On Sunday, February 3, 2002, at 10:26 AM, Chris Heckler wrote:


<excerpt>Jeremy Hunsinger wrote:


<italic>what is the extent of your idea of territoriality?   are you
interested in mental territory or only projected spacialities?</italic>




Mainly I am interested in how online non-verbal behavior is used to
indicate either.  How are you defining projected spacialities?

</excerpt>

we project space in many ways, projected spacialities are those
phenomena that we interpret as spacial, but might be understood in
other ways.  We project spaciality onto the net as much as it exists
there, by creating its useful places in terms of space be that pages,
rooms, dungeons, etc.  You could alternatively appreciate them as
interstitial entities, transient and amorphous in which interaction
occurs.  Then given what you have below the nature of territoriality
changes from less about space, and more about occupation, the
descartesian "I am" restated over and over, combined with the
consistent 'this is mine', which occurs often on the net.  I don't see
many people going that way though in the end.  But the idea of a
projected spaciality is that the space is created and maintained in
the perception of participant, and is projected onto the domain in
question, very Kantian in a way.


However, i think you are probably going for something different.  For
mental territory, i might suggest a brief glance at

http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/digitalfordism/2digdeterr.html


In other senses space is very real on the net.s




<excerpt>  An example of the types of things I am looking at is the
flame war phenomena.  I feel that flaming is a great example of how
humans defend territory online.  In comparative gender studies, men
typially take up more physical space during face-to-face type
interactions.  An analogous online study reflects that on message
boards men will typically post more frequently and write longer
posts.  So what I would be looking at in that instance is how people
use their posts to establish that a certain message board is part of
their cyber territory.

</excerpt>

I worry that the latter analogue is not analogous due to other
factors. For instance, is the message board medium, like say usenet,
amenable toward certain kinds of writing over others, are there
questions of history? are there counterexamples?  I know that in
general i post more frequently, but then I work behind a computer
screen the majority of the day, perhaps it is partially related to the
way men and women's lives are structured, what populations exist, etc.
etc.  Too many possible intervening variables for me to list or
account for.  


This is not to say that cyber territory is not a factor really, just
that I don't know how much of a factor it is say over something else,
like habit, and while they overlap in interesting ways, i don't know
that it would be held the case across cyberspacial entities.  



jeremy hunsinger

jhuns@vt.edu

on the ibook

www.cddc.vt.edu

www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy

www.dromocracy.com