In the typified “here’s my blog, and here’s what it does” introduction, I should start by saying that a seemingly small, though significant part of my purpose is to figure out what the title should be. Astute readers will note that the blog does, in fact, have a title. The title shares the name of one of the primary texts I’ll be reading as part of this project, David Silver and Adrienne Massanari’s Critical Cyberculture Studies. As a descriptive label, that seems fair enough. But in terms of the particular intersection between cybercultures, the “field” of rhetoric & writing, and my own research interests (all sites of vexation in one way or another), I’m not sure (yet) if those three words really hit it.
Aside from titling issues, though, what I should really be doing is discussing the large-scale goals of the project. This is a summer project in which I’m acquainting myself with cybercultures and the academic study of cybercultures. Without even taking the time to sketch a brief history of my myriad uses of technologies, I can safely say that I’ve been enmeshed in the former for a long time. Web surfing, email, online gaming, virtual worlds, message boards, web design, game design, IMing, online social networking, and now blogging (this is my first official foray into blogging) come immediately to mind, and I’m sure there are others. And I’m only describing my material experience with technologies and forms of mediation here, which leaves out all of the attendant cultural implications. As for the latter, I’m basically a newcomer. A n00b, if you will. Thus, I’m undertaking a reading of four major survey texts that will hopefully give me at least a passing understanding of the major issues at stake in how we study and look at cybercultures. These texts are: the Silver and Massanari book mentioned earlier, David Bell’s An Introduction to Cybercultures, Neil Spiller’s Cyber_Reader: Critical Writings for the Digital Era, and the second edition of David Bell and Barbara Kennedy’s The Cybercultures Reader.
As I read, I’m going to be keeping track here of thoughts and questions that I bump into. Fair warning: some of these will be random. However, I also have three texts, three writing outcomes that I plan to end up with, which will be gradually pieced together on this blog. To give a brief synopsis of each:
1. An assemblage of thematic groupings across all the readings. What I mean here is that I’ll end up with lists and brief definitions/annotations of “key” terms, theorists, themes, and so on.
2. A thematically arranged bibliography for further reading. Admittedly, this bibliography will be selfishly framed in terms of what I’m interested in reading next, but I’m hoping that it’ll be of interest to others as well.
3. A reflection on “what this all means” for where I’m headed next. Part of why I’m undertaking this project is to examine if I want to concentrate my doctoral studies on this subject, and if so, how to go about doing that. At stake in this question is the ways in which “critical cyberculture studies” intersects with rhetoric & writing, so this will also be a reflection on larger disciplinary and methodological issues.
So, that’s what I’m aiming for, and we’ll see how it turns out. If you’re keen on jumping in, feel free to do so!
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