Diverse Connectivities
Simon Moreton
This review argues that geographers, technologies and social scientists interested in questions of connectivity offer us a valuable means of theorising the how we understand online/offline practices. Rather than seeing online/offline as a binary, the opportunity offered by this body of work is to see connectivity as a case of being both online and offline at the same time. Space is co-produced by the relations in between states of connection and disconnection, and neither is a static state. The critique made in this section of the review is that the concept of community is frequently reified as an essentialised category of social organisation whose parameters are being met (or not) by the communication forms facilitated by ICT. The question is often posed ‘can Internet use replicate the characteristics we understand necessary for what we have observed a community to be?’. Although there is merit to this line of questioning, it might be better to ask ‘how are the new subjective entanglements of things, people and spaces afforded by ICT, creating new engagements between people that we might call ‘community?’
This engagement is not present in Haythornthwaite and Kendall’s (2010) typology of Internet community research, though it borrows elements from each of the others. This conceptualisation of ICT as an entanglement does not see ICT as a passive tool through which interpersonal interaction emerges that mimic, but do not replicate fully, those in the ‘real world’. It sees technology instead as an actor that is negotiated/encountered by users and that co-produces complex subjective and social relations. These relations exist both through interaction with other actors, but also simultaneously in the world around them – users are present in a co-production of both online and offline worlds all at once.
The implications of frustrations and limitations to connectivity – through lack of access due to hardware failure, financial cost or geographic limitations on connectivity can be understood in relation to this type of theorising. Rather than seeing connection to the Internet (see DCMS debates on High Speed Broadband) as a one-size-fits-all solution to a lack of connectivity, this theorising will show how being offline is experienced in relation to either desires to be connected, or being connected already, but being interrupted by service failures. The idea behind this thinking is that it will point toward the (im)material limits to connectivity, how they are spatialised, and how they are temporalised. This might included responses to temporary breaks in service, to a sustained period of disengagement with ICT, or to the limits and challenges for someone who is unable to access the internet for other reasons, such as cost, access to skills, age etc.
This latter grouping of offline behaviour is important because many services from taxation, to Government information is found online. The transition to being online either in spaces such as libraries or public computers does therefore not always mean that users will be ‘connected’ instaneously. They might undergo experiences of disorientation, the problem of public computers and private information, frustrations at inaccesiblity of the correct information etc. Thus, being online briefly or rarely is still a subjective experience form in relation to being online – in terms of what that means materially, socially and culturally.
Positioning the craft practitioner as the starting point of this study is therefore an important element of the research. We can ask how are craft practitioners are co-present in (and co-producing) spaces that might be at once digitally mediated and disconnected. We can consider how through those processes, communities emerge, intersect, and fold around the craft practitioner. When do communities of interest become more ‘deep’? What subjective experience and relations that occur in the home ‘cross’ through the online/offline barrier to add depth to emotional engagements? What timings and spacings of interactions shape craft practice? How does the internet allow for deepening of professional and personal ties?
This review argues that geographers, technologies and social scientists interested in questions of connectivity offer us a valuable means of theorising the how we understand online/offline practices. Rather than seeing online/offline as a binary, the opportunity offered by this body of work is to see connectivity as a case of being both online and offline at the same time. Space is co-produced by the relations in between states of connection and disconnection, and neither is a static state. The critique made in this section of the review is that the concept of community is frequently reified as an essentialised category of social organisation whose parameters are being met (or not) by the communication forms facilitated by ICT. The question is often posed ‘can Internet use replicate the characteristics we understand necessary for what we have observed a community to be?’. Although there is merit to this line of questioning, it might be better to ask ‘how are the new subjective entanglements of things, people and spaces afforded by ICT, creating new engagements between people that we might call ‘community?’
This engagement is not present in Haythornthwaite and Kendall’s (2010) typology of Internet community research, though it borrows elements from each of the others. This conceptualisation of ICT as an entanglement does not see ICT as a passive tool through which interpersonal interaction emerges that mimic, but do not replicate fully, those in the ‘real world’. It sees technology instead as an actor that is negotiated/encountered by users and that co-produces complex subjective and social relations. These relations exist both through interaction with other actors, but also simultaneously in the world around them – users are present in a co-production of both online and offline worlds all at once.
The implications of frustrations and limitations to connectivity – through lack of access due to hardware failure, financial cost or geographic limitations on connectivity can be understood in relation to this type of theorising. Rather than seeing connection to the Internet (see DCMS debates on High Speed Broadband) as a one-size-fits-all solution to a lack of connectivity, this theorising will show how being offline is experienced in relation to either desires to be connected, or being connected already, but being interrupted by service failures. The idea behind this thinking is that it will point toward the (im)material limits to connectivity, how they are spatialised, and how they are temporalised. This might included responses to temporary breaks in service, to a sustained period of disengagement with ICT, or to the limits and challenges for someone who is unable to access the internet for other reasons, such as cost, access to skills, age etc.
This latter grouping of offline behaviour is important because many services from taxation, to Government information is found online. The transition to being online either in spaces such as libraries or public computers does therefore not always mean that users will be ‘connected’ instaneously. They might undergo experiences of disorientation, the problem of public computers and private information, frustrations at inaccesiblity of the correct information etc. Thus, being online briefly or rarely is still a subjective experience form in relation to being online – in terms of what that means materially, socially and culturally.
Positioning the craft practitioner as the starting point of this study is therefore an important element of the research. We can ask how are craft practitioners are co-present in (and co-producing) spaces that might be at once digitally mediated and disconnected. We can consider how through those processes, communities emerge, intersect, and fold around the craft practitioner. When do communities of interest become more ‘deep’? What subjective experience and relations that occur in the home ‘cross’ through the online/offline barrier to add depth to emotional engagements? What timings and spacings of interactions shape craft practice? How does the internet allow for deepening of professional and personal ties?
