wordle thematics

I'm pleased to say that Wordle has worked out much better so far, for my purposes at least, than the tag cloud generator. Part of what made this work for me is the ability to directly control and limit what text Wordle uses. The "Wordle cloud" that I posted below was generated from my blog entries on Bell's An Introduction to Cybercultures; by focusing on these entries only and not having my entire blog subsumed into the cloud generation, it helped define the kind of thematics I'm looking for.

So what does the Wordle word cloud add up to? I think there are some interesting implications for analytical and reflective modes of reading that deserve exploration. At first glance, Wordle foregrounds two things: a selection of major thematic (or at least repeatedly mentioned) terms and an emphasis on the frequency of those terms, visually scaled to size. But we can also use it to help us understand the assumptions and values that go into particular acts of writing and reading. For instance, assuming that the Bell text was easily accessible online, we could throw it into Wordle and have a cloud generated that covers the whole book. Then, we could read the themes and juxtapositions that emerge from this cloud in light of how Bell is narrating his own, self-defined themes; do they match up? Where and how?

In a similar vein, the Wordle cloud I've posted reflects a remixing of my own interpretation of Bell's book. And it's different in significant ways. In my original postings, I talked about cyberspace as just one key term among several, but in the cloud it takes center stage. I'm also a little surprised by how small "cyberculture" is. In these ways, I can re-evaluate my own process of interpretation and even see where I may have been unconsciously emphasizing some things and de-emphasizing others.

As another kind of thematic, Wordle opens up some "new," and potentially surprising, combinations and juxtapositions of terms that can lead to new avenues for analysis. Out of this cloud, I might pull out "cyborg spaces" or "computer symbolic construction" or "political-economic transparency" or "Visible surveillance architectures" as potential (re)combinations. Some will be more useful than others, but this experiment might point to some of the gaps in how we define and employ these terms.

I do think these are potentially valuable strategies, but I also see a few limitations. First, my word cloud required a lot of set-up work. I had already read the entire book and recorded 2,387 words of thematic analysis before I generated the cloud. This gave me a pretty rich selection for the cloud to work with, but it seems antithetical to expect that kind of (and that much) traditional academic analysis to even get to that point. As a corollary, Wordle's going to be of limited use as a reading response tool unless it can be a bit more mobile. So, I'm going to try a more fragmented response to Critical Cyberculture Studies, where I go back and jot down, in a kind of "automatic" way, the responses I've had so far. I've finished the book, so I've got quite a few of these written in the margins and highlighted in the text already. Stay tuned.

experiment 2: wordle

I thought I'd try something along the lines of a tag cloud again, using a different resource that I recently discovered: Wordle.

why my tag cloud isn't cloudy

Sooooo, yeah. My first tag cloud = FAIL. It's small, doesn't look too cloudy, and doesn't capture the ongoing themes/connections very well. The problem, I think, is that it represents the structure of the blog rather than its contents. This is related to the problem that the cloud generator seems to be pulling only from the post titles rather than the titles + content of posts.

Well, that's why it's an experiment. Interesting failures like this one can illustrate how things like cloud generators work (or how we understand/interpret their workings, which is a theme in Bell's book).

experiment 1: tag clouds

Hey, remember when tag clouds used to be cool? I've been coming up with ideas for presenting my notes/thoughts in a more "rhizomatic" way, as Danielle put it. I plan on making this process as transparent as possible, so expect to see a number of composition experiments worked through here.

I thought I'd start with something simple, a tag cloud generator from makecloud.com.

tag cloud

An Introduction to Cybercultures, Part 2 (pp. 113-207)

Key Terms

Identification – Stuart Hall uses this term to indicate the fragmented and multiple moves that we make in constructing identity. Rather than a stable or essentialized idea of identity, looking at identifications opens up insight into how identity is constantly “in process.” For identifications in cyberspace, a useful heuristic can be looking at personal rhetorical choices in relation to the affordances/constraints of designed systems.

Cyber-capital – The performance and representation of cyber-skills as a means of gaining cultural capital; this can be represented through skills related to design, but also through the consumption and display of cutting-edge technology products.

(the) posthuman – transformation of the operations of the human body (sensory, cognitive, motor-based) through electronic prostheses; not necessarily sci-fi and apocalyptic, though, as Hayles notes that posthumanism involves “extending embodied awareness in highly specific, local, and material ways” (qtd. in Bell 143).

Cyborg – A concept that relates to many different configurations of machine and organism; Gray et al. outline “types” of cyborg technologies such as restorative, normalizing, reconfiguring, and enhancing (qtd. in Bell 149). Also important in the idea of the cyborg is its mythical/fictional status, and how that informs our everyday, material interactions with technologies.

Visible Human – Refers to the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s work to produce complete, accessible digital data for a male and female human body; critiques of this project have included the normalization of a biomedical standard for human bodies (e.g., Waldby’s “The Visible Human Project: Data into Flesh, Flesh into Data”).

Technological subcultures – In Bell’s terms, this kind of cybersubculture is distinct from others (e.g., TV fan cultures) in that they depend on the infrastructures of cyberspace to exist; for example, MUD communities have developed because of the formal features of cyberspace, whereas other subcultures have moved over pre-existing activities and conversations into cyberspace.

Hacker ethic – A belief system characterizing the “computer underground” (Bell 180); this ethic both adopts a political stance and tries to clarify the public image of hackers. How this ethic has been presented is interesting in terms of cyber-capital (above): hackers claim to rely on meritocratic criteria of skill performance rather than other markers of social status.

Key Theorists

Hall – fragmentation of the individual, unified subject; concept of identification (above); difference and identity (identity is constructed through acts of exclusion).

Hayles – theory of the posthuman; calls for a critical consideration of posthumanism in terms of sustainability and “long-range survival” (qtd. in Bell 146).

Haraway – highly influential in developing the idea of the cyborg; points to the simultaneous reality and virtuality of the cyborg; also deconstructs the binaries of human/animal, organic/machinic, and physical/non-physical through the lens of the cyborg (Bell 152).

Jenkins – Jenkins’ work on fan cultures and emphasis on their active cultural work (rather than passive media consumption) has laid the groundwork for studies of cybersubcultures, especially fan cultures; in terms of community and meaning-making, these themes are important to carry over as we look at online cultural formations.

Mitra and Cohen – While the following aren’t necessarily “theorists” in the purest sense, I wanted to devote space to a couple of major figures who have come up in terms of cyberculture research and methodologies. Mitra and Cohen present a methodological framework for doing textual analysis in cyberspace, including “intertextuality, nonlinearity, a blurring of the reader/writer distinction, ‘multimedianess’, ‘globalness’ and ephemerality” (qtd. in Bell 193). This framework, especially in terms of nonlinearity and ephemerality, has some interesting parallels with Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome.

Hine – calls for careful definition of ethnographic contexts for cybercultures research; discusses ethical issues in terms of researcher transparency; presents a series of principles for online ethnography but emphasizes that what counts the most is an adaptive, flexible approach (Bell 201).

Key Themes

Reworking & fragmentation of identity in cyberspace – this theme relates to Hall’s general discussion of identity and identification, but also points to the affordances and constraints of how identity works in cyberspace (e.g., though avatar construction, textual and visual strategies for representation, etc.)

Identity “play” and “authenticity” in relation to gender, race, sexuality, etc. – tension between fantasies and possibilities of taking on a “new” gendered, racial, and/or sexual identity (e.g., Nakamura’s discussion of identity tourism) and the problem of authenticity: what is the “authentic” referent, if any, for these forms of identity construction?

Relation between bodies (physical/virtual) and sense of self – the problem of making bodies into who we want to be or become; Bell comments on the “fit” between bodies and selves (139).

“Evolution” of and beyond the human with body technologies – relates to the idea of prostheses and medical technologies as steps beyond the human, and also the threats of evolutionary termination of the human or ideas that the human is obsolete, as Stelarc has suggested (Bell 144).

Transformation of “sub-” and fan cultures in cyberspace – these cultures are increasingly distributed and geographically collapsed, and we need to evaluate how gender relations and other cultural formations play out in these cybercultures as compared to earlier, off-line iterations; also, the kinds of texts produced by fan cultures have shifted in cyberspace, although some have carried over and been remediated in certain ways (e.g. zines and e-zines).

Determining value of online sources – here’s a familiar one! As a writing teacher, I’m often confronted with, and often talk with my students about, questions of value, credibility, and authorship in relation to using online sources to write. These questions and concerns are important to keep in mind as we do studies in these spaces, especially in terms of trying to figure out what online texts represent in terms of research value.

Legitimacy and ethics of cybercultures research – questions here include the necessity of doing multi-method or multi-site research, and how we frame/qualify claims after doing fieldwork or textual analysis; also, there are ethical questions about researcher transparency and public/private distinctions as we do cybercultural studies.

history and cybercultures

I’m curious to see how the issue of history will be engaged with (or not engaged with) as I read through the texts I’ve outlined for the summer. Cyberculture studies seems to be faced with the same threats of obsolescence that characterize the technologies it looks at; for example, what do we make of a study of an online community that’s now defunct? Is the work obsolete? In need of a quick patching? Does it need a version 2.0 or 3.0? Can we use it to construct a historical lineage that will inform “current-day” work, and if so, what does that process look like?

I’m glad to see that Critical Cyberculture Studies has, so far, framed the issue of history as a central one for the “field” (such as it is). Sterne’s chapter on “The Historiography of Cyberculture” points to one possible avenue for the last question I’ve raised above, and in doing so, he also establishes the importance of audio formats and technologies for cyberculture scholars. History as visibility, then, emerges as one theme. I’ll be on the lookout for others...

An Introduction to Cybercultures, Part 1 (pp. 1-112)

My week-to-week postings here will usually focus on collected notes dealing with my attempts to identify key terms, theorists, and themes within and across readings. That’s not to say I won’t be posting other stuff here, but I’d also like to establish some kind of regularity, so there you have it. :)

As with any acts of selection and summary, these collections/groupings are necessarily fragmented and will most certainly omit a whole range of things that you, dear reader, will want to hear more about. I intend for these lists to be suggestive and multidirectional rather than definitive, and I’m sure my idiosyncracies and disciplinary affiliations will pop up from time to time.

All right, enough with the qualification. Moving forward!

Key Terms (for An Introduction to Cybercultures, pp. 1-112)

Cyberspace(s) – Saying that this term and its partner term “cyberculture” are contested would be quite the understatement. Bell usefully presents three dimensions of cyberspace: material, symbolic, and experiential (2), and the intersection among these three is, at least in part, where we can locate cyberspace. I find a couple of things particularly useful in Bell’s discussion: first, the foregrounding of material elements, where he points to the computational architectures that underlie cyberspace as well as the political-economic forces shaping those architectures. This is often lost in romantic conceptions of cyberspace such as ones found in pop cultural “symbolic” stories. Bell also discusses the mundanity of Internet use, which also counteracts the kind of techno-fetishism often associated with the term “cyberspace.”

Cyberculture(s) – Bell notes that distinguishing between cyberspace and cyberculture is “a false dichotomy” (8), which points to how culture enters into the picture not just at the level of online/virtual spaces themselves, but also in how cultural ideas, personal experiences and narratives, symbols, images, institutions, products, and so on interact with and are influenced by computer technologies and all things “cyber.” Pluralizing cyberculture (and cyberspace) also calls attention to the multiplicity of spaces and interactions that make up these terms.

Virtual reality – Associated with immersive virtual environments that simulate a particular “reality” and attempt to place the user in that “real” space using a mixture of hardware and software-based experiences. I’ve come across a few critiques of the word “virtual,” mostly in the context of virtual worlds such as Second Life, where some have argued for the phrase “synthetic world.” This acts as a reminder that these spaces are hybrid rather than representative of a binary between “real” and “virtual.”

Gibsonian vs. Barlovian cyberspace – Bell equates Gibsonian cyberspace with the symbolic dimension (as in popular cultural representations), while Barlovian cyberspace shifts the focus to the experiential dimension: how people experience computer technologies and how those experiences inform their cultural understanding of cyberspace.

Cyberpunk – An offshoot of sci-fi literature, film, etc. primarily (and originally) associated with the works of William Gibson; Gibson’s definition of “cyberspace” has also been highly influential. Cyberpunk’s themes include (dis)embodiment in virtual spaces, urbanism (e.g., street and city metaphors), anxieties over political-economic institutions and forms of control, and the construction of a punk/hacker ethos.

Social construction of technology – a perspective that traces the “social life” of technologies (Bell 67) and acknowledges that the interpretation of technologies by different groups of people produces situated, cultural knowledge about those technologies and influences the ways in which they are purposed for everyday use.

Forms of community – Defining “community” is too huge a task in the here and now, but I’d like to note Bell’s introduction of Tönnies’ “total community” and “association” or “society” (94). The latter is associated with the fragmentary, distributed nature of city life, while Bell notes that the “total community” is often used as a nostalgic reference point for what community “should” mean and represent.

Detraditionalization – Bell characterizes this as “the shift toward a ‘post-traditional’ society” (95). Of course, this begs the question of what exactly a tradition is, but this can also be linked with the discussion of community above (e.g., modernization has influenced the traditional structures of families and family households).

Disembedding – I associate this with a kind of fixedness in physical space and the disruption of that space; the distribution of information and points of access means that instances of communication are increasingly expanded beyond local geography.

Globalization – Related to disembedding, but the term globalization also calls attention to the challenging of political and cultural borders, where ease and speed of access have changed the ways in which we encounter information and think about inside/outside distinctions involving national communities.

Key Theorists

Gibson – definition of cyberspace; major work Neuromancer is a huge player in the construction of cyberpunk; has also provided accounts of how he arrived at the term cyberspace.

Turkle – construction of identity in online spaces; computer interfaces and representations/conceptions of interfacing; relation of social/cultural practices to “computational objects.”

Latour – I’m intrigued by the appearance of Latour and actor-network theory so far, particularly because it’s so prominent in rhetoric and professional/technical writing literature. The distinction between human and non-human in actor-network theory (and the problems thereof) will be an interesting point to keep in mind.

Baudrillard – notions of simulation and hyperreality; the simulacrum as an endless reproduction; intersects cyberspace with discussion of mediation and virtual reality.

Deleuze and Guattari – the rhizome is something I keep hearing all over the place, I’ll have to check these guys out sometime. The rhizome as hypertext; becoming and being – becoming is dynamic and never-finished.

Foucault – Discourses as not merely descriptive but definitive; discussions of surveillance and power (can be connected to both “everyday” surveillance technologies—e.g., security cameras—but also monitoring of Internet); application of Foucault: databasing and construction of various identities.

Virilio – speed and militarization as filtered through contemporary technologies; implications of these phenomena for global security; critiques of technological invasions of the body.

Rheingold – virtual communities as following from the desire of “total communities” online; associated with frontier metaphors of online community; “shared social codes and reciprocity” (Bell 100) as defining an online community.

Key Themes

Material, symbolic, and experiential dimensions of cyberspace/cybercultures – as seen in the discussion of the term cyberspace above.

Storying of cyberspace – cyberspace as constructed through personal narratives as well as various historical accounts of cyberspace.

Situating cyberculture in political-economic forces – cyberculture is not a neutral phenomenon; cybercultures are caught up in global economies, corporate interests, governmental control, etc.

Issues of ownership and control – surveillance, copyright and intellectual property, enforcement of laws and protection of rights in virtual spaces and as related to computer technologies.

Writing on/and computers – of particular interest to me as a rhet/comp teacher and student; how does writing change, materially and culturally, when it happens on computers? In online/virtual spaces?

Kinds of cultural studies of the Internet – Bell discusses Sterne’s distinction between cultural studies of online “subjectivity, textuality, and experience” and “episodic studies” that locate the Internet as “one site among many in everyday life” (qtd. in Bell 73). In terms of methodology, this distinction is useful in locating how and where to do Internet studies and reminds us that the “default” option should not be restricted to online communities only.

Tensions between “traditional” and “virtual” communities – This comes up in the discussion of Rheingold and the kinds of community referred to above; the tension arises in questions of to what extent online communities “reproduce” traditional, off-line communities or whether they represent “new” forms of community that are necessarily virtual. Also, when does a community count as a community?