Wittenberg Summer School 2006

"Religion in American Politics and Culture" ist the topic of this year's summer school that will take place from July 31 – August 5, 2006 in Lutherstadt Wittenberg. The organizers encourage students from all disciplines, especially the Social Sciences, American Studies and Cultural Studies, from all German universities to apply. More information are available at the ZUSAS Web site: http://www.zusas.uni-halle.de

Course Web Site

More information on my Internet and American Society class are now available online at http://www.zusas.uni-halle.de/ss2006. The site includes handouts on the current week's topics as well as required and suggested readings.

Seinfeld and the Control of the Internet

Although the article does not cover the most recent developments, especially the Tunis Summit, Kenneth Neil Cukier's »Who Will Control the Internet« for Foreign Affairs (Nov./Dec. 2005) is still worth reading.

And I'm wondering, is it just me who believes to have discovered a certain reference to one of Seinfeld's most famous lines in this article? Not that there is anything wrong with that ...

SpOn about Bloggers and Reuters

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzkultur/0,1518,411819,00.html

[UPDATE]
Read also Thomas Knüwer's side of the story.

Back to the Future (II)

As for those in my class who have not seen this Internet archive yet: the Wayback Machine stores old versions of all Web sites once available on the World Wide Web (more or less) and has proofed to be a good tool for doing research on the younger history of the Internet and all kind of Web related issues.

Two examples:
The White House (1997)
University of Halle (1997)

(I really appreciate the usability of Web pages in the »good old days« again, by the way)

Back to the Future

Web sites dedicated to the first computer mouse:
http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/Archive/patent/Mouse.html
http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html
http://www.afrlhorizons.com/Briefs/Mar02/OSR0103.html

And this is how the »Internet« looked like in 1969:
http://www.sri.com/about/timeline/arpanet.html

(Not) Live from Lefkosia V

From my notepad:

»September 10th reality«
»memorial mania«
»military-industrial-entertainment complex«
»Cyberspace is God«

(Not) Live from Lefkosia III

University of Cyprus



The Nicosia Wall



Behind the Wall

(Not) Live from Lefkosia I

In a last minute decision, I changed my mind and brought my laptop to Cyprus. But since the hotel charged 23 Euro for Internet access per day, I dropped my plans for doing some »live blogging.« And found out about a comfortable Wireless LAN on the university campus just a few hours before departing from Cyprus…

America in Lefkosia

For any reason, the capital of Cyprus was chosen as this weekend's destination for scholars in the field of American Studies from all over Europe. In Lefkosia (Nicosia), they'll meet at the Biennial Conference of the European Association for American Studies (EAAS). So, since my dissertation project is on the history of the EAAS, I won't miss this chance to experience this organization »in action.« I actually considered doing some »live blogging« from there, but I'll probably leave my laptop computer at home. Not a smart decision at the starting point of a »career« as a blogger, I see ...

Blogging Class Heroes

»The Impact of the Internet on American Society« is the title of the class I'm currently teaching at Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany. As for me, this is a good reason to set up this blog after reading Weblogs on a regular basis for almost two years. It is also a good reason to do all this nerdy stuff try a more academic approach to the usage of Weblogs in class. Writing, reading, and communication on class projects—here, blog technology could proof to be useful especially when it comes to a more continous and collaborative work over the course of the whole semester. Though »traditional« e-learning platforms or tools (wikis!) might be somewhat more efficient, I really hope students will gain some valuable real world experience on the topics we will discuss in class. Therefore, all students are required to start their own blogs. And since most of them apparently didn't know anything about blogs a few days ago, the whole in-class-blogosphere-
under-real-world-conditions might turn ot to be a risky experiment indeed. At least, the blogs won't be hosted on university servers, so I won't be responsible for any technical or even legal complications ...

[Update]
The most critical student in class was the first one who set up his own blog