Cyberspace Report
The Cyberspace Report is a public affairs radio show which aired on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Irvine,
California (Orange County, just
south of Los Angeles) for two
and a half years. Currently in hiatus, a hostage of Jim's
Ph.D. studies, the Cyberspace Report has explored social issues of
computing using interview and topic shows. We also have a
list of shows that have aired to date.
The host for the Cyberspace Report is Jim Whitehead, a graduate student in
Information and Computer Science
at the University of California,
Irvine. Jim is in the Software research area, and is actively
researching issues surrounding the introduction of hypertext into
software development environments.
Jim welcomes your comments on the Cyberspace Report. He
can be reached at: ejw@ics.uci.edu
Available Shows
Shows are in Sun audio file format, 8-bit uncompressed, 8000 Hz, u-law (.au).
They can be listened to on most hardware platforms by using appropriate
helper applications. For more information on Internet audio formats,
please consult this
Audio FAQ.
Copyright Law and the Commerce Department White Paper
Richard Stallman, MacArthur Fellow, and Founder of the Free Software
Foundation, discusses the drawbacks of the Commerce Department's white
paper on proposed changes to copyright law. The white paper is titled
Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure.
Opponents of the white paper's recommendations are called the
Digital Future Coalition.
In the interview Richard mentions an article by Pamela Samuelson
titled
The Copyright Grab, which appeared in the January, 1996, issue of
Wired magazine. The
NegativWorldWideWebland is another good source
of information on this issue.
"More precisely, you'll trade away this freedom and it won't make a big
difference in how many books are available for you to read, but not
having this freedom will make your reading of them a lot more
inconvenient and cumbersome, and perhaps more expensive."
-
First Part (4.8 Meg)
-
Second Part (4.9 Meg)
-
Third Part (1.2 Meg)
Xanadu
Ted Nelson, hypertext champion and pioneer, author of Computer Lib and
Literary Machines discusses the
Xanadu hypertext system and its
future, the recent Wired article, and gives advice for aspiring visionaries.
About half of this interview was transcribed for an article
in the Winter KUCI Program Guide titled
Orality and
Hypertext: An Interview with Ted Nelson.
"What would I recommend to a young visionary today? {laughter} Very
straightforward, learn to live with short term goals and not delegate.
I trusted them {laughter, pause} famous last words ..."
-
First Part (3.0 Meg)
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Second Part (3.6 Meg)
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Third Part (6.6 Meg)
For more information about Xanadu,
click here.
Literary Hypertext
Mark Bernstein of Eastgate Systems discusses literary hypertext,
his hypertext authoring tool
StorySpace, and the literary hypertext
offered by
Eastgate Systems.
"We are all tied up in interlocking stories and painfully aware that
we are at the intersection of all sorts of stories and we don't know
when we're the star and when we are a role player, when we're the hero
and when we're the villain, and when we don't matter."
-
First Part (4.5 Meg)
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Second Part (4.8 Meg)
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Third Part (3.2 Meg)
Post Modernism
Mark Poster, Professor of History and Information and Computer Science
at the University of California, Irvine discusses
postmodernism and
the Internet.
"The notion of postmodernity relates to what you're calling cyberspace
in the sense that it fits in with the general transformation of
cultures ... toward something like a mass culture through electronic
mediation."
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First Part (4.6 Meg)
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Second Part (3.8 Meg)
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Third Part (5.7 Meg)
Virtual Communities
Marc Smith, a fourth-year doctoral student in the
Dept. of Sociology at
U.C.L.A. discusses his paper,
Voices
From the WELL: The Logic of the Virtual Commons about
virtual communities
on the Well BBS.
"It would be a mistake to say that in cyberspace you can't get hurt.
You can get hurt in cyberspace, and in ways you might not imagine."
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First Part (4.4 Meg)
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Second Part (3.9 Meg)
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Third Part (1.9 Meg)
Municipal BBS
Keith A. Kurtz, Project Manager for PEN, an online bulletin
board system for the City of Santa Monica discusses this leading
edge system. Discover the many surprising ways PEN helps the City of Santa
Monica be more responsive to its citizens. Listen and find out
how PEN was used in the aftermath of the Northridge earthquake!
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First Part (4.4 Meg)
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Second Part (4.4 Meg)
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Third Part (3.6 Meg)
Online Romance
A first hand account of online romance by
`Pete', an avid role-playing game player on America Online.
Pete found that in the case of online romance, the line between
role-playing and real life is very blurry. Listen for what happened
when Pete met an online paramour for a steamy weekend...
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First Part (4.4 Meg)
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Second Part (4.6 Meg)
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Third Part (1.4 Meg)
What has happened in the aftermath of the interview?
We Welcome Your Ideas!
Have a good idea for a future episode of the Cyberspace Report? Let
us know!
FTP Access
The Cyberspace Report can be accessed via anonymous ftp to
liege.ics.uci.edu. The Cyberspace Report files are
located in directories under
pub/ejw.
KUCI 88.9 FM
KUCI Home Page
Rights and Usage
Lisa Covi and Jim Whitehead reserve all rights to the
Cyberspace Report. The Cyberspace Report may be distributed for
not-for-profit purposes so long as we are informed of the usage. We
welcome links to this page.