[Air-L] What is web culture?

[Conor Schaefer]

Regarding your second and third questions, I don't think there's a very 
big difference between setting boundaries and shaping culture. The first 
thing that comes to mind for me is imagery of pouring eggs into a frying 
pan to make an omelette. (Skip lunch much?) All the pan does is provide 
boundaries for the otherwise boundlessly sloshing egg fluid, but thereby 
the pan is shaping the form the egg fluid takes. And then the egg congeals.

It's a clumsy analogy, sure, particularly because it implies that ICT 
really does shape interaction in a very hard way, but I think it's 
appropriate given the context.

Your first question I found most intriguing. I do think that all 
interaction affects the shape of culture (by modifying its boundaries). 
We can look at culture from a societal perspective, documenting that way 
groups of people interact and analyzing their topics of discussion. We 
can also look at the other end of the spectrum, assessing what 
individual people in some of those groups experience in terms of 
interaction and information exchange, and how this modifies their own 
palette of preferences, and their willingness to table new discussions 
on certain topics.

Conor

Christian Nelson wrote:
> I haven't been following this thread, but saw this short note and it  
> struck a chord. Particularly the statement that our modes of  
> interaction "shape" the resultant culture. First question: Do all  
> interactions result in a culture (or the alteration of one)? Second:  
> Do communication modes "shape" interaction or set boundaries for them  
> based on (participants perceptions of) what they afford (in Gibson's  
> sense)? Third, assuming that communication modes set boundaries  
> rather than shape interaction, do differences in boundaries  
> necessarily (or ever) result in differences in culture?
>
> --Christian Nelson
>
> On Jan 18, 2008, at 3:08 AM, Marj Kibby wrote:
>
>   
>> If there were people who regularly interacted in your toolshed they
>> would develop a 'toolshed' culture - a set of practices, beliefs and
>> understandings shaped by their mode of interaction.
>>
>> Marj
>>
>>
>>
>> Dr Marjorie Kibby,
>> Senior Lecturer in Communication & Culture
>> Faculty of Education and Arts
>> The University of Newcastle,  Callaghan NSW 2308 Australia
>> Marj.Kibby at newcastle.edu.au
>> +61 2 49216604
>>     
>>>>> Mary-Helen Ward <mhward at usyd.edu.au> 01/18/08 6:51 PM >>>
>>>>>           
>> If I had a toolshed it wouldn't have any people interacting in it ...
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
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