[Air-l] Re: first post (An Internet Without Space)

[Radhika Gajjala]

At 07:53 PM 2/9/2004 +1030, you wrote:
>thanks for that Denise, very interesting.
>
>my gut feeling of all this, the pocket sized edition would be...
>
>... that internet studies/research needed a home and was able to slot 
>itself into the Arts/ Humanities area in some universities. With very 
>little real information to go on, because it was a field of study in its 
>infancy, the focus needed to be more philosophical, looking at concepts 
>rather than data.
>This is where we find many Internet Studies courses today. ( I realise 
>this is not universal)
>
>But there does appear to be rebellion afoot if my own class is any 
>indication. We want numbers to research, we want to look at data - not 
>read about someones fantasy/ guess in 1990. And I suspect that in order to 
>be relevant, and I do believe in the need to be relevant in scholastic 
>endeavour (even though others dont agree),
>this field of study will turn more towards real number crunching, rather 
>than worrying about "cyberspace" and "cyber communities".
>


Ah how familiar this sounds - not enough people in your class, obviously, 
understand the importance of debate, analysis and being informed of how 
many social , political, historical, cultural and epistemological (and I 
dont even need to see Ontological...;-)) issues mediate the "data" - the 
design of the numbers that emerge. The question is who's fantasy to these 
numbers emerge from?

Numbers and "fantasies" are not mutually exclusive by any means.

Relevant to who?

r