Name Siva Vaidhyanathan | Role Scholar | |
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Education University of Texas at Austin Books The Googlization of Everything: (and why We Should Worry) | ||
Keen on siva vaidhyanathan the googlization of everythin
Siva Vaidhyanathan (born 1966) is a cultural historian and media scholar and is a professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Vaidhyanathan is a frequent contributor on media and cultural issues in various periodicals including The Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Slate, and The Baffler. He is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities and the Institute for the Future of the Book. He directs the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia, which produces a television show, a radio program, several podcasts, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. He has appeared in an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to discuss early social network services. Vaidhyanathan has appeared in several documentary films, including Terms and Conditions May Apply (2013), Inside the Mind of Google (2009), and Freedom of Expression (2007). In 2016 Vaidhyanathan played a prominent role in the higher-education documentary, Starving the Beast. Vaidhyanathan was portrayed as a character on stage at the Public Theater in New York City in a play called Privacy (2016). Vaidhyanathan serves on the board of the Digital Public Library of America.
Contents
- Keen on siva vaidhyanathan the googlization of everythin
- Privacy law scholars conference siva vaidhyanathan
- Biography
- Critical Information Studies
- Selected books
- References
Privacy law scholars conference siva vaidhyanathan
Biography
Vaidhyanathan was born in Buffalo, New York, and attended the University of Texas at Austin, earning a BA in History in 1994 and a Ph.D. in 1999 in American Studies. From 1999 through the summer of 2007 he worked in the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University, the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Columbia University. From 1988 through 1993 he was a professional journalist working for several Texas daily newspapers.
Critical Information Studies
Critical Information Studies is a term coined by Siva Vaidhyanathan in 2006 to describe an emerging, transdisciplinary field concerned broadly with the politics of information in contemporary, connected societies. It first appeared in print in an essay he authored entitled, "Critical Information Studies: A Bibliographic Manifesto," which was the afterword to a 2006 special issue of the journal Cultural Studies.
Vaidhyanathan has argued that academics from many fields associated with what he calls “Critical Information Studies” (which synthesizes, yet also goes beyond, key aspects of both Cultural Studies and Political Economy) should be engaged in interrogating the “structures, functions, habits, norms, and practices” of particular aspects of information culture and in analyzing how these issues go beyond simple arguments about digital “rights” to include consideration of the more subtle impacts of cost and access that have the potential for chilling effects on a “semiotic democracy” that is situated in “global flows of information.”
Many of those affiliated with the field have been critical voices in professional organizations such as the Society for Social Studies of Science and the American Library Association who are concerned about how computer architecture may limit the possibilities of what Henry Jenkins has called "participatory culture." Rather than accept utopian enthusiasms about "Web 2.0" uncritically, these scholars point to possible vulnerabilities in democratic institutions posed by Digital Rights Management, tampering with electronic voting, and otherwise trusting private corporations with public information infrastructure.
According to Vaidhyanathan, Critical Information Studies is defined by four principal concerns:
Vaidhyanathan goes on to argue that Critical Information Studies is "inchoate." Rather than an established field in its own right, it is one that is beginning to take shape and gain its own sense of identity. His essay therefore provides a detailed "taxonomy" of work which, though coming from disparate disciplines, could justifiably be included under this new rubric. These disciplines include American Studies, Anthropology, Communication, Computer Science, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, Legal Studies, Library and Information Science, Literary Studies, Media Studies, Musicology, Political Science, and Sociology. Because work in Critical Information Studies cuts across these and other more traditional academic domains, Vaidhyanathan describes it as a "transfield."
Although Vaidhyanathan identifies Critical Information Studies as a scholarly practice, he also stresses its strong commitment to public engagement.