[Air-l] Taxonomy of Content on the Internet

[William Bain]

I just ran across this quote which I thought encapsulated the 

issue nicely:



"As Hirsch and Silverstone (1992) argue, information technology

 poses unique challenges because it is both a set of artifacts

 to be consumed as well as a medium within which social

 relations are conducted." (from Nafus and Tracey

 "Mobile Phone and Concepts of Personhood" in Katz & Aarkhus 

Perpetual Contact, p.208)
   
  Thanks, that helps a good deal, Nancy. For me at least. The artifact concept seems to me to go a long way in addressing the process-like nature and the entity-like nature of IT. Is this extendable to meta-artifacts? I think it has to be, though undoubtedly there’s a constant or relatively constant merging of the meta form with the non-meta form. And then, are there meta-media? Are social studies meta-social relations? Something on the meta-media idea at http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue2_9/aigrain/ I hope I’m not just rambling into infinite regress. Or is infinite regress part of the nature of the construct............
   
  Best regards, William
   
   
   


William Bain
PhD Student
Comparative Literature
Department of Spanish Philology
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
 		
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