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

[elw at stderr.org]

Beware the approaching parentheticals.


> I'd like to comment that I see nothing illogical (or technologically 
> unsound?) about calling the Internet a medium, which it seems to be, 
> (and in a/some layered form). But while "the 'hardware' is materially 
> implicated in the medium's *expressive* activity" does it follow that 
> the hardware can be assigned an *affective* activity?


Not to delve too far into a pattern of unrestrained radical semiosis, 
but...

If an [abstract concept - in this case internet] is acknowledgedly "meta" 
- in that the functions of the parts are named, negotiated and given 
purpose by human users of those parts - where do we draw the line between 
'the medium' (whatever it is...) and the *instantiations* of that medium?

I'd be perfectly happy to agree (!!!) that there is perhaps one rough 
model of use-of-internet-as-medium that is taken up by blog readers... 
another model taken up by those who are only interested in instant 
messaging... and another taken up by those who are interested only in 
digital broadcasting (e.g., podcast creators), and another taken up by 
MUD/MOO/MUSH/MUCK users...

but when do these *aspects* become "media" themselves, rather than a part 
of the looser "that internet stuff"?

[Channel theory?  Genre theory?  Bunch of things seem to converge nicely 
here...]

[[Now I'm feeling all qualitative-descriptivist... interesting :) ]]

I do realize, like several others, that this conversation is tending to 
loop back on itself... it is interesting, though, that so many of us are 
engaging in the same patterns of contemplation :)

Maybe we're onto (or just ON...) something, huh?

--elijah