About this Issue

The relationship of the Berglund Center for Internet Studies to Pacific University, its sponsoring institution, is quite a direct one.  We are a unit at Pacific, though we have our own budget and are not tied entirely to the academic year.  But any institution even loosely linked to the academic year of its host inevitably finds the beginning of each year an exciting one.

Fall, 2006, is particularly eventful at Pacific, where a new campus for the Health Sciences has just been opened in Hillsboro.  The new state-of-the-art Burlingham dormitory has its first group of residents.  And we are preparing to break ground for the Berglund Building, to be finished in January of 2008.

In addition to the excitement generated at Pacific, we have our own causes for celebration at the Center.  We begin the year with the largest budget in our now 6-year history.  This has permitted a greatly expanded cadre of highly accomplished student workers and the addition of a Berglund Student Fellow as well.  We will be selecting one student fellow annually, and supporting each of the previous fellows through to their graduation.  We are also inviting proposals from prospective Berglund Research Fellows (see call for proposals at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/proposals.php).

The generosity of our sponsors, Jim and Mary Berglund, has also permitted a greatly increased level of activities. We will be reporting on these in future issues, but for now note the addition of several new editors to support our increased research and publishing activities.

We will also be seeking close relationship with other Internet studies institutes, principally in Europe and Asia, in order to support even more widely distributed joint activities than has been so far been possible. Some of these will be supported via our Berglund Roundtable events.  For the roundtables, see: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/roundtables/index.php

As is fitting in this both thoughtful and innovative atmosphere at the Center, our August-September Fall issue is a highly varied one.

Our feature article, “Digital Hygiene: Clean Living on a Dirty Network: by Charles Boulet is found at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2006/03/cboulet.php.  This is the first of a series of regular features by Charles, who makes his debut as a new editor in this edition of Interface. He is a Canadian with a great deal of experience in industry. He is also studying for his optometry degree at Pacific’s College of Optometry. Charles has agreed to write a regular feature focusing on easy and immediately applicable steps that our readers can take to protect their electronic communications within an increasingly hostile environment. Welcome, Charles!

Our editor, Glee Harrah Cady, in  “Adversarial Conditions” found at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2006/03/gleecady.php approaches security from another perspective.  Glee sees security as a matter of risk and conflict.  She points out the many ways in which conflict can, in fact, be quite desirable, leading ultimately to better practices and services. Glee also welcomes comments on the blog she supports with her fellow Berglund editor, Pat McGregor at: http://interface.nithaus.org/

In this issue I review two books.  The first, by Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, is Crashing the Gate.  Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics. To me, this work is a prophetic glimpse behind the scenes of the startling defeat of Joe Lieberman at the hands of Ned Lamont in the  Connecticut primary.  I believe that there could be no better introduction to the politics of blogging than Crashing the Gate.”  See the review at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2006/03/armstrong.php.

The second review is of Alessandro Aurigi’s book, Making the Digital City.  The Early Shaping of Urban Internet Space, is found at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2006/03/aurigi.php  This work is a very dense and demanding analysis of urban planning as related to digital networks. But many interested in the impact of the Internet will, despite this rather forbidding focus, find the work extremely rewarding.

At Interface we have many valuable resources.  High among them are the pro-bono services of a true expert on law and the Internet, attorney Leonard D. DuBoff.  This area of law is so fast changing and so lucrative that very few experts are willing to write for a non-profit institution such as the Berglund Center. Leonard, however, not only writes on Internet related issues for us, but also takes full advantage of the Internet to update previous articles when subsequent events merit reconsideration.  In  “Now You See It, Now You Don’t REVISITED: The Copyright Owner’s Right to Terminate Licenses and Assignments” found at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2006/03/duboff.php
Leonard updates current legal status of copyrights and offers some sage advice.

Another of our editorial treasures is gaming editor Chris Pruett.  Chris couples real-world experience in writing and programming games to a very high ability to explain key issues to even non-gamers. In this issue he offers us “Painting into the Corner of the Conventional” found at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2006/03/pruett.php
 In this piece Chris shows us the key conflict within the industry, and explains the reasons why another crash is the industry is possible.  Chris also presented a Berglund Roundtable for us last Spring.  See it at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/roundtables/schedule/042006/index.php.

Professor Michael Geraci, Chair of the Media Arts program at Pacific University, offers us “Web Typography: Let Your Words Speak.  Part Two: What the research says about typographical improvements” found at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2006/03/geraci.php. The first part of this piece is found at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2006/02/geraci.php Taken together, they provide a wonderfully thoughtful and clear introduction to the key issue of legibility for web-delivered content. This should be useful to everyone who creates (or reads!) such materials.

For my editorial opinion piece, I offer  “Federal Data Aggregation: A Bad Idea” found at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2006/03/edit.php The question of means and ends for collecting data to prevent terrorism, or at least to minimize it, comes at us daily.  While recognizing the importance of the problem, I believe centralized caching of data to be the wrong solution to it.
As always, we hope that this issue of Interface finds our readers well and happy, and that they find it both interesting and informative.

Jeffrey Barlow
Director,
the Berglund Center for Internet Studies
Pacific University