Regarding your second and third questions, I don't think there's a very big difference between setting boundaries and shaping culture. The first thing that comes to mind for me is imagery of pouring eggs into a frying pan to make an omelette. (Skip lunch much?) All the pan does is provide boundaries for the otherwise boundlessly sloshing egg fluid, but thereby the pan is shaping the form the egg fluid takes. And then the egg congeals. It's a clumsy analogy, sure, particularly because it implies that ICT really does shape interaction in a very hard way, but I think it's appropriate given the context. Your first question I found most intriguing. I do think that all interaction affects the shape of culture (by modifying its boundaries). We can look at culture from a societal perspective, documenting that way groups of people interact and analyzing their topics of discussion. We can also look at the other end of the spectrum, assessing what individual people in some of those groups experience in terms of interaction and information exchange, and how this modifies their own palette of preferences, and their willingness to table new discussions on certain topics. Conor Christian Nelson wrote:
I haven't been following this thread, but saw this short note and it struck a chord. Particularly the statement that our modes of interaction "shape" the resultant culture. First question: Do all interactions result in a culture (or the alteration of one)? Second: Do communication modes "shape" interaction or set boundaries for them based on (participants perceptions of) what they afford (in Gibson's sense)? Third, assuming that communication modes set boundaries rather than shape interaction, do differences in boundaries necessarily (or ever) result in differences in culture?
--Christian Nelson
On Jan 18, 2008, at 3:08 AM, Marj Kibby wrote:
If there were people who regularly interacted in your toolshed they would develop a 'toolshed' culture - a set of practices, beliefs and understandings shaped by their mode of interaction.
Marj
Dr Marjorie Kibby, Senior Lecturer in Communication & Culture Faculty of Education and Arts The University of Newcastle, Callaghan NSW 2308 Australia Marj.Kibby@newcastle.edu.au +61 2 49216604
Mary-Helen Ward <mhward@usyd.edu.au> 01/18/08 6:51 PM >>>
If I had a toolshed it wouldn't have any people interacting in it ...
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