Author Archives

10 May 2016

Founding Director Visit to Quello Center

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Great to visit with Professor Emeritus Steve Wildman today at the Quello Center. He came back to MSU for student dissertations and a viva, but colleagues and I were able to fill him in on recent developments. We had an interesting discussion of set top box decisions by the FCC, which left me wondering if we are witnessing an electronic highway robbery?
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08 May 2016

Quello’s Aleks Yankelevich invited as an Adjunct Professor in MSU’s Department of Economics

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The Quello Center’s Assistant Research Professor, Aleks Yankelevich, has been appointed to an Adjunct Professor position by the Department of Economics at MSU. As the Chair of the Department of Economics, Professor Tim Vogelsang, the Addy Chair of Economics, put it: “After obtaining his PhD in Economics from Washington University (2011) and working as an industry economist at the FCC, he joined the Quello Center in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University as a Research Assistant Professor this past Fall. Aleks is currently serving as a member on a dissertation committee of one of our PhD […]
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07 May 2016

Claude E. Shannon: Cult Figure by A. Michael Noll

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Claude E. Shannon: Cult Figure A. Michael Noll May 7, 2016 © 2016 AMN Has a cult developed, worshipping Shannon as the guru of information theory? April 28, 2016 would have been his 100th birthday and thus interest in him has exploded. Shannon is characterized an eccentric, riding a unicycle while juggling. This perhaps adds to his status as a cult figure. I attended a recent event honoring Shannon at which little children ran up and down the aisle, the synthetic-speech Voder was resurrected and played, a tap dance roamed across the stage, lights flashed on the screen, and people […]
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06 May 2016

Hugs, Handshakes and High Fives: Strategies for Evaluating the Impact of Digital Inclusion Using Data from the Broadband Technology Opportunity Program

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A great deal of funding has been devoted to stimulating the development of broadband Internet infrastructures and services in the United States. Federally funded initiatives have been studied and evaluated through dozens of studies. Jon Gant will discuss the lessons learned from efforts to evaluate the impact of broadband Internet initiatives. Biographical Sketch Dr. Jon Gant is a national leader in the areas of digital inclusion and broadband adoption. Jon is currently a professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he serves as the founding Director of the Center […]
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28 Apr 2016

Multi-stakeholder Governance Processes for Cyberspace: A Visit from Virgilio Almeida

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The Brazilian Professor Virgilio Almeida met with my media and information policy class today via Skype. As chair of the very successful NETmundial Internet governance conference in San Paulo in 2014, and chair of Brazil’s Internet Governance Committee (CGI.br), he is particularly well placed to discuss developments around Internet governance, his topic for this class. We were fortunate to catch him while a Visiting Professor at Harvard University, where he is associated with the Berkman Center, but he was very generous with his time. Instead of organizing a meeting of over a thousand members of civil society, business, government and […]
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20 Apr 2016

Optimism Prevails in Opinions on the Future of Detroit

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Optimism Prevails in Opinions on the Future of Detroit by Bill Dutton and Bibi Reisdorf, Quello Center, MSU Conversations about the prospects for Detroit’s future often expose a divide between those who see the city recovering from a decline in population and financial vitality and those who have given up on the city’s recovery. As part of a research project on the role of the Internet and new media in the development of Detroit, the Quello Center surveyed a random sample of Michigan residents about their perspectives on the future of Detroit. Conducted as part of MSU’s State of the […]
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13 Apr 2016

The Complexity of Detroit

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Most of our ICT4Detroit research team met today at MSU’s Detroit Center. We discussed the results of our network analysis of collaboration among non profit civic organizations in the city, and developing our plans for interviewing individuals in some of the key organizations and projects. The major theme arising during the day of discussion was the sheer complexity of the ecology of actors involved in initiatives to support the revitalization of different parts of the city, from the central business district to some of the most distressed neighborhoods. In this context, one ICT initiative does not fit all. It brought […]
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12 Apr 2016

An Up-Date from the Quello Center by Bill Dutton

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Dear Colleagues and Friends of the Quello Center: Since my last up-date, our Postdoctoral Researcher, Bianca C. Reisdorf, and Assistant Research Professor, Aleksandr Yankelevich, have come onboard. In collaboration with our Research Associates and Assistants, they have enabled us to move forward on new research proposals with some early success. Developing Research Foci: Digital Inequalities and Net Neutrality The mission of the James and Mary Quello Center is to conduct high-quality research that will stimulate and inform debate on media, communication, and information policy for our digital age. A wide range of policy issues have been identified for study, but […]
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09 Apr 2016

Elizabeth Kirley’s Talk on Online Reputation and the Law

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Elizabeth A. Kirley presented a talk for the Quello Center that addressed alternative approaches to protecting reputations online. Professor Adam Candeub served as a respondent. So much is said about protecting reputations online that it is brilliant to have a thoughtful and well informed discussion of international agreements on human rights, national legal doctrines, and online reputation. Entitled ‘Trashed: A Comparative Exploration of Law’s Relevance to Online Reputation’, through case studies, Dr. Elizabeth Kirley explores the cultural and historical influences that have resulted in very distinct legal regimes and political agenda. Her central thesis is that digital speech is sufficiently […]
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08 Apr 2016

Deplorable Telephony, by A. Michael Noll

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Deplorable Telephony A. Michael Noll April 7, 2016 © 2016 AMN The quality and fidelity of a telephone call in the United States are deplorable. Calls are disconnected and it is challenging to understand the other person. In our rush to cheaper telephone service, quality has been thrown to the wind. Internet telephony utilizes compression to reduce the bit rate – and compression is a compromise with quality. The speech bits need to all arrive promptly and in the correct sequence, or quality is impaired. The Internet is great for data, but less so for telephony. Computer scientists have never […]
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