous literature regarding recreation and leisure service. As children's age increased, so did their relative influence over the purchase decision. The dominance of parents at the overall decision-making process and children's involvement at the beginning of the decision process indicates that youth sport program marketers should develop dual channel marketing strategies to effectively and efficiently reach decision makers at each stage of the process.

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