(Re)Inventing the Internet: Surveillance and Phenomenology

I had the pleasure of participating in a one-day colloquium called "(Re)Inventing the Internet" in Vancouver in February. This presentation was sponsored by the ACT (Applied Communication Technology) Lab at SFU's school of communication. MP3s of the presentations have recently been posted, and this means that there are a number of great "academic" podcasts to be had now on the colloquium website. There are a number of links that are related to my presentation that I'd like to provide: This paper is one that I developed with Andrew Feenberg and Learningspaces.org researcher Grace Chung over a year ago. It uses phenomenology as a way of investigating the ongoing colonization of the lifeworld by technological systems. One more item to link to in this connection is an interesting paper that applies some of the notions of surveillance to e-learning platforms (to the detriment of the WebCTs of this world). This is Screen or Monitor? Surveillance and disciplinary power in online learning environments by Bayne and Land. At least indirectly, this paper points out the merits of using "open" Web 2.0 technologies in education.