::fibreculture:: imagined networks

[Linda Wallace]

hi alexia

yes I was reworking benedict anderson¹s ideas on national identity to list
culture. I think the piece I pointed to is of interest mainly as a historic
artefact since it was written in pre-blog etc 1998 when the world of lists
was relatively young. at that time my own commitment to list culture was
intense but also it was a new thing and hence bursting with Œglobal¹
possibilities. Also the list I speak of in the text did share a definite
sense of community (faces -- a list for women working with art/technology)
as it was then small and many people did personally know, or know of, each
other. so it was a kind of intimate space where one could trace certain
forces within it -- pushing the dialogue this way or that -- more easily
than I think one cd now with the same list.

linda 



On 30/8/05 10:38 AM, "Alexia Fry" <afr at deakin.edu.au> wrote:

> A bit of a by way:
> 
> Linda - on your piece in the nettime archives you briefly discussed a
> definition of community that is becoming more prevalent for virtual gatherings
> (based off Anderson's imagined community I assume?):
> 
> ..."The imagined community never really knows itself, or who or what it is at
> any point in time, but the community <may> know that what it imagines itself
> to be is only a partial manifestation of itself -- a glimpse of what it might
> be now and of what it could be at another time. "...
> 
> I think that the spatial approach towards imaging such a network of people is
> interesting.  The SPACE/TIME approach seems to be a major body of work that is
> readily transferable to the flow between the physical place and context of the
> person and the virtual spaces that they wander through.  In particular your
> discussion of a 'community' in this setting is something that I am trying to
> come to terms with (in both an empirical and theoretical sense) in my own
> work.
> 
> While this definition sounds great, it is very difficult to operationalise to
> place into an empirical context or as a theoretical cornerstone. This is
> currently how I've re-jigged the above concept to see if it will give
> something more tangible to play with.  If this stimulates a dialogue that'd be
> great.
> 
> --
> A network of people can be constructed into a kind of 'group social
> intersection' by tracing the links of their relations around the intersecting
> medium(s) (in this case a forum, email list, web blog).  Those links and nodes
> land somewhere in a 4th dimensional SPACE/TIME continuum while retaining some
> sort of physical practicalities and context.
> 
>   This 'socialising shape' places the 'node'/person into a network beyond
> their knowledge and immediate Space/Time - all of which most members seem to
> learn to negotiate voluntarily.
> 
> In this context people are aware that they will intersect with people that
> they know and don't know, that they will meet new people, pass or be passed on
> and never know others.  At the core of this social intersection there is a
> cohesive sense of subject identification between participants (whether
> constructed as a prerequisite of the communication medium, mediated or created
> by the participants.)
> 
> A sense of 'community' in this case comes in through identification or
> interaction with expressed sentiments that are civically available in the
> medium where social intersection takes place. The negotiable point of how
> social intersections take place is the medium and individual motivation.
> 
> Participants may be unaware of the exact dimensions of the social 'shape' in
> which they are participating and the social implications of these dimensions
> (whatever they may be).  this awareness is largely dependent upon  the
> participant's computer literacy and drive to know.
> 
> the questions that I think may arise from the above definition are: Does
> hinging the social intersection upon a space/time theory somehow strip
> participants of 'motivation'?  What context does their understanding of the
> mediums that they participate in have? and what happens if the participant's
> intent  is to strip themselves of this space/time context?  How do actors
> regard themselves in this social context:  through their tempo-geographical
> positioning or the experiential side of their cerebral/corporal actions of the
> body?
> 
> Thanks for slogging through it (evening ramblings in this case).
> Alexia Fry
> HDR, Deakin University
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
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