Time(s) and materiality of the Internet discussed at IR16 Phoenix / Part 1

aoir-ir16I am attending the sixteenth conference of the Association for Internet Researchers (IR16) In Phoenix, Arizona. My primary objective here is to co-chair and present in a panel which seeks to build bridges between science and technology studies (STS) approaches and Internet governance research; however, I have been delighted to attend at least two panels whose topics closely intertwine with the goals of the Web90 project: “timing” and “material”.

In the first panel, Timing, which took place on Wednesday 22 October, contributors explored how time – its unfolding, “instantness”, subjective understandings – affect our perceptions of digital tools and their objectives. Sarah Munoz-Bates, from Arizona State University, in “Instant Results with Lingering Effects”, examined the ways in which Google can bias searchers into privileging one set of terms over the other when looking for information on undocumented immigration in the United States. Her study showed how Google often directs users toward the word “illegal” over the word “undocumented” and how this biasing can have negative repercussions in immigration discussions; she argued that the simple act of instantaneously and repeatedly displaying specific words or phrases holds the potential to influence long-term how people research, learn, and discuss a specific topic. In a statistics-based paper, “‘iTime’ as a Blessing or a Curse: Imaginaries of Smartphone Use and Personal and Social Time Among Generational Groups in Estonia”, Veronika Kalmus (University of Tartu, Estonia) focused on people’s imaginaries of smartphones, and the relationships between those imaginaries and personal perception and use of time, testing empirically Ben Agger’s thesis that social imaginaries of the normal social life in a smartphone era vary generationally. Taking as a starting point the Internet jargon term ‘TL;DR’, which stands for ‘too long didn’t read.’ — a dismissive response to a text that was too long or not interesting enough to read within the Internet’s ‘quick pace’ – Stacey Koosel (Estonian Academy of Arts) addressed the many levels of temporality factors in digital culture, arguing notably that online time can be more easily manipulated, artificially constructed and fragmented than offline time, and that temporal awareness online is often a by-product of design, by software guiding temporal and spatial constructs that help create meaning. And finally, Alex Leavitt and colleagues, in “Beyond Big Bird”, addressed the question of how emergent discourses impact the interpretation of large social media events, through an analysis of the use of humor (or lack thereof) in tweets posted during each of the three 2012 presidential debates. Their findings invite to consider humor and other contextual aspects of communication in studies of participatory politics on social media, while emphasizing the “live” and real-time aspect of the impact of tweeting activities.

Francesca Musiani (ISCC)

Time(s) and materiality of the Internet discussed at IR16 Phoenix / Part 2

Old Thinkpad with 3Com Ethernet / modem PCMCIA card sticking out Jim Henderson, travail personnel. CC0

Old Thinkpad with 3Com Ethernet / modem PCMCIA card sticking out
Jim Henderson, travail personnel, CC0

The second panel, “Material”, held on Thursday 23 October, provided some very interesting perspectives on the ‘mundane’ devices that are such an integral part of how we interact with, and indeed, define, our relation to the digital. James Allen-Robertson (University of Essex, UK) focused on the Hard Disk drive as a material foundation for contemporary digital media, providing a historical perspective drawing elements from the development of the Gramophone and Phonograph, Magnetic Tape and Optical Media – a perspective that leveraged Foucault’s concept of ‘descent’ to provide a historical perspective on the way in which fundamental material factors constrain, influence and encourage particular uses of digital media. In the case of the Hard Disk, according to Allen-Robertson, the descent demonstrates how this device’s operation plays a role in the affordances of digital media and how these affordances are prefigured in older media technologies. In his piece “Singing Data Over the Phone”, Kevin Driscoll (Microsoft Research) focused on the modem instead, as a “singularly powerful symbol of late-20th century personal computer networking”. Operating at the junction of computing and communication, he argued, the modem was a device that both defined and defied boundaries during the early history of the net. First, during the period of rapid deregulation of U.S. telecommunications during the 1970s, when modems enabled thousands of microcomputer enthusiasts to exchange data and ideas over standard telephone wires. Second, as PC ownership grew more commonplace during the 1980s, when the modem became a mark of distinction, differentiating the everyday home computer owner from the small but growing telecomputing vanguard. As “a meeting point between the novel and legacy systems of personal computing and telephony”, at the intersection of “virtual and translocal imaginaires”, the modem, Driscoll argued, is deserving of a “social history” of its own. Lindsay Ems, from Butler University, presented an ethnography-based analysis of the socio-technical innovations, including professional artifacts and arrangements, which reflect and protect Amish religious and cultural values in our increasingly digital economy. Wireless ad-hoc arrangements, double screens, were presented as mundane and everyday devices and professional practices that have profound political implications for the empowerment of Amish communities to resist the assimilation of their culture in mainstream society in an increasingly globally networked world. In her award-winning paper “The Digital Not-so-imaginary Behind Genderless Online Discourse”, Jenny Korn adopted a perspective grounded in muted group theory and analytical feminism to examine online discourse within users of the first generalized computer-assisted instruction system in the United States, PLATO. She explored how gender manifested within computer-mediated communication in PLATO as an early originator of online social computing. She exposed gendered muting processes that have persisted from that time, and showed that to attain voice, women have had to present themselves in stereotypical ways that are aligned with men’s discourse.

Francesca Musiani (ISCC)