Cyberidentities
Canadian and European Presence in Cyberspace
Publication Year: 1999
Published by: University of Ottawa Press
Contents
Preface
Beyond Infrastructure: Canadian and European Identities in Cyberspace
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pp. 5-12
What do car enthusiasts, compulsive hardware upgraders and gun nuts have in common? Aside from the fact that they are usually men, their respective fetishes confine them to a static world in which tools verge on the transcendental and their own selves become identified with the objects of their affections. Which can more or less be said of longserving...
Part One: Stationary Travelers?
The Trans-Canada Highway vs The Information Highway: The Road Less Traveled?
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pp. 15-20
Montreal. Monday, May 3, 1971. Steve and I leave on our cross-Canada odyssey that will take us from a quiet suburb of Montr�al to the "exotic" West Coast and Vancouver. We have been planning this trip for over a year, poring over maps, plotting mileage and side trips, saving money, and trying to figure out if there will be room for my guitar in...
On the (Information) Highway: So Is This a Journey or What?
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pp. 21-28
Many years ago, one afternoon in Upstate New York while I was attempting to reprimand my very young daughter Megan for something - I forget what - she looked up at me and said, "Dad, don't get hyper." Unbeknownst to me I was at that moment commencing a paper, for delivery in Antwerp, to the Association of Canadian Studies in...
Part Two: Cyberlaw
Human Rights in Cyberspace
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pp. 31-46
This essay explores the application of the international human rights regime to the governance of cyberspace. Cyberspace is the virtual communicative space created by digital technologies. It is not limited to the operation of computer networks, but also encompasses all social activities in which digital information and communication technologies (ICT) are deployed. It thus ranges from computerized reservation systems...
Internet and Public Order
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pp. 47-54
Although in the post-modern era deregulation has become the rule in Western jurisdictions, attempts at regulating the Internet reality demonstrate a reverse orientation. Should we consider such attempts as contradicting the current trend? Or should we view them as the expression of a general bewilderment due to the fact that humanity is standing on the threshold of virtuality? Anyway, if we accept, as we should, that the use of the Internet is related with the existence of several...
The Legal Aspects of Digital Signatures
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pp. 55-79
In its recently adopted Communication "A European Initiative in Electronic Commerce" the European Commission announced its intention to come forward with a specific initiative on digital signatures (EC, 1997). This initiative will aim at ensuring a common legal framework encompassing the legal recognition of digital signatures in the Single Market, the setting up of minimum criteria for Certification Authorities, as...
Part Three: Communities in Cyberspace
How Comfortably Does the Internet Sit on Canada's Tundra? Reflections on Public Access to the Information Highway in the North
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pp. 83-97
In 1987, Thomas Streeter used this same passage to introduce his critical and insightful analysis of the cable industry entitled, "The Cable Fable Revisited: Discourse, Policy, and the Making of Cable Television," in which he argued that the democratic promise of a large body of discourse used in the early seventies to describe new technologies and, in particular, cable, created "a sense of expert consensus, of...
Policy-Making and the Value of Electronic Forms of Public Debate: Underpinning, Assumptions and First Experiences
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pp. 99-109
One of the ways that new information and communication technologies are expected to contribute to the renewal of democratic processes is through an enhancement of societal debate within governmental policy processes (Van Dijk, 1991; Percy-Smith, 1996). This type of "teledemocracy" usually takes place in the form of electronic debates that are...
Two Canadian Models of Communities on the Net: SchoolNet and Community Access
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pp. 111-119
In this paper I will outline recent experience in Canada with two national initiatives, SchoolNet and the Community Access programs. These two programs are helping Canadians, especially our youth, to live, learn and earn a living in an increasingly knowledge-based society and economy....
Teledemocracy in the Province: An Experiment with Internet-Based Software and Public Debate
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pp. 121-132
With the popularization of the Internet, concern for forms of teledemocracy has been rekindled and discussions intensified. An explosion of conferences, some accompanied by publications, has taken place recently with reference to virtual democracy, electronic democracy and similar expressions. Only a small number of the initiatives reported,...
Part Four: (Business) Opportunities on the Net
Work and Community in Networked Organizations
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pp. 136-145
The many new types of computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies provide co-workers with an increasing number of ways to exchange information. The traditional face-to-face meeting and office memo are now supplemented by electronic mail (email), listservers, bulletin boards, the Web, the telephone, voice-mail, videoconferencing and group decision support systems. As organizations make greater use of CMC, there has...
ICTs for SMEs: The SME Wins on the Information Highway
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pp. 147-153
During the months of February, March and April of 1997, Fabrimetal and CRIF-WTCM teamed up with the local Belgian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (comprising 35,000 members) to launch an ICT promotion program for the Belgian SMEs, concentrating on Electronic Commerce and on Co-operative Networking between SMEs. It was felt that thanks to Internet technology, ICT was suddenly within the reach...
The Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts (CEECT) and Cyberspace
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pp. 155-161
For the last sixteen years the Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts (CEECT) at Carleton University in Ottawa has been preparing, with the help of computers, scholarly editions of major works of early English-Canadian prose. We have as a result participated actively in the technological revolutions of the past two decades. Despite our use of the electronic highway, Carleton University Press has so far continued to...
Part Five: The Role of Government
The Position of Flanders with Regard to Some Internet-Related Matters
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pp. 165-158
According to a recent Gallup survey, European businesses want government to do more to police the Internet. More than 80 percent of companies surveyed said regulators should do more to prevent fraud on the Internet, 78 percent wanted an increased effort to target pornography and the confidentiality and security of data...
Qu�b�cois Policy and the Development of the Information Highway
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pp. 169-182
The purpose of this article is to describe the Qu�bec government's position with regard to the Internet. Right away, I should emphasize that for the moment, despite its sovereigntist project, the Qu�bec government remains a provincial government within the Canadian framework. That means that the government of Qu�bec does not control the entire range of legal and regulatory instruments that would permit it to frame - at a...
Advancing Canada's Information Highway: Strategies for the New Millennium
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pp. 183-193
In the 1994 Speech from the Throne, the Government of Canada announced it would develop a Canadian strategy to address the challenges of the Information Highway. Later that year Industry Minister, John Manley, established the Information Highway Advisory Council (IHAC), a 29-member body drawn from private industry, the cultural community and consumer groups, to provide advice on major issues related to that...
Electronic Commerce Policy and the European Commission
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pp. 195-199
The Internet and electronic commerce currently enjoy enormous interest. Citizens are curious and for many of them e-mail has already become an additional means to communicate with friends and relatives. Business is keen to explore the new opportunities but are still wary of perceived risks. Governments are mobilizing efforts to examine the validity of their legislation for the new electronic forms of business....
References
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pp. 201-210
Abstracts
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pp. 211-218
About the Authors
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pp. 219-220
E-ISBN-13: 9780776615738
E-ISBN-10: 0776615734
Print-ISBN-13: 9780776604930
Print-ISBN-10: 0776604937
Page Count: 224
Publication Year: 1999
Series Title: International Canadian Studies Series
