Welcome to the new Networked Publics site! We've moved to this more modern server, built a new home page, and are getting ready for the next draft of the book. We'll be posting more soon!

The page aggregating conference-related material can be found here

Saskia Sassen will be at the Netpublics research group, speaking on Networks, Power & Democracy, March 23, 2006, 2:00 — 4:00 pm

at the Annenberg Center for Communication, 734 W. Adams Blvd.

Between Hoover and Figueroa, street parking available on Adams.

Saskia Sassen is the Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago, and Centennial Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. Selected publications include Denationalization: Territory, Authority and Rights (2005), Digital Formations: Information Technologies and New Architectures in the Global Realm, Princeton University Press (2005), Global Networks/Linked Cities (2002), Guests and Aliens (1999), Globalization and Its Discontents (1998), Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization. (1996), The Global City: New York London Tokyo. (1991. New ed., 2001), and The Mobility of Labor and Capital (1998).

Her books have been translated into thirteen languages. She has served as co-director of the Economy Section of the Global Chicago Project, a Member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Urban Data Sets, a Member of the Council of Foreign Relations, and Chair of the newly formed Information Technology, International Cooperation and Global Security Committee of the SSRC.

For more information please contact
JoAnn Hanley
Networked Publics
USC Annenberg Center
213 743-2524

SAVE THE DATE: The Networked Publics Conference is on April 28 and 29!

A note of caution about the networked publics revolution is sounded by Directgov, the UK's new one-stop government portal in a survey released on March 6. According to the survey, which of course would seem to validate the site's strategy of consolidating “public services all in one place,

The most recent issue of the Economist carries the surprising news that America has finally caught up to the rest of the world in text messaging, surpassing Germany, Italy, and France. What took us so long? Cheap calling plans meant that there was little reason for texting while incompatible devices and the extra cost carriers frequently charged for texting didn't help. Meanwhile the burgeoning adoption of mobile phones by young people and, surprisingly enough, the reality show “American Idol,

Kazys Varnelis, visiting scholar with the Networked Publics program at the Annenberg Center for Communication will be speaking on Saturday, February 18 at “Philip Johnson and the Constancy of Change,

The era of telegraph has finally come to an end. Effective 27 January, Western Union announced that it is no longer sending telegrams. The company will remain, having made a transition to wiring money some time ago. While this was predictable—the last time I saw a telegram was in the early 1980s and even that was unusual—what are the next forms of media to die? Always an inferior format, cassette tape must be on its last legs by now. More ominously, Quantegy, formerly Ampex, the last US manufacturer of reel-to-reel recording tape had a near death experience last year. So, too, the days for analog broadcast television continue to draw near, even though the original US date of transition in 2007 has been extended. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for media!

Technorati Tags: networked publics

Slashdot carries a story today about a project by UC-Irvine's Beatriz da Costa in which cellphone and GPS bearing pigeons (...just how much cargo can a pigeon haul into the sky?...) will report back about the pollution they encounter.

Technorati Tags: locative media, network culture, networked publics

So maybe Google is really living up to its motto, “Don't be evil.

2006 marks the start of the second half of the decade and just an hour ago, Apple announced Macbooks with dual-core Intel processors as well as dual-core Intel powered iMacs . Assuming there are no unpleasant surprises, these machines should be able to run Windows, Mac OS X, and various flavors of Linux. In this brave, new world, the OS, becomes nothing more than a form of media. Meanwhile, Google is rumored to be providing an alternative vision of an OS that can run through your web browser. Certainly they have to do something with all that iron they own and those minds they employ.