Center for Advanced Study - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign : events : The Age of Networks: Social, Cultural and Technological Connections

cas: initiative 2005-2006

The Age of Networks: Social, Cultural and Technological Connections Making Public-Service Telecommunications: Past And Present Challenges For Networked Information Infrastructures

		Friday • April 14 and Saturday • April 15, 2006 Third Floor • Levis Faculty Center 919 W. Illinois • Urbana
	Telecommunications networks have long constituted a core infrastructure, supporting an array of social, cultural and economic activities, and vested with varying public service responsibilities. Historically, how, why and to what extent have telecommunications systems been endowed with such public service functions? What are the lessons of this history for us, today, as a newly versatile and capacious telecommunications infrastructure becomes the foundation of an intensively informationalized social process? Leading international scholars will address these urgent issues, with two tasks in mind: first, to extract what may be learned from the historical record about the uneven movement to define public service principles and to enact public service policies; and second, to begin to bring this knowledge to bear on contemporary policy making, by attempting to distinguish the key challenges and issues we face during our own momentous work of infrastructural development. Symposium sponsored by: Center for Advanced Study • Graduate School of Library and Information Science • Institute of Communications Research • Office of the Provost Organized by: Dan Schiller (GSLIS) "Making Public-Service Telecommunications: Past and Present Challenges to Networked Information Infrastructures," Info, Dan Schiller, guest editor, Vol. 9 (2007). Edited versions of papers presented at CAS conference held April, 2006.


	Friday, April 14
	9:00 - 9:30am	Coffee and pastries
	Morning Session
	9:45am	Welcome Dan Schiller (UIUC)
	10:00-11:45 am	Looking Back: North American Origins of Public Service Telecoms Patricia Mazepa (York University, Canada) Dan Schiller (UIUC)
	Afternoon Session
	1:15-3:00 pm	Vectors of Change and Conflict (part I) Jill Hills (University of Westminster, England) Michael Bernstein (University of California at San Diego)
	3:00-3:15 pm	Break
	3:15-5:00 pm	Vectors of Change and Conflict (part II) Greg Downey (University of Wisconsin at Madison) Andrew Calabrese (University of Colorado)
	Saturday, April 15
	9:15 - 9:45am	Coffee and pastries
	Morning Session
	10:00-11:45 am	Looking Forward: Needs, Blockages, Forecasts Colin Blackman (editor, info and foresight, England) Christian Sandvig (UIUC)
	Afternoon Session
	1:15-3:45 pm	Looking Outward: Needs, Blockages, Forecasts Pradip Thomas (University of Queensland, Australia) Yuezhi Zhao (Simon Fraser University, Canada) Vincent Mosco (Queen’s University, Canada)
	3:45-4:15 pm	Break
	4:15-5:15 pm	General Discussion: Conclusions and Directions