Image from:
atclassroom.blogspot.com.au
“Territory
is space actively defended whereas home range is where we live and travel” (Petray,
2013). When you come to think about it
dispute over space and place has been known for centuries, individuals can
possess that power over another in their physical lives but through this week’s
reading focusing on our virtual networks.
The virtual network I have decided to analyse for my assessment throughout week 3 to week 8 is Pinterest. I joined this social network recently, for the purpose of this assessment, I was told it would be “Pinteresting.” However, at first it was rather overwhelming, I found that it was based on how similar your interests were to others.
It didn’t take me long to familiarize myself with Pinterest but in saying this also I am still at the beginning of this learning scope. The architecture of my virtual network, Pinterest, caters for my interests and also allows me to re-pin posts that have been pinned by other members who share the same interests. As one Japanese blogger wrote over at newsonjapan.com, “Civilians must not be engaged in a pointless dispute.” So basically, we can both have and share the same posts without confrontation. This coincides with Gayle Barnes written essay on, ‘Passage of the Cyber-Flanuer,’1997. “The cyber-flanuer instead creates their own spatial and temporal boundaries through a cognitive mapping of points of orientation” (Barnes, 1997).
We become comfortable at times through virtual networks; we have the power and it is not so difficult to portray what is socially acceptable as it would be in the physical being almost like a flanuer as Prouty explains in his blog post, ‘Turtle on a leash’ (2009). I find that most people online put on a façade, “To show the one, the other has to be twisted..” as Wood, Kaiser and Abramms(2006).
In saying this, with the way the network designer has created the site you are able to view other “places in space” without confrontation of any sort there are also safety guards put in place such as reporting or blocking users to your discretion or theirs. Would there be such thing as a minority with this network?
References
AFP. Apple Maps Disaster
may solve China-Japan Islands Row. Retrieved
15th August, 2013 from
Barnes,
G. (1997). Passage of the cyber-flanuer. Retrieved 11 August, 2013 from
http://raybird.com/essays/Passage_Flanuer.html
Flanuer.
(2009). In One-way street. Retrieved August 8, 2013 from http://onewaystreet.typepad.com/one_way_street/2009/10/a-turtle-on-a-leash.html
Petray,
T. (2013). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, narratives and the making of place,
Lecture 3: Mapping. [Notes] Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au
Wood, D.,
Ward, K.L., & Abramms, B. (2006). The Multiple Truths of the Mappable
World. In Seeing Through Maps: Many Ways
to See the World. (p.8) Oxford, UK: New Internationalist.
Image Credits
Hi Dawnie-Lee,
ReplyDeleteI read and took in your blog with a keen interest. I was especially interested in the ‘façade’ element of your blog, and in the context of your social network.
Tuan (1977) noted that “people tend to supress that which they cannot express” and Turkle (1995) alluded to “accordance to social norms (being) enforcers of power within modern society”. As the commodity of Pinterest is largely, in my opinion, contingent upon the ability to express your interests freely I ask if in both first hand and voyeuristic experience you find both sentiments to be a reality within your network. Allen (2003) found that “power is a relational effect of social interaction”. For yourself as a first time user who would irrefutably struggle to obtain a “presence” within the community, was this a reality despite having limited or no social interaction – in the form of comments and repins from boards you created – as a new user? I look forward to hearing from you in the future.
Regards,
Gabriel
Reference List:
Tuan, Y. (1977). Space and place: The perspective of experience. London, England: Edward Arnold.
Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the internet. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Allen, J. (2003). Lost geographies of power. Malden, MA: Blackwell.