infobong.com

Over on the Association of Internet Researchers mailing list, there's a long, multi-threaded discussion of what to call the range of communication practices they study, including email, USENET, the Web, SMS messaging, and chat. As these technologies have been in mainstream use for about a decade, the term "New Media" seems obsolete and "Internet" doesn't quite address the fact that many of these practices like SMS or Intranets don't necessarily occur on the Internet. Some have suggested that the existing terms like "CMC" (computer-mediated communication) and the particularly loathesome "ICTs" (Interactive Communications Technologies) are adequate to describe this range of topics, but I suspect only communication and information studies scholars understand and tolerate these acronyms. Someone even suggested "Cyberspace" is the proper name of the field. Naming a domain that studies rapidly changing technology (Radio-TV-Film?), so it is easy to understand how this exercize is both contentious and incomplete. Therefore I suggest we call it "Interweb Studies" or perhaps "Intarweb Studies," so suggest the silliness of this project.