Page 14 - Culture Technology Communication

Acknowledgments xiii

Teri Harrison, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA

Herbert Hrachovec, University of Vienna, Austria
Ang Peng Hwa, Nanyang Technical University, Singapore
Thomas L. Jacobson, State University of New York, Buffalo,
USA
Simon Joss, Imperial College, UK
David Kolb, Bates College, USA
Willard McCarty, Kings College, London, UK
Cliff McKnight, Loughborough University, UK
Sheizaf Rafaeli, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Lucienne Rey, Swiss Office of Technology Assessment,
Switzerland
Rohan Samarijiva, Ohio State University, USA
Slavko Splichal, University of Ljublijana, Slovenia

We would also like to express our deep appreciation to Ms. Margo
Boles (curator of the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, Univer-
sity of Virginia) and Mr. Anthony Wallis (Aboriginal Artists Agency,
Cammeray, Australia) for their delightful and efficient assistance in
acquiring permission to use Dini Tjampitjinpa Campbell’s painting.
On a first level, the painting is a conceptual map of connections
between important places—typically, waterholes, important geological
formations embedded in the religious/philosophical stories of specific
peoples, etc.—and thus serves as a powerful visual metaphor for the
Web as connecting information centers. Moreover, the painting is an
artifact of the oldest continuous human culture on the planet (esti-
mates range between 30,000 to 60,000 years) and is thus most appro-
priate for a volume examining culture and cultural changes, especially
in the face of various forms of what may amount to electronically-
mediated cultural imperialism. In particular, in using the dot style,
the painting incorporates modifications of Aboriginal art that are de-
signed to conceal elements of the map/story that are reserved only for
those deemed by tribal elders/knowledge-holders to be worthy of
learning the more complex and intricate aspects of the basic
map/story. In this way, the painting specifically reflects a cultural
change made in response to the European colonization of Australia—
and thus visually represents a specific solution to a central question of