Academia

ECIS day 1

Probably the best thing about today was the final panel I attended entitled Publishing high impact IS research in top journals: Tips and traps. The panelists were Kalle Lyytinen (Editor In Chief JAIS), Richard Baskerville (Editor EJIS), Juhani Iivari (SE, JAIS) and Dov Teâ??eni (SE, MISQ).

All the panelists gave a personal view of the roles of the editors, reviewers and authors in the life-cycle of a paper. Lots of useful and thoughtful tips such as “When is a theoretical development a theoretical development?” and some more basic (or obvious) such as: “never submit to a journal you haven’t read”

In addition to this I have presented my paper so now I can lean back and enjoy the conference…

Posted on by mklang

Learning with blogs?

After the summer I will teach my course in Computer Ethics at the University of Göteborg. The course tends to cover the typical areas of computer ethics (integrity, property, harmful content, community etc etc). The main problem is getting the students to â??getâ?? that technology has an ethical dimension.

Once the students realise that there is an ethical dimension or problem they tend to react very enthusiastically.

In order to help them â??get itâ?? I am planning something a bit different. I want to get the students blogging and have a minimum requirement of posts in the area we will be covering. The basic idea is that the students will have to find, adapt and post information. Hopefully this process will engage and awaken the students interest.

So I am looking for input:

Does anyone have any similar experience of this?
How successful was it?
What were the pitfalls and strengths?

All feedback will be appreciated…

Posted on by mklang

14th European Conference on Information Systems

Tomorrow the 14th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) begins. This is the biggest annual European IS conference and this time it has the additional bonus of being in my hometown. I have been accepted to the track on â??Open Source, Open Access and the Open Information Societyâ?? with a paper entitled â??Informational Commonsâ??.

The venue: The School of Economics and Law

The conference tracks include: Communities and New Forms of Organizations – eBusiness – eGovernment – Enterprise Systems – Grand Challenges of System Development – Human Computer Interaction – Information and Knowledge Management – IS and Organizational Change – IT in Tourism and Travel – Living in, and Coping with, the society – Mobile Communication, Telematics and Ubiquitous Computing – New Technologies, Innovation and Infrastructure Development – Open Source, Open Access and the Open Information Society – Philosophy and Epistemology of IS Research – Strategic Management of IS and IT – The Economics of IS

A harbour view near the opera

The programme (including a list of all papers) can be found here.

Posted on by mklang

Online Civil Disobedience

One of my research areas is the odd but interesting area of online civil disobedience. The basic problem her is whether or not the internet can be used in political forms of protest. The trend has been to limit the ability to use denial of service (even manual attacks) and web page defacement as legitimate forms of political protest. My opinion has been that this discriminates against online activities. For my arguments read the chapter Participation in the draft of my thesis Disruptive Technology here.

Five years ago the groups “Libertad” and “Kein Mensch ist illegal” (No Human is Illegal) organised 13000 people in an online blockade (With a script- client- based distributed denial of service attack) of the airline Lufthansa. The protest was against the companies part in the deportation of asylum seekers.

Now the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt says online demonstration is not force but a legitimate form of political protest.

Decision by the Frankfurt Appellate Court (in German only, 22.05.2006)
http://www.libertad.de/service/downloads/pdf/olg220506.pdf

Statement by Libertad on the ruling (in German only, 1.06.2006)
http://www.libertad.de/inhalt/projekte/depclass/verfahren/libpe010606.shtml

In German (1.06.2006)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/73755
In English (2.06.2006)
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/73827

(via EDRI newsletter)

Posted on by mklang

Writing Disruptive Technology

Finally done. I handed in my edited thesis to my supervisor today. The work spans 268 pages split up into 1769 paragraphs, 9953 lines. Which became 101 956 words. It includes 7 tables and 2 figures, not including the cartoon in the acknowledgements.

Since I have already survived two seminars on the work with revisions after each now my supervisor will read the work again and I will be able to make minor changes after his comments.

From the brilliant Jorge Cham – PhdComics

Then its summer – not a lot happens then. With any luck I will avoid reading my thesis. Just let it be until the begining of August. Then the work is off to the printers and upon its return a copy of the work is nailed to the university notice board along with information about the public defence which will be in September (one of the days: 25th, 26th or 27th still undecided…). If I pass & survive my defence then I am well and truely finished with this project.

The title of my thesis is “Disruptive Technology” and it has the subtitle “Effects of Technology Regulation on Democracy” if you want to read the latest version download it here.

Posted on by mklang

Editing Hell

Editing my thesis is hell. Every time I pick it up to do some more work there is a physical feeling of lethargy which needs to be overcome. Thankfully a quote of Albert Camus keeps me on track. He wrote this in his personal notebook on September 30, 1937

It is in order to shine sooner that authors refuse to rewrite. Despicable. Begin again.

Albert Camus (1947) photo: Henri Cartier-Bresson

This was not written for others but I see it as a message to himself- a reminder that the work must be done. So ok – I am not Camus but I realise that when such a great writer needed to remind himself of the work that needed to be done…I feel comforted and begin again.

The thesis is now 101 815 words long. This is spread over 270 pages. An updated draft can be found online here.

Posted on by mklang

thou shall not plagiarize

Tomorrow I am giving another of my “thou shall not plagiarize” lectures to masters students. While I like giving this lecture since it gives an opportunity to get discussions going on the limitations between using other peoples work and stealing – I am sometimes concerned that the lecture may instead turn into “thou shall not get caught”

OK so I understand that the students don’t want to get caught , they are nervous and unsure about where the borders go. But there is still a nasty undercurrent of howto copy without getting caught in the questions many students ask.

Its very similar to the students who are very concerned about the number of pages an assignment must be without understanding the reason for this number or that the reader actually want content on the pages.

So the day begins with explaining plagiarism, references, writing etiquette and legal positions. Then after a short lunchbreak its off to grade two final essays…

TGIF.

Posted on by mklang

Examination

With the end of spring term we arrive at the wonderful world of examinations and in particular the examination of masters thesisâ??

Lots of students who have finally managed to pull together enough text sit nervously as we attempt to understand what they have learned and why they couldnâ??t write clearly.

Basically there are three groups

Pass â?? this includes everything from the adequate to the overachievers. The latter group are desperate for the highest grade and will question every attempt to criticise what they believe to be the ultimate thesis ever handed in at your department.

Fail â?? a tragic group. Includes those who have worked hard but simply cannot get the grade. Mainly because they cannot write or understand what they read. This group also includes the slackers who feel that by simply handing in numbered pages (preferably with the school logo on each page and lots of diagrams) they deserve not only to pass but also to have national holidays created in memory of them.

Cheats â?? they stole it off the Internet but still feel that somehow due to their superior intellect they will get away with it. They will protest vigorously if caught and explain that everything from world politics to the neighbours cat is to blame. The fact that they are attempting to pass of stolen work as their own does not seem to them to be wrong.

Thankfully this ordeal will soon be overâ?¦

Posted on by mklang

Read this book

The blurb on the back of the book is important since it has to interest the reader and at the same time be a factual discription – without being too long, complex or explanatory… So after a period of thought and procrastination this is what I have:

This work is on the democratic effects of attempts to regulate disruptive technology. By looking at the phenomenon of online civil disobedience, viruses, spyware, online games, software standards and Internet censorship this work shows the effects of regulation upon the core democratic values of Participation, Communication, Integrity, Property, Access and Autonomy.

Social interaction and organisation are, in part, shaped by the technology used. The social differences between the technology of snail-mail and the technology of e-mail are defined by features that the technology allows, and the limitations that constrain, the user modes of interaction. Therefore technological innovation and development over time affects the ways in which social interaction and communication are carried out. Certain forms of gradual technological innovation and development may be easily assimilated while other forms are more disruptive. This disruption can be seen in the way which new technologies affect the organisation of social interaction and are called, in this work: disruptive technology.

This work studies regulation as an attempt to come to terms with the disruptive effects of technology upon social interaction. This is done by focusing on the attempts to regulate the disruptive effects of Internet technology and the consequences of these regulatory attempts on the IT-based participatory democracy. In conclusion, this work will show that the regulation of technology is the regulation of democracy.

Would you read this book? If so you can download it here.

Posted on by mklang

Swedish Public Domain

Sweden, Swedish law and Swedes have a low understanding of the public domain (basically the time after copyright protection when the public is free to copy, use and adapt works, see for example Wikipedia) especially if one compares with the US approach.

One of the problems is that Swedish law does not have the concept of public domain but only the time after copyright. Americans have always been able to put things into the public domain, the closest Swedish version is extremely weak and involves releasing work anonymously (but this is NOT the same).

This â??lack of conceptâ?? makes the public domain more abstract and incomprehensible. The question is how can one increase the understanding of the public domain?

One way of not improving this concept is when the national public service radio & television begin to open up their archives but require users to have RealPlayer which is a closed standard. The whole concept is very much â??look-but-donâ??t-touchâ??

On the positive side one of the more inciteful writers on the topic is the Swedish scholar Eva Hemmungs-Wirtén her excellent 2004 book â??No Trespassingâ?? was published by Toronto University Press and in 2007 her work â??On Common Ground: a Cultural History of the Public Domainâ?? (working title) will be out.

Posted on by mklang