The Goals of the Center: An Overview

The Center for Internet Studies at Yale University (the Center) will investigate the Internet's
effect on society, and vice versa, from many perspectives -- technological, legal, political,
economic, cultural, and educational. The Center's most important contribution will be to combine
humanities, social-science, and hard science approaches to produce technically well-informed
cultural and legal studies, and culturally and legally well-informed technical studies. Today such
studies are rare; the technological naiveté of the average non-scientist is exceeded only by the
all-around naiveté of the average technologist. The Center's activities will be premised on the
idea that an understanding of technology is increasingly central to the making of public policy;
to emphasize technology's prominent role, the Center will be housed in the Department of
Computer Science.

At this turbulent, decisively-important moment in the evolution of the Internet, the Center will
convene a core group of scholars and scientists and direct their energies at the key issues. To
start, the Center will serve as a focal point for work already underway at Yale, and will provide
resources to faculty and students from the Computer Science Department and other College
academic divisions, the School of Management, and the Law School. Once the program is
underway, the Center will seek collaborations with other universities and private industry.

We are particularly eager initially to pursue collaborations involving journalism, which offer
opportunities for both immediate impact and enhanced public awareness of the Center.
Journalists strongly influence public attitudes and public policy makers' ideas about technology,
and the news media devote increasingly enormous attention to technology developments. But
journalists too often know little about technology and are too often badly informed about this
crucial and complicated topic on which they address the public so often and at such length. The
better journalists reporting on technology realize they know little, and worry about it. We plan to
invite journalists to the Center for symposia and workshops, as well as for extended visits of a
term or a year. We hope to establish the Center as a "source" for journalists in search of both
quotes and expertise.

Yale's traditional strength in public policy and American culture combined with its top law
school and strong computer science department make it a natural center for Internet Studies,
which will certainly emerge over the next decade as a focus of academic attention and research
of all sorts. In addition to traditional scientific, legal, and policy studies, the Center will
encourage the use of economic analysis; the work of historians of industry, science, and
technology; and the insights of sociologists, psychologists, philosophers, businessmen, and
creative artists, along with the perspective of culturalists. As has been widely observed in both
popular and scholarly circles, the world stands on the edge of a paradigmatic shift in technology
and culture. The Center will position Yale University on the leading edge of scholarly inquiry and
investigation regarding that unfolding revolution.

It is unclear what kind of field "Internet Studies" will turn out to be; it could easily develop in an
unscholarly and scientifically illiterate direction. Yale's tradition of seriousness, intellectual depth,
and academic integrity are desperately wanted right now. Yale has an opportunity to help
determine the basic character of "Internet Studies" by showing the way.

The Center will sponsor an annual colloquium, regular policy and technology roundtables, and
ad hoc conferences for considering specific issues as they arise. These activities would be
supplemented by both a Research Fellow program to encourage the research of students and
younger scholars, and a Visiting Scholar program, which would invite a leading figure to spend
one semester in residence at the Center. Finally, the Center will establish an electronic and print
publication center, beginning with distribution of conference and colloquium proceedings in the
early years, maturing into a quarterly journal publication as the Center becomes more
established, and will ultimately provide an imprint press for the publication of relevant
monographs and book-length projects.
[back to top]

Organization/Faculty and Directors

The Center will be organized in a loose "corporate" structure, with a Board of Advisors, a Chair
of that Advisory Board, and a faculty Director or, at least initially, co-Directors (David
Gelernter and Robert Dunne). As the Center becomes more established, the organization should
also include an editor-in-chief of the publishing arm. The Board of Advisors will be composed of
leading figures from academe, industry, and the bench and bar.

The co-Directors will function as the CEOs of the Center, providing guidance, vision,
supervision and procurement of grants and other funding, and administrative support. In addition,
the co-Directors will each teach at least one Internet Studies-related course each year.

At the earliest stages of the Center's foundation, staffing will be lean, perhaps including an
administrative assistant and a part-time publications director. As the Center evolves, the need
for staff support will obviously grow to eventually include a full publication staff and several
administrative assistants.
[back to top]

Colloquium

The Center will sponsor an annual Internet Studies Colloquium that will include both students
and members of the broader cyberspace policy community, including faculty at Yale, faculty of
other universities, law practitioners, and industry representatives. Topics will be chosen by the
co-Directors and the Visiting Scholar serving as the Colloquium faculty for that year (see below),
with the advice of the Board of Advisors. The Colloquium will, over time, consider a wide range
of issues and be representative of the interdisciplinary nature of the Center. Such topics might
include Internet governance and structure, Internet II development and growth, sustainable
technologies for the future, Web programming and the harmonization of markup languages,
domain name registration, intellectual property issues, encryption, obscenity and other
constitutional issues, the cultural influence of the Internet, the aesthetics and functionality of Web
design, the impact and future of Web advertising, the effect of new technologies on national and
global economies, electronic publishing and attendant issues, the sociology of the Internet, the
metaphysics of virtual reality, and so forth. Any particular colloquium might choose to explore
several of these topics, tied together with a common theme, in a multi-day conference containing
multiple components.
[back to top]

Roundtables

In addition to the Colloquium, the Center will sponsor Policy and Technology Roundtables.
These events will be monthly discussions of timely issues, attended and led by the co-Directors,
the Visiting Scholar, and Research Fellows in residence. The Roundtables may be attended by
interested students across the University. The Roundtable will occasionally invite a guest
speaker, with rotating areas of interest as is warranted by the topics considered. For example,
one Roundtable might focus on philosophical issues and invite a leading figure in that field to
discuss appropriate issues; the next event would include an invited speaker from some other field
(for example, an economist), with fields not duplicated across the semester unless pressing issues
demand such attention. With approvals from the appropriate University committees, the series of
Roundtables might be offered as a credit-bearing course, in which students would engage in
independent research under the direction of the Visiting Scholar or other Center faculty.
[back to top]

Conferences and Position Papers

As a supplement to the annual Colloquium, the Center will also sponsor ad hoc mini-conferences
to spotlight crucial policy issues as they arise. For example, the Center might sponsor such
discussions where new legislative initiatives (such as the many copyright bills currently pending
before the Congress) and administrative proposals (such as the Clinton Administration's revised
plan for domain name registration) can be discussed and explored. Where the conference results
in substantial suggestions for improvement or lends some insight to a topic of political concern,
the Center will offer its findings, in white paper form, to the appropriate governmental body as a
position paper of the Center. Such papers will be initially written by a Research Fellow in
residence (see below), and edited and submitted by the co-Directors and the Advisory Board.
Where appropriate, the Center might seek to file amici briefs with courts considering critical
issues of cyberspace law.
[back to top]

Fellows

Each year, the Center's co-Directors and Advisory Board will select two Student Fellows from
the Yale student body, including one undergraduate Fellow of advanced status, and one
graduate or professional student Fellow. These Student Fellows will work with the co-Directors
to develop the various initiatives of the Center, from Roundtables to Colloquia and conferences.
The Student Fellows will also be responsible for research and writing of Center white papers
and position papers, as described above. The Student Fellows will be supported with a small
annual stipend.

In addition to the Student Fellows, the Center will appoint Research Fellows from the Yale
community, as well as other academic institutions, the private sector (representing either an
Internet industry or coalition), or private law firms. The Research Fellows will receive
administrative support in the form of office resources if required, letterhead, and so forth, but
will not receive any compensation save for reimbursement of necessary travel expenses for
attendance at Center events.
[back to top]

Visiting Scholars

The Visiting Scholar will be an academician involved in exploring the cutting edge of cyberspace
policy issues. One Scholar will be selected each semester by the Advisory Board at the
recommendation of the co-Directors; the two Scholars chosen for the academic year will be
closely involved with planning the scholarly aspects of the annual Colloquium. In addition, the
Visiting Scholar will participate in the Policy Roundtables. The position will be designed to allow
the Scholar to pursue individual research to the maximum extent possible, while still facilitating
student access to such critical. The position will be fully-supported by funds raised by the Center.
[back to top]