Work In Progress

These are the research projects I am currently working on. I will be happy to discuss or provide details of the current status of these projects on request.

Books

My primary working goal as a scholar within the field is the development of a series of books related to the continuing invention process associated with systems that support communication (e.g. media). Books currently underway include:

• New Media and Genre . Fully outlined and underway. Several chapters are partially complete. Awaits completion of Characteristics of Media. Describes five spheres of invention with which media are built and the ways in which we can build and operate media more effectively.
• Characteristics of Media: the message beneath. Full outlined. Data set of 167 media and 200 plus characteristics of media complete. Preliminary data analysis for all chapters complete. Five chapters (about 80 pages) complete. Chapters 6 and 7 in progress. Final data analysis of chapter 6 in progress. Plan to submit to publisher on completion of chapter 6. Attempts to provide what might be thought of as a "Grey's Anatomy" of the attributes of media and the ways in which they interact to make different media useful for different purposes.

Other titles, including Media Constituents and Design Patterns , are planned and at least partially outlined.

Papers

• Currently Writing/Researching

  • The Problem with Problems: the Structuration of Media as a Problem Solving Process. Extends a chapter of doctoral dissertation. Preparing for a special issue of Communicaiton Theory.
  • Music and the Vocabulary of Communication: Message, Language and Medium. In progress.
  • Organization as Media Ecology. Early stages of research. Have collected preliminary data on several companies that is extremely promising.
  • Community as Media Ecology. Early stages of research. Have collected a number of interesting exemplars.
• In submission/revision cycle
  • Medium and Genre. Submitted to Philosophy of Communicatoin Division of ICA. Evaluating potential journal submission targets.
  • Models of the Communication Process. Developed as a paper for student use in various classes, but has acheived very high hit rate on my web site, has been adopted in other courses, and portions have been adapted for book publication. Given the high level of interest, am evaluating potential journal submission targets.
  • Medium as Communication Process Primitive. Presented at 2005 NCA. Evaluating potential journal submission targets.
  • Building Time Machines: thinking about the future of interpersonal communication. Fundamentally complete. Continue to incrementally change as submitted to various conferences. Describes the time-related user interface elements associated with interpersonal communication systems and the possibilities inherent to those elements.
• Completed and awaiting publication
  • The Cliff and the Continuum: Defining the Digital Divide. Selected chapter for proposed book on the digital divide based on presentations at the 2001 IAMCR & ICA Symposium on Digital Divide. In preparation. Talks about two important conceptions of the digital divide, why they confuse interaction in discussions of the digital divide, and why each requires the resolution of very different problems.