Interrupting the Binary of Online/Offline
Simon Moreton
This section of the literature review considers research that explores the pervasive nature of ICT and other new digital technologies. It is apparent from the preceding section that the use of ICT emerged as a practice that shapes, codes, times and delineates our working and private lives. What is further important is not just engagements with ‘obvious’ digital technologies, such as mobile telephones or personal computers, but also other digital technologies that shape our lives. These might included traffic lights that automate the flow of traffic in the city (Thrift and French, 2002) or home devices such as washing machines or alarm clocks that respond (to varying degrees) to environment stimuli to effect particular changes to a user’s experience of space (Dodge and Kitchin, 2009). This expands the parameters for subjective interaction – either collectively or individually – with technologies that connect users and passersby to new kinds of digital technology.
An identification with a specific place, locality or networked local area has been argued to be a key determinate of community relations (Driskell and Lyon, 2002). The potential for ICTs and their use to recast our experience of time and space is noted in this research, as is the danger that this quality of ICT use might undermine or weaken place-based ties. Some research into how ICTs operate, are used and experience offers alternative accounts of spatiality, for example in the city (Aurigi and De Cindio, 2008, Mitchell, 1995, Shepard, 2011, Townsend, 2000). Crang et al. (2007) write about the new forms of spatiality emerging in the city as a consequence of ICT usage. They reject unhelpful binaries around ‘online’ vs ‘offline’ and static concepts of spatial delineations such as ‘the neighbourhood’, recognise the material infrastructure that represents a backdrop to ICT use, and explore how new forms of space and experience of time are bought into being. They “seek to find a nuanced way of thinking through the interactions of mediated and physical action, as online and offline interactions are constituted and constructed together to sustain and transform the complex temporalities and spatialities of everyday urban life.” (Crang et al., 2007b p. 2406). Examples of some of these place/space shaping technologies are explored by Erickson (2010), Galloway (2006, 2004).
Technologies that further refigure how spaces are produced through ICT have emerged from the concept of Ubiquitous Computing. Ubiquitous Computing represents a very specific type of technology that is not always analogous with more fixed modes of ICT use, such as web-browsing or desktop computing (Galloway, 2004). However, in complicating the way in which we understand the relationship between technology, connectivity, temporality and spatiality, the debates inherent to the concept pose important questions about how digital technologies shape everyday life: what is it to be connected? In what ways are the (im)materialities of technology re-engaging actors in the production of multiple subjective/affective spaces in everyday activity? How is technology repurposing our everyday lives? In this latter question in particular, an engagement with this literature will be key to theorising the way in which the everyday lives of people are being performed in relation to one another, and in relation to the production of new forms of interpersonal interaction. This review now moves on to discuss the question of space through the lens of connectivity.
The (im)materiality of contemporary coded technologies has been a focus of attention for some geographers. This body of work suggests that coded devices and software in general are able to bring into being specific spatial and temporal possibilities. As Thrift and French (2002) describe it, their interest is in, “software's ability to act as a means of providing a new and complex form of automated spatiality, complex ethologies of software and other entities which, too often in the past, have been studied as if human agency is clearly the directive force.” (Thrift and French, 2002 p. 309). In other words, software makes spaces, and predetermines some of the ways in which interaction in those is facilitated by technology. They use various examples to illustrate their point, from traffic lights regulating the flow of pedestrians and traffic, to navigation and security devices within cars.
In this understanding of technology, software provides a mosaic of spatialities. Dodge and Kitchin (2009) provide a typology of code enabled objects in the home. They unpack the extent to which coded objects regulate, time, produce, influence and otherwise are generative of spatial experiences in the home. Space is something that emerges from the interplay between things and people, technology, code and affective relations. But how does this affect our experience of connectivity? Do spaces produced in this way require connection, or does our interest in them lie in their apparent independence and agency?
As Dodge and Kitchen (2005 p. 169) write, “The extent to which code is embedded in everyday society (as objects, infrastructure, processes, and assemblages) is not the same thing as the extent to which it makes a difference to everyday life.” The point about connectivity becomes links to not only our direct, knowing experience of it, but also the experience of disruption felt if and when the technological substrate fails. They refer to the concept of transduction (“Transduction, then, is a process of ontogenesis, the making anew of a domain in reiterative and transformative individuations” ibid. P. 170), that facilities code’s technicity to be realised. In other words, it is the practice of making spaces the disruption of which could be experienced as online/offline effects.
The materiality of elements of ICT is also important here as they also play a role in the formation of connected space. Although there is a general tendency to see the Internet as a ‘virtual’ space, these technologies are supported by an infrastructure not just of production (mineral extraction, international trade in components, plastics, handsets, desktops, accessories, silicon chops etc.) but also of use (servers, telephone masts, GPS satellites etc.). These objects offer both a material infrastructural backdrop and a present, artefactual presence (keyboards with missing keys, a phone with short battery life) that colour their use. This person/tool/thing interaction is important to think through further when thinking about the process of making/using (Schwanen, 2007). Furthermore, in Jean-François Blanchette’s ‘A Material History of Bits’ (Blanchette, 2011), the materiality of bytes and bits is taken to the atomic level to challenge how we thinking about the virtuality vs. materiality debate.
In summary for this section, we can infer from this literature that:
a) Code-space is bought into being in the complex interrelation between people and things, and technology plays a role in shaping those interactions.
b) Connectivity is not a binary (online/offline) but a state in which people and things are connected/not-connected simultaneously.
c) Connections between people arise in this milieu: someone ‘present’ on an Internet chat forum is simultaneously creating spaces of virtuality through the Internet, and materiality at home, at the desk, at the computer.
d) The habits of Internet use and those experiences of being in virtual spaces are mediated by the materiality of technology, infrastructure etc.
e) Identities/affective identities unfold in relation to these processes, and will always be mediated by those experiences. However, in as much as ICT use can be construed as a technology of the self, it is always and already being made in relation to others.
f) Community thus is something emergent from these types of flows, forms, practices, spaces and things – and may not be reducible to traditional typologies of community. Usage practices can reinforce or strengthen bonds and ties, but also exclude: new affective challenges about the imperative to be omni-present or omni-connected produce new experiences in ‘keeping up’ or ‘keeping in’ those communities etc.
This section of the literature review considers research that explores the pervasive nature of ICT and other new digital technologies. It is apparent from the preceding section that the use of ICT emerged as a practice that shapes, codes, times and delineates our working and private lives. What is further important is not just engagements with ‘obvious’ digital technologies, such as mobile telephones or personal computers, but also other digital technologies that shape our lives. These might included traffic lights that automate the flow of traffic in the city (Thrift and French, 2002) or home devices such as washing machines or alarm clocks that respond (to varying degrees) to environment stimuli to effect particular changes to a user’s experience of space (Dodge and Kitchin, 2009). This expands the parameters for subjective interaction – either collectively or individually – with technologies that connect users and passersby to new kinds of digital technology.
An identification with a specific place, locality or networked local area has been argued to be a key determinate of community relations (Driskell and Lyon, 2002). The potential for ICTs and their use to recast our experience of time and space is noted in this research, as is the danger that this quality of ICT use might undermine or weaken place-based ties. Some research into how ICTs operate, are used and experience offers alternative accounts of spatiality, for example in the city (Aurigi and De Cindio, 2008, Mitchell, 1995, Shepard, 2011, Townsend, 2000). Crang et al. (2007) write about the new forms of spatiality emerging in the city as a consequence of ICT usage. They reject unhelpful binaries around ‘online’ vs ‘offline’ and static concepts of spatial delineations such as ‘the neighbourhood’, recognise the material infrastructure that represents a backdrop to ICT use, and explore how new forms of space and experience of time are bought into being. They “seek to find a nuanced way of thinking through the interactions of mediated and physical action, as online and offline interactions are constituted and constructed together to sustain and transform the complex temporalities and spatialities of everyday urban life.” (Crang et al., 2007b p. 2406). Examples of some of these place/space shaping technologies are explored by Erickson (2010), Galloway (2006, 2004).
Technologies that further refigure how spaces are produced through ICT have emerged from the concept of Ubiquitous Computing. Ubiquitous Computing represents a very specific type of technology that is not always analogous with more fixed modes of ICT use, such as web-browsing or desktop computing (Galloway, 2004). However, in complicating the way in which we understand the relationship between technology, connectivity, temporality and spatiality, the debates inherent to the concept pose important questions about how digital technologies shape everyday life: what is it to be connected? In what ways are the (im)materialities of technology re-engaging actors in the production of multiple subjective/affective spaces in everyday activity? How is technology repurposing our everyday lives? In this latter question in particular, an engagement with this literature will be key to theorising the way in which the everyday lives of people are being performed in relation to one another, and in relation to the production of new forms of interpersonal interaction. This review now moves on to discuss the question of space through the lens of connectivity.
The (im)materiality of contemporary coded technologies has been a focus of attention for some geographers. This body of work suggests that coded devices and software in general are able to bring into being specific spatial and temporal possibilities. As Thrift and French (2002) describe it, their interest is in, “software's ability to act as a means of providing a new and complex form of automated spatiality, complex ethologies of software and other entities which, too often in the past, have been studied as if human agency is clearly the directive force.” (Thrift and French, 2002 p. 309). In other words, software makes spaces, and predetermines some of the ways in which interaction in those is facilitated by technology. They use various examples to illustrate their point, from traffic lights regulating the flow of pedestrians and traffic, to navigation and security devices within cars.
In this understanding of technology, software provides a mosaic of spatialities. Dodge and Kitchin (2009) provide a typology of code enabled objects in the home. They unpack the extent to which coded objects regulate, time, produce, influence and otherwise are generative of spatial experiences in the home. Space is something that emerges from the interplay between things and people, technology, code and affective relations. But how does this affect our experience of connectivity? Do spaces produced in this way require connection, or does our interest in them lie in their apparent independence and agency?
As Dodge and Kitchen (2005 p. 169) write, “The extent to which code is embedded in everyday society (as objects, infrastructure, processes, and assemblages) is not the same thing as the extent to which it makes a difference to everyday life.” The point about connectivity becomes links to not only our direct, knowing experience of it, but also the experience of disruption felt if and when the technological substrate fails. They refer to the concept of transduction (“Transduction, then, is a process of ontogenesis, the making anew of a domain in reiterative and transformative individuations” ibid. P. 170), that facilities code’s technicity to be realised. In other words, it is the practice of making spaces the disruption of which could be experienced as online/offline effects.
The materiality of elements of ICT is also important here as they also play a role in the formation of connected space. Although there is a general tendency to see the Internet as a ‘virtual’ space, these technologies are supported by an infrastructure not just of production (mineral extraction, international trade in components, plastics, handsets, desktops, accessories, silicon chops etc.) but also of use (servers, telephone masts, GPS satellites etc.). These objects offer both a material infrastructural backdrop and a present, artefactual presence (keyboards with missing keys, a phone with short battery life) that colour their use. This person/tool/thing interaction is important to think through further when thinking about the process of making/using (Schwanen, 2007). Furthermore, in Jean-François Blanchette’s ‘A Material History of Bits’ (Blanchette, 2011), the materiality of bytes and bits is taken to the atomic level to challenge how we thinking about the virtuality vs. materiality debate.
In summary for this section, we can infer from this literature that:
a) Code-space is bought into being in the complex interrelation between people and things, and technology plays a role in shaping those interactions.
b) Connectivity is not a binary (online/offline) but a state in which people and things are connected/not-connected simultaneously.
c) Connections between people arise in this milieu: someone ‘present’ on an Internet chat forum is simultaneously creating spaces of virtuality through the Internet, and materiality at home, at the desk, at the computer.
d) The habits of Internet use and those experiences of being in virtual spaces are mediated by the materiality of technology, infrastructure etc.
e) Identities/affective identities unfold in relation to these processes, and will always be mediated by those experiences. However, in as much as ICT use can be construed as a technology of the self, it is always and already being made in relation to others.
f) Community thus is something emergent from these types of flows, forms, practices, spaces and things – and may not be reducible to traditional typologies of community. Usage practices can reinforce or strengthen bonds and ties, but also exclude: new affective challenges about the imperative to be omni-present or omni-connected produce new experiences in ‘keeping up’ or ‘keeping in’ those communities etc.