Pretty Cyberspace Report Pretty


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."

Audio First Part (4.8 Meg)
Audio Second Part (4.9 Meg)
Audio 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 ..."

Audio First Part (3.0 Meg)
Audio Second Part (3.6 Meg)
Audio 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."

Audio First Part (4.5 Meg)
Audio Second Part (4.8 Meg)
Audio 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."

Audio First Part (4.6 Meg)
Audio Second Part (3.8 Meg)
Audio 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."

Audio First Part (4.4 Meg)
Audio Second Part (3.9 Meg)
Audio 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!

Audio First Part (4.4 Meg)
Audio Second Part (4.4 Meg)
Audio 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...
Audio First Part (4.4 Meg)
Audio Second Part (4.6 Meg)
Audio 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.