This issue of 
                                                 SEMA
                             was made possible by the generous support of:

                                    the Richard Hamilton foundation
                        (through a grant made possible by Dr. Caterina Cicogna)

                                      the Bruno Bratti foundation
                          (through a grant made possible by Ms. Lynne Bratti)

                        the Victoria University Student Administrative Council
                                                (VUSAC)

SEMA is a forum for the latest contributions in semiotics related
work.  SEMA welcomes the contributions from anybody, at any level
of academic experience or lack thereof.  Contributions can be sent
to the address below in either hard copy or disk format, and work
should be accompanied by an address and phone number. 

SEMA
NF 217
Victoria College, University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
M5S 1K7
ISSN # 1183 - 160X

EDITOR: Christopher Woodill
(email: cwoodill@epas.utoronto.ca)

Cover Photo courtesy of the editor's camera, scanned in by the
latest in computer equipment we could find.

SEMA and The Information Highway
Christopher Woodill (Editor)
cwoodill@epas.utoronto.ca

The so-called information highway is being built as we speak, and
SEMA is making its way to being a pit-stop on the highway.  At the
present, the greatest form of this new way of communicating is the
Internet.  The Internet is a collection of networks that encompass
millions of people worlwide.  What started as primarily a research
and military network has blossomed into a virtual world where one
can talk to friends, find the latest news, play virtual games, and
so on.  

One of the most easily accessed and popular forms of interacting
with the Internet is through electronic mail (e-mail).  E-mailing
is similar to regular mail, but the message can travel from one end
of the globe to another in minutes.  Furthermore, many different
forms of information can be transferred through e-mail: sound,
pictures, text, and even video can be sent through the internet.  

For many, Internet-speak is a foreign language.  In this short
article, I will not try to explain every detail of the Internet,
nor will I explain how to get access to the internet.  There are
several good resources for such things, and in most major cities,
there are ways to get access to the internet for a fee, and in some
areas, free of charge.  Generally, if you are connected with some
kind of academic or government institution, you can get an Internet
account fairly easily.

How does the internet affect SEMA?  This year, we are including the
e-mail addresses of the authors who have them. Furthermore, we are
depositing a text copy of SEMA in an
archive on the internet.  This will allow anyone who has access to
get a free copy of SEMA through the Internet without having the
hassle of regular mail.  

SEMA will now be deposited in an archive of e-zines (electronic
magazines) where it can be accessed in the following ways:

FTP etext.archive.umich.edu /pub/Zines/sema
Gopher etext.archive.umich.edu /pub/Zines/sema
Send email to the editor at cwoodill@epas.utoronto.ca

We hope that with such open access, SEMA will be read by more
people.

For information on the Internet, I highly recomend the following
books:
        
Braun, Eric.  The Internet Directory.  Toronto: Random House                                         of
Canada, 1994.

LaQuey, Tracy and Ryer, Jeanne C.  The Internet Companion:                                    A
Beginner's Guide to Global Networking.  New York:                                     Addison-
Wesley Publishing Company, 1993.

The Internet may be new to people now, but the population of users
is growing at a phenominal rate.  Within the next year, those who
do not have an account now will have one.  For all those who are
new to the experience, good luck.  

Other forms of new technology have been incorporate into the making
of SEMA.  With scanning equipment we can now duplicate and edit
pictures.  Hopefully, in future issues, we will be able to
incorporate sound and video into our document,  so that we can
present SEMA in a multimedia format.   This will allow us to
explore issues of media, culture and other semiotics-related issues
in a whole new way.