Citizen Scientists: Student Experiences in the GTP Georgia/Russian Exchange Project

During the past two years, the Global Thinking Project, through grants from the United States Information Agency, facilitated student and educator exchanges among 10 schools in Georgia (USA) and Russia. This paper describes the results of the experience during the 1995–1996 school year. One hundred students lived in each others' homes for two three-week periods, participated in environmental research activities in American and Russian communities, and lived in the context of each others culture. Students were helped by their teachers to construct ideas about environmental topics outlined in the curriculum of the Global Thinking Project (http://www.gsu.edu/~wwwgtp/gtp.html). Students and teachers were involved in two episodes of problem identification, data collection and analysis at five sites in each country, and two Global Environmental Summits in Moscow and Atlanta. The students activity is described as that of a citizen scientist—one who combines the process of science with public policy decision making.     

R＆D能力对国际竞争力的动态影响——基于我国电子及通信设备制造业的研究

以波特的钻石模型为分析工具进行理论分析,指出电子及通信设备制造业R&D能力可通过创造知识资源;传播、应用新知识;增强从业人员的能力,提高人力资源素质;积累内部技术能力,了解外部可用信息,提高生产要素的利用效率等方式改善生产要素条件.并通过钻石模型中各因素的互动影响产业国际竞争力.最后以我国电子及通信设备制造业为对象进行了实证研究.研究结果支持了上述观点.     

Which Lessons Are Learned? Best Practices and World Bank Rural Telecommunications Policy

The World Bank has been the largest multilateral source of rural telecommunications financing in developing countries since the mid-1960s. This article analyzes World Bank-sponsored studies of rural telecommunications initiatives in Chile, Peru, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Malaysia to identify which lessons the bank draws from them and recommends for other countries. The World Bank's preference for a “best practice” approach in its research leads it to attribute successes and failures to a narrow scope of factors that tend to agree with its economic policy priorities. Instead, rural telecommunications practices should be analyzed within their broader socio-institutional and cultural contexts in order to enable cross-situational applications, and a broad array of stakeholders should be involved in shaping the lessons learned.     

Privacy in (mobile) Telecommunications Services

Telecommunications services are for long subject to privacy regulations. At stake are traditionally: privacy of the communication and the protection of traffic data. Privacy of the communication is legally founded. Traffic data subsume under the notion of data protection and are central in the discussion. The telecommunications environment is profoundly changing. The traditionally closed markets with closed networks change into an open market with open networks. Within these open networks more privacy sensitive data are generated and have to be exchanged between growing numbers of parties. Also telecommunications and computer networks are rapidly being integrated and thus the distinction between telephony and computing disappears. Traditional telecommunications privacy regulations are revised to cover internet applications. In this paper telecommunications issues are recalled to aid the on-going debate. Cellular mobile phones have recently be introduced. Cellular networks process a particular category of traffic data namely location data, thereby introducing the issue of territorial privacy into the telecommunications domain. Location data are bound to be used for pervasive future services. Designs for future services are discussed and evaluated for their impact on privacy protection.Parts of this paper have been presented at Ubicomp 2002 in Goteborg and E-CAP 2003 in Glasgow.     

种群演化模型与实证研究

本文通过解释单一种群及两个种群之间的演化过程,分析它们的一般演化规律,对我国电子及通信设备制造业的专利种群的演化提出了4种假设,并就其演化规律进行了实证研究。结果显示:定量模型的分析结果支持这4个假设。     

海南生态经济发展的主导产业模式

本文依据罗斯托的起飞理论,提出了海南经济发展的主导产业模式：大力发展以热带高效农业为主体的生态型农业、以热带产品工业为主体的生态型工业和以热带海岛旅游业主体的生态型第三产业,建立以海南热带自然资源为基础禀赋、以高新技术为投入要素和以现代化生态管理为导控系统的主导产业发展模工划确保海南实现生态省建设战略目标的基本路线。     

STUDYING THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS

This article proposes a methodology for studying the social history of telecommunications grounded in the interrelations and contaminations between Anglophone and Continental literature; its originality lies in the fact that it presents and discusses both traditions. Before tackling the central theme, the reasons for studying the history of telecommunications will be discussed and three different approaches will be considered. The first is the constructivist approach which, examines ‘relevant social groups’ and their decisions regarding telecommunications. The second is socio-economic and considers both path dependence theories and concepts useful in understanding the network economy: natural monopolies, economies of scale, externalities and public services. Finally, the macro-systemic approach will be considered. In our proposal these three approaches, deriving from both the Anglophone and Continental schools of thought, form a methodological basis for studying the history of telecommunications.     

Culture,Technology, Communication: Towards an Intercultural Global Village,edited by Charles Ess with Fay Sudweeks. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. 355 pp. $26.95. ISBN 0-7914-5016-3

Abstract

The evolution into the age of information has produced a number of consequences that were never considered during the move into this new era. Among them is a phenomenon called the electronic immigrant. The worldwide telecommunications infrastructure has made it possible to telecommute from any location where the worker can link up with the network. Thus, new potentials and problems have evolved along with the electronic technology. This article examines this new worker and identifies the chief problems and promises created by the concept of the electronic immigrant.     

The Framing Years: Policy Fundamentals in the Internet Design Process, 1969–1979

Those responsible for the technical decision making that created the Internet found they had to think through a number of social policy issues, from privacy and intellectual property rights through the definition of common carriage and environmental problems, along the way. Such issues were framed by conceptualizations of the nature of the network, goals to be served by the network, users and uses of the network, and the design criteria that served as policy principles developed during the early years of the design process. This article examines such policy fundamentals as they developed through the technical document series that records the Internet design process, the Internet Requests for Comments (RFCs) during the first decade of that process, 1969–1979.     

Dimensions of concern over telecommunications privacy in the United States

Abstract

Analyses of attitudes and concerns about privacy from a national survey sample of 1,532 adult Americans in 1988 revealed several separate dimensions. A modification of Tryon's method of clustering variables (third‐order correlations) yielded groups of variables whose meanings were much more interpretable than they had been when factor analysis was initially used. We tested the validity of the clustering by a highly comprehensive system of item analyses. The main findings were that (1) respondent concerns over telephone privacy were not related to other aspects of privacy, (2) interest in devices like Caller ID that enable recipients to know the number of the caller were not related to other aspects of telephone privacy, and (3) general privacy concerns under conditions where the respondent and the other party know each other were independent of those conditions where they do not know each other. Implications for telecommunications policy and new services are discussed.