Week 4 F08

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Week 4

Contents

[edit] Video

[edit] Week 4

[edit] Prompt reading

    • Technologies and the coordination of everyday life (per Cris' exercise on the list)
      • Cell Phone
      • Caller ID
      • Text Messages
      • Mobile Email/Web
      • Email
      • Twitter
      • Facebook/SNS
  • What sort of relationships do these technologies sustain?
  • What are key differences between direct maintenance of relationships, and ambient maintenance?
  • Bridging Calhoun's levels of relationships - secondary/tertiary/quarternary
  • What kind of relationships are Follower relations?
  • How do we integrate ambient social intelligence into everyday life?


[edit] Historical Perspectives, Early Technologies

Lecture Slides (PDF)

[edit] Standage, The Victorian Internet

  • "Spies and criminals are invariably among the first to take advantage of new modes of communication. But lovers are never far behind"
    • First marriag over telegraph in 1848
    • Could the Telegraph "impede the course to true love". Where have we heard this before?
    • Cost and lack of secrecy meant telegraph use was not mainstreamed - however, operators utilized the networks.
  • Telegraph operators and personal messages
    • Operators were a highly prized skilled prfession; operators existed in a highly hierarchical society.
    • Finest operators worked in cities, new operators worked in rural areas.
    • Despite lack of richness and cues, operators developed a deeply personal form of communication.
  • Operators and signal styles
    • Operators used signatures to identify self - we might think of this as similar to the avatar.
    • Operators also knew each other by style - the nature of transmission
    • Operators learned each other's style, leading to more efficient communication. Early Social Information Processing.
  • Use of the lines for interpersonal communication
    • Operators would fill lines with interpersonal communication during off-hours
    • Scores, weather, financial information and personal messages would be passed. What does this remind us of?
    • Operators would also engage in group chat, where many operators would join in a large discussion network.
  • Gender and Telegraph Operators
    • 1876 1/3 of telegraph operators were female
    • Operators were segregated by gender
    • Despite segregation, hierarchy, rules prohibiting fraternization, many relationships were developed over the wires.
    • What is the CMC interpretation of interpersonal communication via telegraph lines?
    • Similarities to chat, text, etc? Differences?
  • The Telegraph and Global Culture
    • "Thanks to the telegraph, the general public became participants in a continually unfolding global drama, courtesy of their newspapers, which were suddenly able to report on events on the other side of the world within hours of their occurrence"
    • The telegraph shifted global perceptions through increased communication reach and speed
    • In 1845, newspaper international coverage was 6-8 weeks old - length of time it took for messages to be passed via steamship
    • The telegraph's second message "Have you any news?"
  • Intercontinental telegraph transmission
    • 1858 - earliest cables were used for global news transmission
    • 1859 - Reuter provides his global business information services
    • Effect of the telegraph on global policy, war and peace - an impact impossible to gauge.
  • Pushback against the telgraph
    • The bias towards international coverage of news led some small newspapers to suspend telegraph service.
    • Earliest pushbacks against the globalization of culture and society.
    • "The rapid distribution of news was thought to promote universal peace, truthfulness and mutual understanding."
    • Analogies to internet culture.

[edit] Fischer - America Calling

  • The marketing of the telephone
    • Earliest marketing of the telephone was face-to-face
    • Exhibitions in public, designed to convince potential adopters of the universality of the telephone
    • Motives for use shifted over time - from telephone as utility to telephone as social device
  • Managing uses
    • Uses of the telephone
    • Appropriate situations for telephone communication
    • Etiquette of telephone use
      • "Without any unnecessary and undignified Hello's"
      • AT&T later adopts hello-girls as names for its operators
  • Sociability
    • AT&T reframed the telephone as a device for social interaction
    • Uses included:
      • "Visiting"
      • "Modern housewife" narratives
      • Social maintenance - kin-keeping
      • Social utility/coordination
  • The Normalization of the Telephone
    • The telephone as an "anonymous object"
    • Gradually accepted as a way to conduct social business
    • Integrated into family life - budgeted, became a necessity


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