internet and advertisements

Advertising on the Internet is big business. Popular Norwegian web-sites are sold out on the most attractive advertisement-spots, and the Danish newspaper Politiken reports on a similar situation in Denmark. I only wish the ads in Norwegian web-tabloids could stop scaring me: sound/music is used rather extensively, all of a sudden there, trying to get my attention.

comments

Comment this are still having problems getting comments up and running after their break-down: "We've had a server failure. We are working to get everything running again". Sounds scary. I should probably have chosen Haloscan, which seems to be more reliable. Blogger's own comment-service wasn't an option in February 2004.

iTMS

I find it rather entertaining to read the comments from VG-readers concerning the release of iTunes Music Store in Norway. There are of course a lot of people who really can't believe why on earth anybody would pay a lot of money to download music they can get for free p2p. How long will it take before people in general realise paying for stuff on the Internet is fine? Another discussion concerns the (lacking) quality of mp3-files (or aac-files), and whether or not you can actually tell the difference between downloaded music and music-CDs (comment 32 and 33 especially). On my equipment you certainly can't.

absent presence

I'm not convinced by Kenneth Gergen's arguments in his article "The challenge of absent presence" in Katz and Aarhus (eds.): Perpetual Contact. Gergen claims that the general tendency of communication technologies have been to enable communication at a distance. Absent presence refers to situations where one is "physically present but (...) absorbed by a technologically mediated world of elsewhere." So far, so good (... so what?). But:

Gergen separates between monological technologies (mass media) and dialogic communication technologies. In the latter category he includes the telephone, video and computer games and the Internet. Dialogic communication technologies are, surprise, characterised as interactive. I don't think the Internet per se (or computer games) can be included in a category called dialogic. The Internet has several monological forms or genres or whatever.

More seriously though, I think Gergen underplays the significance of the local and the context for using any kind of media (of relevance: Anne's reference to David Morley on global/local). A sentence like "Friendship, intimacy, family and neighbors cease to be the primary sources of meaning, and become the objects of deliberation from yet another domain of reality" seems like a pessimistic claim proposed at least ten years ago. I raise my eye-brows again and again: "We move into a cultural condition in which our identities are increasingly situated, conditional and optional". It sounds very last millenium-like (I love being able to say that). He concludes with arguing how the cell phone is sort of different, because it is more typically used among intimate friends. But then, damn it, the cell phone is turning more and more into a small computer, again intensifying de-localizing tendencies.

alias real

Lonely Gay Teen Seeking Same by Jennifer Egan is an interesting article first published in the New York Times Magazine in December 2000. It's a rather balanced description of how online communication to many teenagers is the only arena where they can be true to their gay selves (yet usually using some alias). Egan talked to a lot of gay teenagers (mostly using e-mail, IM and phone) and at several times. Both problematic and valuable aspects are highlighted. Main problem is never knowing with whom one is really interacting. The shock of meeting someone you know online face-to-face, and realising they have been lying about who they are, is of course unpleasant.

Almost all of my informants have met people online, and then after learning to know each other through IM, e-mail, diaries, arranged to meet offline. The unpleasant meetings are not dominating (actually almost non-existing). Then again, the ideal to be very true to their offline selves dominates. Online presentations of selves may very well be controlled and preferred presentations, but they are still "authentic." They do not uncritically trust strangers though, precautions are taken.

beginnings

I think I'm about to start writing an article about the significance of personal communication media in processes of constituting and reconstituting personal relationships. My notes are messy, and I have some problems choosing what main persepctives to use. Moreover, I hope I'll manage to separate this article from another article where the focus will be more on the characteristics of mediated social interaction (where I'll deal more with presentations of selves and stuff). Both articles will of course make a point of the interdependency between online and offline interaction. Which reminds me of something I find intriguing: my informants always value face-to-face interaction as the ultimate form of interaction. Still, they acknowledge the hyperpersonal characteristics of computer-mediated communication: they are or they know others who are more open and honest when computers intermediate the meeting. Of course, in many ways I feel the same: there's magic in shared presence. And then there's awkwardness in shared presence.

answers

I'm reading the utterly difficult Deconstructing communication by Briankle G. Chang. Hence I look up words a lot these days. I even sometimes look up the same words again and again. Being a dictionary-addict, it's strange that I haven't discovered Answers.com before. Very practical all-in-one meta-reference/dictionary. It was first bookmarked on del.ici.us on the 7th of December last year. Otherwise I often rely on google's meta-dictionary service.

network seminar

Network is obviously a very significant concept in my phd-project. As Jill has already mentioned, there will be a multidisciplinary seminar on social and digital networks at IMK on Monday. Fun, free and everyone's welcome! Reminds me that I still have a few pages left of Albert-László Barabásis rather entertaining book Linked. He's not coming though...

new technology

The previous post sort of reminds me of Michael Bull's guest lecture From the Walkman to the iPod: Investigating the Culture of Mobile Listening on Monday. Mobile listening is a clear indicator of the individualized society, of reclaiming privacy in public spaces and of using your musical identity to control and remake the meaning of your surroundings. I don't have an iPod or an Mp3-player (I have music on my phone, but it's not like I have several years of listening on it). I love music, and I have of course considered buying an iPod. But when would I use it? I don't really like having music in my ears when I'm on my bicycle in the city traffic. Which is how I usually get around.

old technology

I tape my interviews to old-fashioned cassettes. The dictationmachines at the department are for regular cassettes, hence no digital recording for me. Today, I called the shop beforehand: "eh, do you have recording cassettes?" They did. But it's like I'm expecting that cassettes will be hard to find.