[Sigah-l] RE: [Sigcrit-l] SIG-AH collaborations

[Ralph Dumain]

I'm not a member of ASIST, so I'm disqualified from voting on 
anything.  But I want to point out that "critical theory" was in the 
original description of SIG/AH, and I cut it out when rewriting the mission 
statement.  I think the mission statement is perfect as is.

Just to make sure we are on the same page, do we all mean the same thing by 
"critical theory"?  I understand the term to refer to the Frankfurt School, 
and secondarily to other developments in cultural theory over the past 
three-four decades.  I cut 'critical theory' out of the mission statement 
because I thought it was too narrow and partisan a declaration for that 
purpose.  Critical theory as I understand it--about which I know a great 
deal, BTW--is one legitimate approach to theoretical and social criticism 
viz. information issues, but I think it is unwise to canonize one family of 
theoretical approaches in the mission statement.

I never heard of SIG-CRIT until now.  This must be a newer SIG.  Can anyone 
tell us what it has done?

As SIG/AH chair, I pursued a number of collaborations in my conference 
programs: with CR, III, BSS, perhaps others I can no longer remember (FIS 
perhaps?).

I should also point out that there were a number of interesting conference 
sessions I discovered at the meetings themselves, without having the chance 
to get in on a collaborative effort.  I'll have to resurrect my old 
programs, but there were a few great sessions of philosophical import.  I 
recall one in particular that occurred on the final afternoon time slot of 
the meeting, when everyone had pretty much gone home.  My guess is this 
scheduling was not accidental.

As for critiques, my impression as a member was that ASIS was essentially a 
combination of entrepreneurs and professors, whose interest sometimes 
overlapped but not always.  I remember one vocal social critic was Thomas 
Froelich [sp?].  I presume he is still active.  There have been other 
philosophical interventions; I remember a few in old issues of JASIS, 
mostly those of which I disapproved.  I did not think that philosophical 
profundity was rife in ASIS, and while I opened by big mouth a few times, I 
did not believe that making an issue out of it would do any good.

I gave an extremely provocative speech on virtual reality in 1984 that was 
condemned by many and appreciated by some for keeping everyone awake with 
its scandalous nature.  I remember an online debate over the renaming of 
ASIS, and I missed the point at which it was decided on.  I thought then 
that a suitable moniker for ASIS would not be what it became--ASIST--but 
rather the American Society for Information Commerce.

At 11:42 AM 2/21/2004 -0600, jrc0043 at unt.edu wrote:
>SIG-AH and SIG-CRIT missions are separated by time and focus
>I think.  AH (pre-critical theory) wanted to explore applications of
>information science to the arts and humanities, while CRIT (post-AH) seems to
>want to explore applications of critical theory to information science itself.
>
>In one sense, they are both involved in the intersection of
>multi-disciplines with information science, with broad
>implications for all sides of the intersection.
>
>john