Topics
We
have identified six topics to be explored both as distinct
entities as well as themes that are intersecting or cross-cutting:
1)
Network Structures and Dynamics (Knowledge of Networks):
While the study of networks goes back many decades, it has
taken on tremendous new importance in the age of the personal
computer and the Internet. Analysis of these means of communication
and information storage has in turn stimulated new theories
about the emergence - creation, maintenance, dissolution
and reconstitution - of networks. The goal here would be
to identify the principles undergirding network theories
with explanatory force in order to arrive at a general theory
of networks.
2)
Networks of Knowledge: The Internet is transforming the
creation of scientific knowledge in all disciplines. The
knowledge sector of the modern world grows continuously,
and its growth has been facilitated and accelerated by the
new technologies. How do universities produce and disseminate
knowledge in the age of the internet? How do businesses
and governments create rival and overlapping networks of
knowledge? How do local nodes and knowledge brokers function
within a global network? How has the internet redistributed
or reinforced the power to create, control and disseminate
knowledge? At the same time questions of knowledge networks
extend in other directions: into the arts (questions of
the "networks" by which paintings, films and books
are produced and distributed) and into history (the ways
in which production and dissemination of knowledge has changed
over time).
3)
Network Hazards: The effects of new network technologies
are ambiguous, facilitating both ease of communication and
undesirable opportunistic behavior that creates problems
such as invasion of privacy, viruses, personal surveillance,
and theft of stored information including plagiarism. We
wish to study these problems especially as they spill over
from technical management to such areas as privacy rights
and property rights. How does civilization as a
whole address predatory behavior enabled by the internet,
and what are the ramifications? In short, how can we anticipate
and protect against attacks to the global cyber infrastructure?
4)
Regulation and Policy: Internet technologies have had the
specific effect of facilitating fraud and creating ambiguity
about the legitimacy and validity of written materials.
What are the specific ways in which the possibilities for
fraud are heightened? What are the best ways to address
societal concerns in a networked environment? What are the
areas of genuine ambiguity, in which one could argue about
the legitimacy or authority of documents hosted on the cyberinfrastructure?
Any discussion of regulatory mechanisms must include an
examination of the inequities and disparities revealed by
our increasingly networked age, as well a closer look at
those who live on the very edge of networks.
5)
Network Communities: Local and Individual. One effect of
the Internet has been a proliferation of Internet communities
arising from voluntary, grass roots organizations, encompassing
everything from book clubs to political hate groups. In
many instances, small, regional identities have become more
important than state or national identities. What are the
distinctive features of this novel sociological formation?
To what extent can the Internet and computer technologies
be a force for democratization, and what kind of impact
can they have on our entire political system? The rise of
the virtual community also points to the fact that the very
definition of locality must be revised. In a networked universe,
the strength of the association is paramount, but paradoxically,
the very bonds that create a community can be easily broken
and reassembled, "disembedded" and re-embedded
into a new community.
6)
Network Communities: Global and International
There is already a fierce discussion of whether new electronic
technologies are seriously undermining the nation-state
and facilitating the formation of new kinds of global communities.
These include international financial communities, ideological
communities, off-shore businesses, humanitarian movements,
and illegal activities. These global networks have the effect
of undermining physical borders and creating new, hard-to-police
international flows of information and capital, with commodities
and people following in their wake.
