What follows is the Abstract to my Masters degree dissertation.
An End to Cyberspace? Metaphor, Affect and Socio-Technical Relations
Despite twenty-five years of the personal computer and a wealth of literature on all things ‘cyber-‘ the discussion of computer-mediated communication largely remains pre-figured by (misguided) binaries, such as ‘material’-‘electronic’ and ‘real’-‘virtual’. This dissertation (re)examines the metaphorical concepts enfolded in constituting computer-mediated place(s). Given the upsurge of social networking websites, this inquiry attends to the place(s) of contemporary phenomenon MySpace.com. After Doreen Massey and Nigel Thrift I utilise prominent theories of relationality, namely Actor-Network Theory. This is situated in an understanding, through the work of philosopher Gilles Deleuze and geographers such as J-D Dewsbury and Nigel Thrift, of a ceaselessly taking-place or becoming world, significantly motivated by the affectual. Following influential work on metaphor by Lakoff and Johnson and work on socio-technical relations, by geographers such as Nick Bingham and Stephen Graham, I chart a typology of transcendental, co-evolutionary and recombinatory metaphors for the Internet, with examples from a cross-section of literature. Evaluating how these metaphors are enrolled in the conception of place(s) is achieved through a dual methodology of interviews, with expert technological commentators and practitioners, and experimental Internet-based participant observation, using MySpace.com. I discuss the manner in which socio-technical assemblages such as MySpace can be considered place(s) through empirical evidence, arguing that a relational approach reveals a finer granularity and nuance to the production and performance of place. Interwoven through my analysis is an attention to the role of the pre-cognitive and impersonal motivations of affect. I move on to evaluate how our normative spatial metaphors orientate or map computer-mediated place(s) framed by the aforementioned typology of metaphor. This dissertation proposes an end to over-simplistic and technologically determinate notions of ‘cyberspace’ by offering a beginning – a conceptualisation of place as an intensity of socio-technical relations, which are an increasingly significant part of the intermeshing skein of networks that makes up the social world.
You can download a full copy of this dissertation. Please understand your downloading of the document as an agreement to respect the Creative Commons license it is issued under. If you are interested in this research feel free to contact me to discuss it more.
3 Replies to “Masters Research”
Comments are closed.