Sunday, November 13, 2005

Windows


window

Morning sunlight was particularly good this Saturday. I had a few hours in the window with Christine Hines’ Virtual Ethnography. She talks about newsgroups and webpages (let’s add blogs) as “instances of self-presentation which it is hoped will be accepted as appropriate and plausible performances.” (p.122) - it’s interesting that use of the word ‘hoped’.

Later she argues that the webpage is “made meaningful primarily through the imagining of an audience and the seeking of recognition from that audience.” (p.136). There’s also a useful page on virtual ethnography here.

3 comments:

Kate said...

Great post.
Take a look here - good stuff on affordances of virtual world
http://www.monoculartimes.co.uk/avantgardening/newmedialanguage.shtml

Guy Merchant said...

Many thanks Kate, a useful link indeed!

Mary Plain said...

Lovely window..
that bit about the imagining of the audience feels very bloglike. I was also thinking about your previous post about IM. I find it very hard to do well unless we have a shared obejctive or mutual reference point. I use Skype for IM now mainly as my friend Benny in Mexico can't use MSN at work anymore. As a result we often talk instead using the phone bit of Skype and it is surprising how different the conversations are. when we IM I can do several things at the same time but I am always getting out of sequence with replies. When we talk it is easier to keep on track but harder to keep normal life going alongside. It has been great to be able to share things like the poster design for my lecture this week with him and places we both know on Google Earth- it is kind of magic to be both looking at the same thing at the same time all these miles and time zones apart.. It is of course true that when Benny and his family went back it was only email (all we had then) that has kept us in touch so regularly. Which meant I was able to go on seeing Veronica, our good daughter, and to write about her with Benny.