Participation in Broadband Society Vols. 1 & 2 |
Larry
Stillman
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Leopoldina Vincent, Jane Vincent, Julian Gebhardt, Andraz Petrovcic, Olga Vershinskaya (eds.) Interacting with Broadband Society Series: Participation in Broadband Society Vol. 1 (2010) Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2010. 262 pp. ISBN 978-3-631-58393-7. Hardback Julian Gebhardt, Hajo Greif, Lilia Raycheva,Claire, Lobet-Maris, Amparo Lasen, eds.) Experiencing Broadband Society Series: Participation in Broadband Society Vol. 2 (2010) Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2010. 206 pp. ISBN 978-3-631-58406-4. Hardback. These are two significant and provocative volumes, though a short review can not do justice to their significance as research tools. For those unfamiliar with COST (the European Cooperation in Science and Technology:http://www.cost298.org), it is an EU-supported structure to support cooperation among scientists and researchers across Europe in many areas, including the study of ICTs. While it does not support projects, it supports the generation of ideas though face-to-face workshops, and the workshops result in publications such as these two volumes. The two volumes here a result of the Working Groups on Humans as e-Actors, from the workshops which took place in Moscow in May 2007. As the historian Tony Judt suggested in his Postwar, a History of Europe since 1945, the most fascinating thing about Europe is that the relatively small geographic area of Europe (now including Russia) contains such a massively documented and multicultural diversity of languages, cultures, and formative historical experiences which are brought to bear in contemporary scholarship. This allows for diversity in practical and theoretical responses to the challenge of the Broadband Society, though we are lucky that they have been published in the dominant language of communication, English. Over 70 people have taken part in COST 298 activity. Without underplaying the role of other contributors, individuals such as Leopoldina Fortunati of the University of Udine in Italy must be credited for being a driving force behind such initiatives. More than 20 papers are represented in the two volumes, across two broad themes, firstly, experiencing the broadband society, and secondly, interacting with broadband society. In the first volume, the concept of the e-actor is unpacked from many directions. As Fortunati, Vincent, Gebhardt, Pretrovčič and Vershinskaya indicate in the introduction, there is a far broader understanding of the actor as an active agent who shapes ICTs, rather than the rather passive and ‘dependent variable’ that has often been associated with Roger’s influential theory of innovation with a simplistic understanding of the user/actor (Rogers, 2003) (also taken up by Dolničar in her paper). Furthermore, as Vincent suggests in her paper, the concept of e-actor is related to the emotions and (inter) subjectivity (also taken up by Gebhardt). Other authors provide useful concepts and vocabulary to describe these mediated, embedded, and changing relationships with ICTs. Additionally, adding an increased degree of difficulty to both theoretical and design considerations, there is no such thing as ‘the one device’ or ‘universal machine’ (to take up Turing’s famous term). Instead, taking from Grief, Mitrea and Werner in their paper, there is vast heterogeneity of not only actors, but of forms of devices and the original idea of the universal machine (perhaps embodied in the phone or PC), has been replaced by ‘a concept of small, single purpose or limited-purpose machines’, and we see this in the emergence of the multiplicity of ereaders, as well as the cross-over i-pad which is bound to merge into something else. We all have to be on our toes, fingers, eyes and ears alert. In the second volume, the picture turns away from the (constructed) individual, to that of the new media itself and media practices and their influence on everyday life. It is suggested that there cannot be a conclusive or uniform picture of THE broadband society, but instead, a sensitising lens is provided about recent research and thinking about social and cultural aspects of the broadband society. As examples, the paper by Gebhardt, Greif, Raycheva, Lobet-Maris and Lasen examines development of Ketnet Kick, a popular collaborative game in Flanders (Belgium) for pre-adolescents and suggests that the ethical relationship between on and online communities is critical, and children, as children, exist in a ‘netplay’ society, in which research drawing upon child development and media studies in the development of games needs to take place to development meaningful and relevant products. There is also a study of Web2.0 design from Argentina for social development in a remote region with allusions to Bourdieu and the construction of social capital for ‘communitarian construction’ (Galán, Legal and Pedro). The paper by Gallez, Orban, Schöller, and Lobet-Maris, examines moral, ethical and legal issues around the engagement of young people in multimedia, and Hjorth provides a study of ‘haptic’ media, that is, media that are ‘touched’ and operated in banal circumstances—thus, the seeming non-stop posing and taking of photos with mobile phones by young people, tourists, couples at every opportunity. Is this a move to full-time intimacy, or complete banality without any meaning, a kind of fetishism offered through the Janus-faced opportunities of ICTs? Or do people interpret such immediacy responses (posting pictures on Facebook instead of Youtube, or real-time video-calls between continents on i-phones? Can we ever have enough electronic affect? Think deeply over the research and thinking in both these volumes and contact the authors! One complaint: in an era when the traditional book is under threat, academic publishing is shooting itself in the book through such high prices (each volume is about €45. Perhaps e-publishing is the only way to go and a much larger audience will ensue in the long run).
Rogers, E. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations (5th. ed.). New York: Free Press. |