About ITRI

Welcome to the International Telecommunications Research Institute, at the University of Houston. The Institute (ITRI) has three primary objectives: to assist in the successful implementation and utilization of communication technology, to address the social consequences of communication technology in its historical context and to study the underlying processes involved in people's interaction with communication technology.

Areas of research include the identification of factors that influence the success or failure of communication systems and services, the potential of telecommunications for altering historic, social and cultural patterns and applied research on communication and technology.

This site also supports School of Communication faculty and their graduate and undergraduate students through its course related links to Internet sites central to the study of world-wide mass communications.

The Institute Staff includes faculty from the School of Communication. In addition, ITRI plans to recruit scholars from universities and research institutes around the world as associates of the institute for specific projects related to their areas of expertise. The Institute Annual Report for 1996-7 is available on this site.

The ITRI archives contain a number of U.S. Department of Commerce telecommunications journals and files of articles and reports on computers, broadcasting, teleconferencing, electronic mail, social and public policy issues and other topics related to telecommunications.

Abstracts of research done through the School of Communication's Masters Degree in Mass Communication and supervised within ITRI are available on this site.

The Media Futures Archive was launched in the fall of 1997 by Associate Professor and ITRI Staff member David Donnelly. This project preserves thoughts on how our media are evolving and what they will be like in the future, as well as thoughts on how our media are changing our culture and our world. The site also contains material on technological and social forecasting methodologies, and an annotated bibliography of works on the social impact of technology. 

Jaron Lanier - The Future of Humanism in a Technological Society - February 26, 1998

Click on the photo for a look at the streaming video interview

    Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist, composer, visual artist, and author.  He is probably best known for his work in Virtual Reality.  He coined the term 'Virtual Reality', and founded the VR industry.  He started the first VR company, VPL Research, Inc., which produced most of the world's VR equipment for many years.  Currently, Lanier serves as the lead scientist of the National Teleimmersion Initiative, a coalition of universities studying advanced shared environment applications on the Internet.

    Lanier was also the first to propose and implement a variety of technologies that have since spawned industries in their own right.  Among his lineup of "firsts" are the first "avatar" for network communications, the first moving camera virtual set for television production, and the first performance animation for 3D computer graphics.  He was the first to propose web-based network computers.  Along with Dr. Joe Rosen and Scott Fisher he initiated the fields of real-time surgical simulation and telesurgery.

    As a musician, Lanier has been active in the world of new classical music since the late seventies.  He is a pianist and a specialist in unusual musical instruments, especially the wind and string instruments of Asia.  Lanier has performed with artists as diverse as Philip Glass, Ornette Coleman, Barbara Higbie, and Stanley Jordan.  He also writes chamber and orchestral music.

    Lanier's paintings and drawings have been exhibited in galleries in the United States and Europe and in the Internet.  He has a one man show this year at the Danish Museum for Modern Art in Roskilde as well as major exhibitions in Montreal and New York.

    Lanier is also a well known author and speaker.  He is a founding contributing writer for Wired Magazine, he appears on national television regularly and has been profiled in many prominent publications, including the front pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.  His original research has been featured on the cover of Scientific American twice.

In recognition of Domestic Violence Awareness Month the International Telecommunications Research Institute held a panel discussion on media and domestic violence.  It was co-sponsored by the UH School of Communication, Bertha Capen Reynolds Society, and UH Women's Studies

ITRI hosted several symposiums involving the Information Superhighway including:  Internet Regulation in the Wake of the CDA (July 1997), Local Media and The World Wide Web (April 1996), Building the Information Superhighway: Problems and Possibilities (November 1994), The Information Superhighway:  A Roundtable Discussion (April 1994).

Staff