Academic Web - What's it all About?

Academic Web - What's it all About?

"Academics Web" is nothing more then a vain attempt to reach out to industry specialists and encourage them to comment on academic work. It is vain because it is my work in particular that I want comments on.

My name is Michael Zarb, I graduated from the University of Leicester, with a 2.1, in Ba Business Economics. I am now undertaking an MSc ADMIS (Analysis, Design and Management of Information System) at LSE (London School of Economics and Politics), and I plan to continue my research with a PHD at Harvard.

I have always been keenly interested in the evolution and economics of the Internet. The Internet may be said to have evolved into a society in itself, at the very least it has become a large new dynamic of human society - It has it's own culture, it's own hierarchy and form of governance or means of self organizing.

It's increasing emergence is changing the way the rest of society is organised, and has the possibility of creating or reviving power struggles within society.

Take for example the electronic library idea proposed by Google. It’s reality will cause some severe and global societal effects. I do not refer simply to the tradition publisher's struggle for survival rather more complex issue such as the decreased cost of education, increased accessibility for researches in third world countries or the new ability for terrorist to acquire dangerous literature with out leaving any traces ? Will the importance and demand for school teachers decrease? Will it effect the prominence of universities as providers for research? Does it present a real security threat?

My research and works will hopefully help understand the economics and evolutionary process of the internet. It will focus on analysing the latest internet trends from both a functionalistic and interpretive epistemology - spreading light to areas which will be effected by new technology whilst also understanding and modelling the economic and political determinants of the Internet in hope of predicting future areas of dominance and realistic business opportunity.

This Blog will contain drafts of such research in hope to facilitate comments from Industry Specialists.

Michael Zarb