My academic motivations . .

I was first attracted to academia many years ago. On my first trip through college, I was a philosophy major. It's the kind of area that seems to only have a future if you have a PhD and I went into the major assuming that would be my path. But I slowly became disillusioned with academic philosophy. Authors like  Heidegger and Foucault  made a strong impression on my thinking and I was interested in real world applications of those kinds of ideas, but academic philosophy didn't seem to be about that, at least not in a way that I could see then. I never finished that philosophy degree and turned to the world of work for lack of a better plan. Fast forward many years and, tired of the kinds of work I had been doing, I returned to school to pursue a degree in "technology". I thought this was a purely practical choice; I could make use of some long ago earned credits and get a degree in a field that seemed to be in demand and be more gainfully employed in just a couple of years. But it didn't take long to catch the academic bug again.

 It's become clear that the Internet could change everything. Maybe it already has. Authors like Lawrence Lessig,  who frequently talks  about the need for our legal framework for IP to change to address this new digital reality, seem to be tremendously important if we actually want to fully embrace the potential of this new tool. The potential for the technology like Bit Torrent to level the playing field in terms of distribution has made me hopeful that we can broaden the conversation that is our culture beyond established commercial media sources. Rather than just consumers of culture, we can be participants and commentators in this new media. This already seems to be happening but established media still owns a lot of eyeballs on the Web and, as organizations like Free Press point out, the fight for the future of the Web is not over. And this goes beyond just the issue of content; I think it's also about the future of our democracy. Though I can't say this will be an area of my own research, it's certainly one of my motivations for earning a PhD - why go into a gun fight armed only with a knife?

Beyond the themes of media and democracy, I'm motivated by an interest in the theme of collaboration made possible by technology. The Internet has already made new kinds of long-distance collaboration possible. But it seems that most of this has been studied in the context of the business world. Can we use ICTs to support more effective humanitarian relief for international NGOs? or to support the work of local non-profits? It seems like there is no lack of effort to exploit the commercial potential of the web; what about its potential in areas of human value that aren't measured well in dollars? We seem to have no lack of important problems to address. And it seems that most of them will require increasing levels of cooperation, coordination, and collaboration to solve.

And beyond any particular technology area, I'm motivated by a desire to write and to teach for a living. There are many authors and teachers who had a huge influence on my life, and it has always seemed appropriate to me to work in the world of ideas and their application in the real world  as the way to 'pass it forward'. And honestly, nothing else really seems nearly as interesting as a way to spend my remaining working years. I'm getting too old to do anything that I don't love everyday.