This is Internet On The Air. I'm Todd Mundt. Using the Internet for professional
"networking." Details in a moment.
Funding Credit: Internet On The Air is a production of the University of
Michigan School of Information and Michigan radio, made possible by a grant from the W.K.
Kellogg Foundation.
The Internet gives us the ability to connect to millions of people in
new ways. This leads some people to ask how it can help with another form of
networking...the social art of building professional re lationships.
Phil Agre is a professor at the University of California at San Diego. Agre became
interested in using the Internet for professional networking as a graduate student more
than 15 years ago. An avid reader of self-help books, he went on to develop his own
six-step program for "networking on the network."
Agre says the Internet can be a good place for identifying interesting people. But he
says exchanges on the Internet often lack the social context needed to establish lasting
professional relationships. So even though the Internet gives people to potential to
connect with others around the world, he expects initial face-to-face meetings will remain
important. He says the technology is often most useful for following up on common
interests once a personal connection is established.
In the Internet community, Agre is best known for an application of one of his
networking techniques. He regularly passes along articles of interest in the form of an
e-mail list. Known as the Red Rock Eater News Service, the list has become one of the
Internet's most popular sources for current information on the social and political
aspects of computer networks.
To learn more about networking on the Internet and listen to an interview with Phil
Agre, visit our Web site at www.iota.org. For Internet On The Air, I'm Todd Mundt.
