"Making Public-Service Telecommunications: Past And Present Challenges For Networked Information Infrastructures" organized by Dan Schiller

April 14-15, 2006
by:

Making Public-Service Telecommunications: Past And Present Challenges For Networked Information Infrastructures a two day conference by the Center for Advanced Studies "The Age of Networks" initiative.

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


Friday, April 14
9:00-9:30am Coffee and pastries

MORNING SESSION
9:45am Welcome
Dan Schiller (UIUC)

10:00-11:45am Looking Back: North American Origins of Public Service Telecoms.
Patricia Mazepa (York University, Canada)
Dan Schiller(UIUC)

AFTERNOON SESSION
1:15-3:00pm Vectors of Change and Conflict (part I).
Jill Hills (University of Westminster, England)
Michael Bernstein (University of California at San Diego)

3:00-3:15pm Break

3:15-5:00pm Vectors of Change and Conflict (part II).
Greg Downey (University of Wisconsin at Madison)
Andrew Calabrese (University of Colorado)

Saturday, April 15th
9:15-9:45am Coffee and pastries

MORNING SESSION
10:00-11:45am Looking Forward: Needs, Blockages, Forecasts.
Colin Blackman (editor, info and foresight, England)
Christian Sandvig (UIUC)

AFTERNOON SESSION
1:15-3:45pm Looking Outward: Needs, Blockages, Forecasts.
Pradip Thomas (University of Queensland, Australia)
Yuezhi Zhao (Simon Fraser University, Canada)
Vincent Mosco (Queen's University, Canada)

3:45-4:15pm Break

4:15-5:15pm General Discussion: Conclusions and Directions