Sorin Adam Matei
Analysis, research, maps, and essays from Sorin Adam Matei.
Assistant Vice President for Partnerships in Strategic Defense Innnovation and Professor of Communication at Purdue University, Director of the FORCES initiative leads research teams that study the relationship between technological and social systems using big data, simulation, and mapping approaches. He published papers and articles in Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Information Society, National Interest, and Foreign Policy. He is the author or co-editor of several books. The most recent is Structural differentation in social media. He also co-edited Ethical Reasoning in Big Data,Transparency in social media and Roles, Trust, and Reputation in Social Media Knowledge Markets: Theory and Methods (Computational Social Sciences) , all three the product of the NSF funded KredibleNet project. Dr. Matei's teaching portfolio includes technology and strategy, online interaction, and digital media analytics classes. A former BBC World Service journalist, his contributions have been published in Esquire and several leading Romanian newspapers. In Romania, he is known for his books Boierii Mintii (The Mind Boyars), Idolii forului (Idols of the forum), and Idei de schimb (Spare ideas).
A surprising wake up call coming from the digerati camp. The “emergentist” party, which claimed that the best the net has to offer will come out of undirected, “random” interactions of the many (see wikipedia…) has gone too far. Now, according to…
a version of this article was published in the Romanian language national daily “Evenimentul Zilei” Dresden, one of the former East German cities reunited with the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990 has been finely restored over the past 15 years. A…
Follwing up on his smart Weekly Standard article , Andrew Keen posts on this blog, The Great Seduction, a very thoughtful comment on the Google-China debacle. The lack of guilt (doubled by an excess of guile) associated with how the cybergiant treated…
Larry Sanger’s talk at Purdue about the Future of Information is available. His talk summarizes his work in the area of mediated/stewarded collaboration.
Noshir Contractor, one of the most prominent reserchers in the field of social networks and communication technologies shared during his visit at Purdue U.’s Perspectives on Communication and Technology Graduate Seminar his most recent research on organizing the web information space utilizing…
Google Chief Rejects Pressuring China – New York Times BEIJING, April 12 — Google’s chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, whose company has been sharply criticized for complying with Chinese censorship, said on Wednesday that the company had not lobbied to change the…
Nosh Contractor gave an interview to PRI’s To the Point on the virtues (and fallings) of online communication. The interview starts 24 min 30 sec into the show. Details about the topic.
SPCM 529, NC, “Communication Networks” Professor Noshir Contractor University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign & Professor Peter Monge Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California Available via Access Grid and Polycom Videoconference 3 – 6 pm Tuesday, Central (4 – 7 pm…
The metaphor of organization-as-networks directs attention to the dynamic nature of the process of organization as an emergent, evolving, and dynamic. At a global level, theorists have engaged with different forms of interdependencies, whether social, political or economic, as exemplified by Castells’…
Larry Sanger, the first chief editor of Wikipedia and considered by many to be a co-founder of the popular website together with James Wales, its current leader, will give a talk today at Purdue on The Digital Universe — What would the…
In the context of Larry Sanger’s meetings and talks at PURDUE this Newsweek issue points to the onging “we” revolution on the web. How did we get from the “Daily Me” to the “US” services such as delicious, flickr, etc.? This is…
USA Today’s Kevin Maney is suggesting that the 1980s series wasn’t all fiction, after all… There might be something New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson isn’t telling us about this spaceport he’s building. Something, perhaps, related to what the military didn’t want to…
China has bought all that was for sale in the famed Russian science town, Akademogorsk. Formely the brain behind the Soviet military-industrial complex, the city, just outside Nobosibirsk, in Siberia, has for many post-communist years languished in poverty and despair. Chinese cash…
An interesting and predictible spin on the location aware concept… Museums Begin Offering Cell Phone Tours – Yahoo! News Museums Begin Offering Cell Phone Tours By DAN GOODIN, Associated Press Writer Fri Mar 17, 2:56 PM ET SAN FRANCISCO – Art lovers,…
We were discussing the other day in class (COM 250H) the Net neutralityprinciple, which if violated would destroy the great philosophical underpinning of the Internet: its edge-to-edge openness and simplicity. The same The Economist, which attacked the issue with great gusto in…
Giant website gobbler Google is on a rampage. The latest member of the collective is Writely… Writely – The Web Word Processor The Web Word Processor …that’s now part of Google. · Share documents instantly & collaborate real-time. Pick exactly who can…
The US vs. Google lawsuit is looming. At first sight the issue at stake is the US government’s right to demand US media companies to provide data about the aggregated habits of US consumers. In the background, the issue seems to be…
The Internet is a great equalizer. Even for Al Qaeda… ABC News: Al Qaeda’s Web of Terror bin Laden and Zawahiri still use these e-mail services to send their directives through the Internet. Not directly, of course, but through intermediaries, usually bodyguards,…
The Economist takes a stance, contrarian as usual, on the issues of “preferential service” and premium fees on the Internet. Economist.com | Articles by Subject | The internet Yet some packets are already favoured, even on today’s internet. Businesses routinely pay a…
Have you ever thought about the Internet as a giant piece of flypaper? Or as a bottomless La Brea Tar Pit? No? Maybe you should… The Exponent – Purdue’s Independent Student Newspaper Web cam use requires caution By Sarah Michalos Campus Editor…
NY Times takes a moderately supportive position in the matter: The High-Speed Money Line – New York Times Are consumers going to start having to spend a lot more to surf the Web? Phone and cable companies have stoked those fears recently…
Clay Shirky, star digeratus and influential web thinker-tinkerer, ponders on the 80/20 rule, equality and future of blogging. Building on an interesting article from a couple of years ago, he affirms that if the blogosphere appears to be mercilessly elitist (in terms…
What exactly does a blogger do, why, and more importantly, how can you make money out of it? The answer is in New York Magazine… Blogs to Riches – The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom — New York Magazine Blogs…
I tried for a couple of weeks Yahoo’s new email interface. It promised to do a lot of things simple web interfaces could not. Dragging and dropping files and messages, complete listing of messages, faster searches, etc. Most of the functionalities resembled…
Larry Lessing, ever the technodeterminst, thinks that the solution for our neverending tragedy of the trust commons called phishing is in Microsoft’s hands. The next elixir is a new method of encrypting messages, layered in the upcoming version of Microsoft Windows. But…
McCain takes a stance in USA TODAY on the Google-China story: We believe that American companies must develop and agree to abide by a code of conduct governing their interactions with repressive regimes, and we applaud the suggestion by some companies that…
Kim Jong Nam is Kim Jong Il’s son and will probably become the ruler of the Communist Korean state at some point. Little is known about him, but is believed that he is a computer geek. In the Korean Communist tradition, each…
Hearings today in Congress related to the Chinese policy of some major IT companies WASHINGTON – Four U.S. high-tech companies on Wednesday found themselves branded collaborators with the Chinese government in suppressing dissent in return for access to a booming Internet market.…
Congress is busily drafting a law that would prevent IT giants like Microsoft and Google from repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot. The law would prevent US media/telecom companies from hosting major portions of their networks in locations where human rights are…
Answering to criticisms related to its subservient behavior in China Yahoo! seems to be saying “I’ll do it, if Mickey does it first”. Microsoft, that is… » Yahoo Wants Collective Action Against Chinese Web Regulations : Search Engine Journal Yahoo’s basic dilemma…
Moira Gunn, the NPR technology correspondent, will start her visit at Purdue’s “Perspectives on Communication and Technology” graduate seminar later today. In addition to giving two lectures in our seminar she will give a public talk tomorrow, at 3 PM, titled “The…
It is often said that modern communication technology levels the playing field. Rich or poor, educated or not, Indian, Chinese or American, all can now own or use a cell phone or a computer. Furthermore, the expectation is that the more pervasive…
Yahoo accused in jailing of 2nd China Internet user – Yahoo! News BEIJING (Reuters) – Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO – news) provided evidence to Chinese authorities that led to the imprisonment of an Internet writer, lawyers and activists said on Thursday, the second…
Doug Englebart’s Mother of All Demos (1968) launched at least two central concepts for modern computing: long-distance on-line collaboration and interaction with computers via visual graphic displays. The demo movie is now available on-line via Google Video and the Invisible Revolution site.…
The “other Internet.” A network of networks created by peer-to-peer networking of wireless access points. An idea that has been the main buzz in the underground, punk networking world for some time. The FON project, coming out of Spain (see link below…
It happened in Greece, but the company is British… Greek officials: Government phones tapped – Europe – MSNBC.com Mobile phones belonging to top Greek military and government officials — including the prime minister — and the U.S. Embassy were tapped for nearly…
The US Congress has started an investigation into the new Google, MSN, Yahoo policies in China. Interestingly enough, Microsoft and Yahoo! believe that the ball is in the government’s court: Google, Microsoft, Cisco, and Yahoo! were yesterday roundly condemned for “collaborating with…
**Top 10 U.S. newspapers by average weekday readership in millions.** *USA TODAY 7.1 *The Wall Street Journal: 5.1 *The New York Times: 5.0 *New York Daily News: 2.7 *Los Angeles Times: 2.4 *New York Post: 2.1 *Chicago Tribune:1.9 *The Washington Post: 1.8…
A big name corporation (can’t tell the name, I might be sued, but it isn’t Microsoft) came up with this absolutely amazing innovative device… Announcing the New Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge Device It’s a revolutionary breakthrough in technology: no wires, no electric…
Microsoft figured out a way to avoid coming across as the bad guy… Microsoft says it is setting new policies on shutting down Web journals after its much-publicized squelching of a well-known Chinese blogger at the request of Chinese officials. The Redmond…
… as loud by any other spelling… SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0) – Google (Research) is getting lambasted online for its new policy of accommodating China’s Internet-censorship rules. But with its new Chinese search engine, Google.cn, Google isn’t living up to its reputation…
The New York Times mentions several solutions: The OpenNet Initiative (www.opennet.net), an international human rights project linking researchers from the University of Toronto, Harvard Law School and Cambridge University, tracks Internet censorship and the techniques used to evade it. To surf the…
The Economist thinks that there is a silver lining in the Google-China story… The fact that Google will indeed use disclaimers and will not unroll services that will make it vulnerable to collaboration with the secret police is something that deserves attention.…
As if free mp3 downloading wasn’t aggravation enough for the music industry… Preloaded iPods prompt legal ponderings By Kevin Maney, USA TODAY A blossoming trade in Apple iPods and other digital devices pre-loaded with movies, TV shows and thousands of songs is…
Slate in on the Google-China debacle. A treat! Great Firewall of China By Michael Weiss Posted Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2006, at 6:28 PM ET Bloggers are overwhelmingly horrified by Google’s decision to censor search queries in China. They’re also less than thrilled…
The Pixel that Jobs built got a pair of wiskers! FOXNews.com – Business News – Disney to Buy Pixar for $7.4B LOS ANGELES — The Walt Disney Co. (DIS) said Tuesday it is buying longtime partner Pixar Animation Studios Inc. (PIXR) for…
It’s official, in exchange for better acess to the Chinese market Google agrees to censor the searches requested by Chinese users. FOXNews.com – Technology News – China’s Google Search Engine to Be Censored SAN FRANCISCO — Online search engine leader Google Inc.…
Is this a form of business discrimination/monopolistic behavior, or just an attempt to make the Internet a little bit more efficient? But the nation’s largest telephone companies have a new business plan, and if it comes to pass you may one day…
Since none of our guests specializes in policy issues, especially in an international context, I would like to suggest the following story as a subject of online (via this blog) debate. This is one of the several topics I will propose between…
Steve’s Powerpoint presentation can now be found on the web.
I posted the talk on the web. For optimal viewing first download the file (preferrably through a campus computer). The file is very large (110MB), so be patient. Also, the quality of the slides is not very good. I asked Steve to…
A warm “Welcome!” to Steve Jones, who gave us a wonderful intro the the big Whys? related to Communication Technology. I am looking forward to his talk tomorrow, on the impact of New New Communication technologies. As you start posting your stuff…
A piece of news I plucked from the Purdue News Service stream made my heart leap with joy. Two of my Purdue colleagues have won the Microsoft competition for designing the computer of the future. Their design slaughters the desktop computer to…