[Air-l] Internet as medium with different sub-media or channels? - on metaphor

[Denise N. Rall]

Sorry more responses from Denise. Per Mark Johns it's
useful to look for metaphors.
A metaphor I quite enjoyed:
Pffafenberger, B. (1992). Social anthropology of
technology. Annual Review of Anthropology. 21:
491-516.
Sure it's dated, but he explicates a brilliant
metaphor called the 'technological drama'

"A technological drama is a discourse of of
technological "statements" and "counterstatements" om
which there are three recognizable processes:
technolgical regularization, technological adjustment,
and technological reconstitution." p.505

The drama starts "when a design constituency creates,
appropriates, or modifies a technological production
process, artifact, user activity, or systme in such a
way that some of it's technological fetures embody a
political aim -- that is, an intention to alter the
allocation of power, prestige or wealth. (etc.)

But I also liked this earlier statement even better
(p.504)
". . . one can argue that the dimention of an artifact
identified by archeologists, historians and collectors
as "style" once formed part of a now lost ritual
system, and for that reason now stands out oddly and
mysteriously against the artifacts' supposed
"function." (see Hodder, 1985).

Ok, this reflects my interest in function. I think
with the focus exclusively on MEDIUM we leave out very
interesting discussions about the functions of
technology in other venues - STS, anthropology,
philosophy etc.

Cheers,
Denise






Denise N. Rall, Ph.D. submitted, School of Environ. Science,
Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA
Tuesdays: Room T2.12, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 or Mobile 0438 233 344
http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/rsm/staff/pages/drall/index.html
Virtual member, Cybermetrics Group, University of Wolverhampton, UK
http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/index.html