Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Space and time (again)


space city
A short while back I promised Sarah I'd do a favourite three list of sources on time, space and new technology. So here’s how it goes. First I have to have Giddens, because he writes so lucidly about the changing nature of place, space and time in late modernity. For me he sets out the broad context in which specific technoliteracy practices are played out. Secondly, I really enjoy Jay Lemke on this topic - probably Across the Scales of Time: Artifacts, Activities, and Meanings in Ecosocial Systems is what I’d go for (there’s a version here). Third is Kevin Leander – I don’t enjoy the theoretical stuff as much as the case study commentary (so, I’d nominate ‘You won’t be needing your laptops today’ which is in Knobel and Lankshear’s New Literacy Sampler). I’d have Lefebvre in, but although I like some of it I can’t make it all work for me. And then, out of the one’s that didn’t make it, there is Barry Wellman. His idea of the movement from the glocal to the networked individual is really based upon changing spaces and time, but I don’t think the theme is really foregounded in his work. Well anyway that’s how I’m thinking about things at this moment in time!

3 comments:

SarahL said...

Awesome, thank you! In fact, after going over some of my data with me the other day Lalitha suggested Lemke's time scales as well - looks like that's my first stop!

Guy Merchant said...

Yay! So that could really work for you - well I hope so anyway. Lemke's sometimes a bit like hard work, but reading the stuff often seems to pay off - so go to it :)

Guy Merchant said...

Afterthought on Ito and Okabe. This is very much in the same territory. The idea of the 'technosocial situation' is a way of describing the terrain. The paper has 'space-time compression'; the midway point between interaction and non-interaction ('background awareness') and the 'social expectation that a message should be responded to within about thirty minutes'. So we're certainly in the zone here, but Ito and Okabe don't theorise these phenomena.