[Air-l] presence, telepresence research

[Willard Uncapher]

At 03:31 PM 1/9/2003 +1100, you wrote:
>I'm interested in sources which discuss presence/telepresence with regard 
>to online text based communication practices (email, in particular). most 
>of the literature concentrates on presence in teleconferencing, VR, 
>webcams etc (eg The Robot in the Garden, 2000) or, if it does look at 
>electronic textual mediation it's often from the 'social presence' 
>theoretical perspective which, while it needs to be noted, is not the 
>speculative path i want to pursue. i'm also familiar with William 
>Mitchell's formulation of the "economy of presence" - and would welcome 
>discussions on this.
>
>Presence is, of course, implicit in many of the discussions about 
>subjectivity, supposed immediacy & transparency of the medium, but i 
>wonder if anyone knows of any specific, cultural studies (whatever that 
>is) or philosophy of technological approaches? Specifically, perhaps any 
>that work within a Derridean framework?

Richard Coyne's excellent 'technoromanticism: digital narrative, holism, 
and the romance of the real' (MIT, 1999) might be the ticket, particularly 
as it takes on questions of narrative.  His earlier, 'Designing Information 
Technology in the Postmodern Age: From Method to Metaphor' (MIT, 1995) also 
could be interesting, dealing more with philosophy and interpretation than 
with ordinary 'design' issues.





Willard Uncapher, Ph.D. / Network Emergence / 8706 Kendall Court, Arvada, 
CO 80003
mailto:willard at well.com / http://www.well.com/user/willard