[Air-L] physical/digital worlds

Sun Feb 10 08:29:31 PST 2013

Good morning, Andrea,

This is a great question. I like Turkle's book Life on the Screen and
I think it might be of some use for you in regards to this issue. I
also wanted to mention Licklider & Taylor's essay, The Computer as a
Communication Device (1968), because I think it might be helpful in
terms of the conceptualization questions that you raise in your note.
It is linked here: <http://memex.org/licklider.pdf>.

Sincerely, Peter

>> Hi Andrea and colleagues,
>> Two sorts of quick suggestions -
>>
>> 1. In the direction of the history of the broader conceptualizations of the
>> relationships/interactions you describe:
>> A) partly by way of invoking both Barry Wellman's taxonomy of "the three
>> ages of Internet Studies" and Heidi Campbell's similar taxonomy of three
>> waves of research on religion online (both in Consalvo and Ess, The Handbook
>> of Internet Studies, Blackwell, 2011), I developed an overview chapter on
>> the history of the virtual/online //
>> actual-real-material-"meatspace"/offline distinctions-relationships for our
>> 2011 anthology:
>> Self, Community, and Ethics in Digital Mediatized Worlds.  In C. Ess and M.
>> Thorseth, eds., Trust and Virtual Worlds: Contemporary Perspectives, 3-30.
>> Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011.
>> B) For a variety of reasons, AoIRists will likely want to also be aware
>> generally of the now publicized results of the Onlife Initiative, a European
>> Commission "Digital Futures" project -
>> <https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/onlife-initiative>.
>> Broadly, the project sought to move us conceptually further down the road
>> regarding the basic assumptions that have undergirded most of our thinking,
>> research, and policy-making in conjunction with, e.g., "the information
>> society" over past several decades.  As the phrase "onlife" is meant to
>> suggest, the once hard (with the usual caveats) distinctions asserted
>> between "the online" and "offline life" have been (largely) shifted towards
>> strong interrelationality (a point that is now made in many, many ways, of
>> course, but is also one of the characterizations of the third Age / Wave in
>> Campbell and Wellman's taxonomies).
>> In addition to what the Onlife Manifesto articulates in terms of developing
>> new conceptual approaches towards what is characterized as a hyperconnected
>> era, AoIRists may find some of the background papers that contributed to the
>> development of the manifesto helpful as well:
>> <https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/onlife-web-output>
>>
>> 2.  In terms of more specific analyses, I find especially helpful
>> A) Lomborg, Stine. Negotiating Privacy Through Phatic Communication: A Case
>> Study of the Blogging Self. Philosophy and Technology 25 (2012):415434. DOI
>> 10.1007/s13347-011-0018-7.
>> Stine draws on Simmel's understanding of the sociable self - i.e., as first
>> used to theorize and describe "offline" sociabilities - to analyze
>> interactions and negotiations online between a prominent blogger and her
>> readers/respondents.  This analysis I found to be particularly useful in a
>> number of ways, beginning with the details Stine careful documents of the
>> negotiations between those engaged with the blog, as these negotiations
>> involve perspective-taking and phatic communication that work to both
>> preserve individual privacy while simultaneously constructing and
>> maintaining the shared personal space (in Danish and other Germanic
>> language, the _intimsfære_ - the "intimate sphere" of close(r/est)
>> relationships) online.  These details, among other things, show how such
>> online processes are extremely similar to their offline counterparts -
>> again, challenging especially 1990s' tendencies towards hard dualisms
>> between the online and the offline.
>> More broadly - though this may take you beyond your primary focus - Stine's
>> work thereby provides an empirically-grounded analysis that fits with both
>> other similar work in Internet Studies as well as in contemporary philosophy
>> on identity and, most basically, conceptions/assumptions regarding selfhood
>> - hence the article's inclusion in this special issue of the journal
>> Philosophy and Technology, as dedicated to these matters.
>> For the introduction:
>> ³At the Intersections Between Internet Studies and Philosophy: ³Who Am I
>> Online?² (Introduction to special issue), Philosophy & Technology: Volume
>> 25, Issue 3: (September, 2012): 275-284. DOI 10.1007/s13347-012-0085-4.
>>
>> (In these directions - of course, "the networked self" from Wellman and
>> Haythornthwaite has worked prominently over the past decade, e.g., most
>> recently in Julie Cohen's 2012 _Configuring the Networked Self: Law, Code,
>> and the Play of Everyday Practice_. New Haven: Yale University Press.
>> <http://www.juliecohen.com/page5.php>.  At the same time, however, still
>> more strongly relational notions of selfhood have been emerging in
>> neurobiology (e.g., enactivism, the embodied mind, and other umbrella terms)
>> and ethics (beginning with ecological ethics and feminist ethics / ethics of
>> care - now with feminist concepts of "relational autonomy" and parallel
>> notions of distributed epistemic and ethical responsibility).  Such strongly
>> relational emphases, most broadly, appear to have been characteristic of
>> notions of selfhood in the pre-modern "West" and still typically function
>> strongly in societies shaped by Confucian and Buddhist traditions, for
>> example.
>> What's of interest here regarding ethics is how such relational selves draw
>> on virtue ethics: hence the importance of Shannon Vallor's work on virtue
>> ethics vis-a-vis social networking - most recently, Social Networking and
>> Ethics. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition),
>> Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL =
>> <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/ethics-social-networking
>> />.
>> As well, the relational emphases in several Confucian and Buddhist societies
>> appear to be shift towards more individual emphases, e.g.,
>> Hansen, Mette Halskov and Rune Svarverud (eds.). 2010. The Rise of the
>> Individual in Modern Chinese Society, Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian
>> Studies.)
>>
>> For my part, I find the "flow" you refer to helpfully analyzed especially
>> from phenomenologically-informed frameworks (where such flow experiences are
>> initially described in offline contexts) as well as, classically, in
>> Csíkszentmihályi et al.  I know there's some work along these lines in Game
>> Studies, for example, and, when I get a few more minutes, can cobble
>> together a list of those references. In the meantime, someone(s) else on
>> this list may have such a bibliography ready to hand?
>>
>> In any event, hope some of this is of some use - and hope to hear more about
>> your work at AoIR in Denver!
>>
>> Best,
>> - charles
>> Associate Professor in Media Studies
>> Department of Media and Communication
>>
>> Director, Centre for Research on Media Innovations
>> <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/research/center/media-innovations/>
>>
>> University of Oslo
>> P.O. Box 1093 Blindern
>> NO-0317
>> Oslo Norway
>> email: charles.ess at media.uio.no
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 10.02.13 00:54, "Baker, Andrea" <bakera at ohio.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi, everyone,
>>>
>>> Thanks so much for all your help, from those of you commenting both here in
>>> the list and off of it.
>>>
>>> Yes, Barry, it was Nathan Jurgenson's work that first inspired me to carry on
>>> with my current project, sorry I didn't mention knowing about it.  I also
>>> consulted with him initially, well before posting my inquiry.   Nathan and PJ
>>> Rey are running their third Theorizing the Web conference, this year in NYC.
>>>
>>> Of course, much work has dealt with the issue some, including mine on
>>> relationships, identities and communities, and thanks for your own important
>>> list of contributions, your references.  Thankfully there is now such a wealth
>>> of writing and research available.  However, some of us think we still have a
>>> way to go in, to use your words, "flesh"-ing out dimensions of the processes.
>>> There's really still much more to say about it at this time, imo.  Most these
>>> days seem to not only accept that online/mobile/cmc interaction is real but
>>> that it is less discrete from other activities than many of us early internet
>>> researchers and private citizens had originally conceived, and experienced
>>> back then.
>>>
>>> Anyone else who has specific references, please feel free to continue sending
>>> them to me and/or posting them.
>>>
>>> Here are my original questions previously posted to the aoirlist.  I'm hoping
>>> the formatting is better this time:
>>> "For a piece I'm preparing on interaction back and forth between online and
>>> offline or from digital to physical worlds and back, I'm looking for
>>> references about how that works for people, especially those who are members
>>> of online communities.
>>>
>>> More than particular data to show this communication in process, although that
>>> is good too, I want to conceptualize themovement, the "flow" from one realm to
>>> another, to describe what is happening.  Also, how does the online
>>> communication, including that through mobile phones, affect the offline
>>> interaction, and how do the offline encounters affect what goes on inside the
>>> online communities and in other social media containing some of the same
>>> people interacting offline. This project is part of my music fan research on
>>> fan communities, identities, and relationships.
>>> I'm already aware of the articles in the first issue of Mobile Media and
>>> Communication (January, 2013), and of Lauren Sessions-Goulet's excellent paper
>>> of a few years back on offline meetings and online communities, and have a few
>>> other helpful sources.  I've done a body of work on romantic online
>>> relationships so I understand many of the dynamics there.
>>>
>>> Please feel free to write off list or on.  Thanks so much in advance!
>>> cheers,
>>> andee (andrea baker)"
>>>
>>> thanks!  --a
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
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-- 
Peter Joseph Gloviczki, Ph.D.
http://petergloviczki.com