[Air-l] Reification was Definitions

[Dr. Steve Eskow]

 << The problem that started this discussion was a definition of the word
"Internet".>>  

Why this need to find precise boundaries for a word that encompasses many
realms of meaning, that includes technology and the people that use it and
the uses they make of it--and much more?
   
  <<I think that what both Ellis and I are attempting to communicate is
that, any time a new metaphor enters the language there is the possibility
of it being reified and turned into a trope. The term "cyberspace" is such a
term and it started as fiction has become a trope in popular usage and is
now used in scholarly writing without objectification.>>

The danger of the yearning for fencing in a concept such as "cyberspace" is
that turns a complex world into an object: it reifies, it says, now we know
what cyberspace is and isn't. That is: it "objectifies," turns complexity
into a simple object that one can hold up and point to and say: This is
cyberspace, and that isn't.
   
  <<I have read many papers from our members and have seen this to be the
case. I could be wrong, but I believe that as scholars it is our role to
objectify the language of  Internet research and subvert this process.>>

It is our role, I believe, to resist the premature drawing of boundaries.
There are the physical sciences, and their methods that rest on the mystique
of "objectivity"; and there are the human sciences which begin by
acknowledging the limits, perhaps the impossibility, of "objectivity," since
the observer inevitably sees the phenomena under study through the lenses of
a particular language and the assumptions it imposes.
   
  <<As Barry Wellman points out the leaders in our area of investigation are
interested in what we are doing. I have had conversations with some of them
and they have concerns about the work being less than "objective.">>

What work that "we" are doing is less than "objective"? Who are these
leaders, and what is the nature of their objections? Why are they anonymous?
   
  <<On a more practical level, I have investigated deviant behavior in this
group. I have reason to believe that lack of objectification has created a
situation in which incomplete and imperfect understanding of the many of
these tropes and definitions has created the manufacturing of trolls when
none exist.>>

What are the reasons you have for this belief? Are they secret?
   
  <<In the end, if some understanding of this issue is not addressed it will
be impossible for empirically grounded scholars to cite anything associated
with AOIR. I know that I am crying the "sky is falling" but I have had this
conversation offline with several people not the least of which are two of
the people who have been labeled trolls.>>

Can you give us one or two examples of poor scholarship associated with
AOIR--scholarship that is not "empirically grounded"?

The issues raised here are important, but this atmosphere of secret
backstage discussions is most offputting.

Steve Eskow
   
   

Nancy Baym <nbaym at ku.edu> wrote:
  >
>If "research" is something done by humanists and artists, as well as
>scientists and practitioners, is there anyone who isn't a researcher? Is
>this, in essense, the Association of Internet Anythingers?



 		
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