Re: [Air-L] What is web culture?
I'm more of a lurker here but I thought I might try to weigh in on this "web culture" thing. Pardon any incoherence, it's been a long week and this is mostly stream of consciousness. As I understand it, "web culture" is a misnomer. The term seems to have been created to describe that slightly different way things seem to occur online when compared to related offline experiences, but I think this is all barking up the wrong tree. Cyberspace (in this instance, AKA the Web, the Internet) is a virtual world extension; it's an extension of our real world. Saying that there is a unique culture in cyberspace is the same as claiming that there is a unique culture in your toolshed. Culture is something produced, carried, consumed, displayed, etc, by the people that occupy a space, not the space itself. Therefore, there isn't a "Web culture", but the cultures of the people interacting with one another within the Web. They may have different tools available to communicate and share that culture, but I don't think that those tools beget a culture in their own right. e.g. "Web culture" didn't produce LOLcats, "bored teen culture" (or something like that) did. The ease of sharing LOLcats online is what made them popular. Hope this helps... Greg Williams e-: greg@lexiphanic.com P.S. Apologies if I'm on the wrong track! :)
Hmmm. I disagree with this. I think there are human interactions on the web that have created new aspects of human interaction: new artefacts, new rituals, new relationships, new shared expressions of language, new viewpoints and ways of doing things. And I'm not talking about LOLcats. There are cultures on the Web that I am and have been part of that have no offline parallel in their reach and complexity, because it is the sharing of people from different cultures in a space of common interest that creates new... well ... cultures. (Sorry, but I don't have another word for what has been created). If I had a toolshed it wouldn't have any people interacting in it; the web does. M-H On 18/1/08 6:38 PM, "Greg Williams" <greg@lexiphanic.com> wrote:
I'm more of a lurker here but I thought I might try to weigh in on this "web culture" thing. Pardon any incoherence, it's been a long week and this is mostly stream of consciousness.
As I understand it, "web culture" is a misnomer. The term seems to have been created to describe that slightly different way things seem to occur online when compared to related offline experiences, but I think this is all barking up the wrong tree.
Cyberspace (in this instance, AKA the Web, the Internet) is a virtual world extension; it's an extension of our real world. Saying that there is a unique culture in cyberspace is the same as claiming that there is a unique culture in your toolshed.
Culture is something produced, carried, consumed, displayed, etc, by the people that occupy a space, not the space itself. Therefore, there isn't a "Web culture", but the cultures of the people interacting with one another within the Web. They may have different tools available to communicate and share that culture, but I don't think that those tools beget a culture in their own right.
e.g. "Web culture" didn't produce LOLcats, "bored teen culture" (or something like that) did. The ease of sharing LOLcats online is what made them popular.
Hope this helps...
Greg Williams e-: greg@lexiphanic.com
P.S. Apologies if I'm on the wrong track! :) _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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I make web pages therefore at least this is produced. is there a literary culture? If only a literary culture then the web is just another aspect of the literacy culture and good in the main. my thesis of web 2.0 is that is is less mythical, less cyber, less strangers, and more real and everyday life. On 18-Jan-08, at 2:51 AM, Mary-Helen Ward wrote:
Culture is something produced,
are they 'new' or are they another version of older forms? can you point to an example of the completely new? is web culture the same as web-based cultures, iow, is the web an intrinsic relation or an extrinsic one in relation to the specific culture. in regards to the toolshed...., I've been in many and interacted with them, none I should note were my own. merely knowing that you have a toolshed is of cultural importance semiologically and as soon as you said that on the conceptual level, i've started interacting with it and placing you in relation to it, even if.... said toolshed doesn't exist. It is very much like web-culture in that respect, i suppose. On Jan 18, 2008, at 1:51 AM, Mary-Helen Ward wrote:
Hmmm. I disagree with this. I think there are human interactions on the web that have created new aspects of human interaction: new artefacts, new rituals, new relationships, new shared expressions of language, new viewpoints and ways of doing things. And I'm not talking about LOLcats. There are cultures on the Web that I am and have been part of that have no offline parallel in their reach and complexity, because it is the sharing of people from different cultures in a space of common interest that creates new... well ... cultures. (Sorry, but I don't have another word for what has been created).
If I had a toolshed it wouldn't have any people interacting in it; the web does.
M-H
On 18/1/08 6:38 PM, "Greg Williams" <greg@lexiphanic.com> wrote:
I'm more of a lurker here but I thought I might try to weigh in on this "web culture" thing. Pardon any incoherence, it's been a long week and this is mostly stream of consciousness.
As I understand it, "web culture" is a misnomer. The term seems to have been created to describe that slightly different way things seem to occur online when compared to related offline experiences, but I think this is all barking up the wrong tree.
Cyberspace (in this instance, AKA the Web, the Internet) is a virtual world extension; it's an extension of our real world. Saying that there is a unique culture in cyberspace is the same as claiming that there is a unique culture in your toolshed.
Culture is something produced, carried, consumed, displayed, etc, by the people that occupy a space, not the space itself. Therefore, there isn't a "Web culture", but the cultures of the people interacting with one another within the Web. They may have different tools available to communicate and share that culture, but I don't think that those tools beget a culture in their own right.
e.g. "Web culture" didn't produce LOLcats, "bored teen culture" (or something like that) did. The ease of sharing LOLcats online is what made them popular.
Hope this helps...
Greg Williams e-: greg@lexiphanic.com
P.S. Apologies if I'm on the wrong track! :) _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http:// aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
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As I understand it, "web culture" is a misnomer. The term seems to have been created to describe that slightly different way things seem to occur online when compared to related offline experiences, but I think this is all barking up the wrong tree.
Cyberspace (in this instance, AKA the Web, the Internet) is a virtual world extension; it's an extension of our real world. Saying that there is a unique culture in cyberspace is the same as claiming that there is a unique culture in your toolshed.
Great thoughts, Greg. To riff off of this a little... Web 'culture' serves as a counterpoint to the normal operation of our culture. Through the web - through its technical affordances, whatever - we see things about our own f2f, day to day culture that we might not otherwise be aware of. Certain principles of our 'culture' are less inviolate and more flexible than we typically admit; certain things about the web or digital life (lolcats is a great example, i think... everyone loves kitties, mostly, and making them say mocking or offensive things is a *hilarious* display of our common, warped sense of humor... does anyone seriously *not* enjoy the occasional lolcat?) happen to provide convenient contrasts against our normal expectations of others, their behavior, the nature of interpersonal communication, etc. This makes for great fun, or for great irritation. Depending on our individual level of mental flexibility. [Side track: an interesting predecessor sense of this can be gleaned from thinking about 'hacker culture' in the US vs. Europe in the late 80s / early 90s; in the US, things have had a tinge of libertarian idealism and 'rights' (MIT, and the greater Boston area, right in the middle throughout... Boston probably has the strongest set of 'commons' events of any point on this half of the globe...) very much tied to our national history and identity; in, say, Germany, strong practical and engineering influences led to a population that truly loved and celebrated the Amiga, loved Linux early on, and built the KDE desktop out of essentially dreams and big ideas... amazing stuff, those Germans. Culture definitely in the mix - at least at the level of stereotypes - producing interesting reflections in the medium of computing and its artifacts.] --elijah
Culture is something produced, carried, consumed, displayed, etc, by the people that occupy a space, not the space itself. Therefore, there isn't a "Web culture", but the cultures of the people interacting with one another within the Web. They may have different tools available to communicate and share that culture, but I don't think that those tools beget a culture in their own right.
e.g. "Web culture" didn't produce LOLcats, "bored teen culture" (or something like that) did. The ease of sharing LOLcats online is what made them popular.
Hope this helps...
Greg Williams e-: greg@lexiphanic.com
P.S. Apologies if I'm on the wrong track! :) _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
participants (5)
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elw＠stderr.org -
Greg Williams -
Jeremy Hunsinger -
Mary-Helen Ward -
Peter Timusk