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MA ADA 2007 > articles > community and interaction

community and interaction

May 8, 07:25 PM · Penelope Dunbar

Latour(1993) argues that the polarity between subject and object is a modern construct , one which impedes our attempts to access to the imbrications and networked relations of subject and object . Latour thinks we must restore the role of the mediator , as an ‘ original event [which] creates what it translates, as well as the entities between which it plays the mediating role ‘(Latour 1993:78) Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory(2005) is founded on the interaction between humans and things.’ stretch any
inter-action and, sure enough , it becomes an actor-network’(2005:202) There are some interesting dimensions to this interaction which I can directly vouch for in my growing interactions with the internet .Latour(2005) describes interactions as overflowing in all directions , encompassing a ‘Bewildering array of participants…...simulataneously at work in them and which are dislocating their neat boundaries’ The internet is reflection of our human interactivity with the world of things. Its technology creates everyone of Latour’s conditions for interaction between inumerable actants.The internet is saturated with hetrogenous entities that are not synoptic (simultaneously visible) Interactions involving millions of different actors and actants from diverse and distant places.

The internet is altering how we behave on a societal level. The private and the public conflate on a daily basis.Scores of people regularly are rendered completely absorbered ,privately interacting in a public space with vast amounts of public information.*

The pioneers of the world wide web were inspired by the idea of connecting people creating communities of users and collaboration between people . Berners-Lee’s original idea was that the web could become a “mirror (or in fact a primary embodiment ) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize” (Berners-Lee 1999).

Berners-Lee translated the dream of a machine which could be interacted with into the beginnings of a reality. Central to his idea was the aspiration to use technology to facilitate a two-way process involving interaction with the information space , a creative exchange, that would provide people with the opportunity to engage in sharing. People to be reading , accessing ,creating links and connections between web pages.

Serres (1993) would suggest we should think of communication as the sending and recieving of messages via different messangers and be vigilent of the role the Internet has as a mediator and ‘actor endowed with the capacity to translate what they transport, to redefine it redeploy it and betray it’. (Latour 1993:81) silentmiaow the internet to communicate her unique perspective of the world . This video is especially powerful because of its transparancy and immediacy. Hearing and seeing directly through the medium of the internet , this subjects private world rendered in a public dimension presented a paradox. Silentmiaow opens up the possiblity for new definitions of communication,People with autism are often identified by non-autistic people as having a communication disorder.By posting this clip on youtube she is inadvertently engaging with multiple and mobile relationships that involve complex and fluid hybridising of public-and-prvate life(Sheller & Urry 2003) This could be misconstrued as publicity ,a media infiltration of the private realm. thus collapsing her mode of communication into a spectacle for world-wide consumption.I felt concerned that this material becomes vulnerable to misinterpretation by being posted on youtube which has a diverse and vast audience.The internet and its populations of networks , can distort and corrupt the integrity of a message.

References

Berners-Lee, T & Fischetti,M. _Weaving the Web : the past, present and future of the World Wide Web._London : Orion Business, 1999.

Csordas, T. ed. (1994) Embodiment and Experience: the existential ground of culture and Self . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

Latour, B.& Porter,C (trans) (1993) We have never been modern. Cambridge MA:Harvard University Press.

Latour, B.(2005) _Reassembling the social:An introduction to Actor-Network-Theory_Oxford:Oxford University Press

Serres,M & MacArthur&Paulson(trans)(1995)_ The natural contract_ . USA:University of Michigan Press .

Serres, M & Cowper, P(trans) (1993) Angels: A modern myth. Paris: Flammarion.

Sheller, M & Urr, J.(2003) ‘Mobile transformations of ‘public’ and ‘private’ life.’ Theory ,Culture& Society. vol 20 no3 pp.107-126

 

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