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.

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Philosophy

This paper argues that since media or technologies are extensions or abstractions of ourselves, the technologies that we performatively produce simultaneously function to (re)produce us. Technologies are highly social spaces which have the performative power to (re)produce the very 'materiality' of that thing we call 'reality.' The performative powers of technologies manifest as the powerfully (re)productive meaningmaking paradigms and regulatory controls in operation in a given culture. After considering the predominant paradigms performed through typographic and computing technologies, this paper investigates 'gender' as a performative site of social interface (re)produced in relation to these predominating technological paradigms. This paper further argues that in the context of the cyborg, 'gender' is exposed to be a map with no territory: in a world increasingly exposed as simulation, the material reality of 'gender' is power's effect. Finally, this paper considers the theatre in relation to typographic and computing paradigms, arguing that 'play' and the imagination, in world that is all representation, are crucial sites of social practice. Indeed, 'performativity' provides a means for understanding the agency, subjectivity, materiality, and politics of construction (re)produced through this, our simulated world.

No description available.

But suppose now that technology were no means, how would it stand with the will to master it? Martin Heidegger / Mais supposez maintenant que Ia technologie ne soit pas en moyen,comment ~a se comparerait avec Ie desir de la connaitre au fond? Martin Heidegger

Typescript. / Bibliography: leaves [203]-219. / Microfiche. / viii, 219 leaves ill

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008. / Committee Chair: Elizabeth D. Mynatt; Committee Member: Jay D. Bolter; Committee Member: Rebecca E. Grinter; Committee Member: W. Keith Edwards; Committee Member: Wendy A. Kellogg

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1986. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 362-368).

Societal trends have changed more in the last decade than they have in the last century. This is particularly prevalent in the education environment. Concepts such as Lifelong Learning (the continued learning/educating of an individual throughout his/her lifetime), New Competencies (technology that is now part of almost every skill in the workplace) and Telecommuting (more people working from home rather than traditional offices) have become common-place today (Twigg, 1996, pp. 1-2). Education delivery needs to provide for these societal changes in order to ensure competent individuals pass on to the next level of education and ultimately to the work force. With key trends in technology such as Digitization, Maturation and Disintermediation becoming common in the workplace, education delivery must address the ―Digital Divide. (Twigg, 1996, pp. 2-3). Historically, schools in South Africa have used traditional teaching methods that have stayed the same for the last century. Educational institutions in South Africa, in particular, the previously disadvantaged schools of the Eastern Cape, face various challenges such as the dwindling ability to collect school fees from parents of scholars and declining financial support from the government. In Chapter Seven of the Draft White Paper on e-Education, which was gazetted on 26 August, 2004, the DoE, as part of its implementation strategies, urged the private sector to respond by implementing ICT initiatives nationwide. Phase 1 of the strategy advocated that ―Institutions are connected, access the internet and communicate electronically. (Department of Education, 2004, pp. 37-40). This dissertation shows that it is feasible to create a communications’ network among South African schools. It is believed that such a network can add great value to the education system in South Africa. The potential for this network to address the gap in the Digital Divide is enormous. This dissertation examines various ICT communications’ technologies and isolates wireless communications’ technology as best suited for this purpose, due to the speeds offered by the technology and the cost structure associated with it. A case study examines a pilot installation of the network and endeavours to prove the concept.