The body of academics interested in "cyberculture" is slowly becoming aware of itself, and influencing other realms of study, as the growing clientele of the shoe-string-budgeted Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies proves.
Developed by University of Maryland graduate student David Silver as an adjunct to the American studies classes he teaches, the Web site has grown from a bibliography and introduction to the subject, to a networking center for academics dealing with cybercultural issues. Last week Silver launched the site's latest area, Conversations and Collaborations, in which teachers and students put up messages detailing their classes or courses of study.
"There was pretty much a void in the field of academic research of cyberculture. You'll see a book here and there ... but there was no real online presence for both students, researchers, and instructors to go to learn about cyberculture," says Silver. "So I decided to start one and see what happened."
After four months, the RCCS has added six new sections and has a list of more than 60 classes in cyberculture taught around the world. With course descriptions on such diverse subjects as "Literature and Rhetoric of the Internet" and "Using New Media in Criminology," teachers and students can get a glimpse of the important implications of the Digital Revolution without being limited by their chosen fields of study. Teachers from 15 countries have written to Silver, saying that seeing the syllabi of other teachers helped them develop their own course.
Professors from other institutions, such as John Unsworth of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia, view the RCCS favorably. "It's a good filter. The stuff I've seen there is helpful," says Unsworth, despite worries about whether Silver will be able to maintain the site over time. "One of the big challenges here is fighting link rot," Unsworth points out from his own online experience.
