News from
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Office of Communications
Stanhope Hall
Princeton, New Jersey 08544-5264
Telephone 609-258-3601; Fax 609-258-1301Contact: Patricia Coen (609) 258-5764
Date: April 2, 1999
Two Experts Debate the Role of the Internet
Princeton, NJ -- "The Embedded Internet" will be the subject of a discussion by author Philip E. Agre and David Post, co-director of the Cyberspace Law Institute, at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs on Tuesday, April 13, at 4:30 p.m. in Robertson Hall, Bowl Six.
"Now that the Internet is rapidly becoming integrated with the institutional world around it, we must reckon with the remarkably profound influence of the cyberspace ideology on our language and thinking," Agre has said. He rejects the legal theory of cyberspace as a distinct jurisdiction. "A more useful approach," according to Agre, "is to analyze how information infrastructure co-evolves with social institutions and to identify analytical categories that help us comprehend the genuine changes that accompany new digital technologies while transcending the boundaries of particular media."
Agre, an associate professor of information studies at UCLA, holds a Ph.D. in computer science from MIT, where he conducted his dissertation research in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory on computational models of improvised activities. He is the author of Computation and Human Experience and coeditor of Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape and Reinventing Technology, Rediscovering Community: Critical Studies in computing as a Social Practice. He edits an Internet mailing list called The Red Rock Eater News Service that distributes information on the social and political aspects of networking and computing to 4,000 people in 60 countries.
Agre's assertions will be challenged by respondent David Post, an associate professor of law at Temple University Law School who teaches intellectual property law and cyberspace law. He has published numerous scholarly articles on the law of cyberspace that have appeared in the Stanford Law Review, the Journal of Online Law, the University of Chicago Legal Forum, the Chicago-Kent Law Review, the Computer Law Reporter, and the Wayne Law Review. He writes a bimonthly column called "Plugging In" for the American Lawyer, and has appeared on the Lehrer News Hour, Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Court TV's "Supreme Court Preview," and PBS's "Life on the Internet" series.
The talk is sponsored by Princeton University's Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, which was created to improve the clarity, accuracy, and sophistication of discourse about the nation's artistic and cultural life, the Program in Science, Technology, and Ethics, the Forum for Media, Information, and Culture, the Computer Science Department, and the Woodrow Wilson School.