...better late than never...

In The Technocultural Dimensions of Meaning, Langlois explores the links between a wide network of theorists and theories of communication with the goal of establishing a “mixed semiotics of the world wide web.” Drawing heavily from Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network theory, D + G’s mixed semiotics, and Chun et. al’s software studies, Langlois attempts to elucidate the complex relationships between code, software, and the production of cultural meaning. In so doing, Langlois calls into question the notions of usership, access, interface, and hyperspace that have dominated cultural conceptions and understandings of new media, specifically the world wide web.

 

Briefly delving into medium theory, Langlois asserts that:

 

“medium is not simply a technology, but the social relations within which a technology develops and which are re-arranged around it” (1998). A medium, then, is the space where technology, social relations and cultural processes are articulated.” (27)

 

Applying this conception of medium to the internet, Langlois argues that:

 

“examination of linking patterns among websites gives strong clues as to the new relationships between the local and the global and as to how social movements can be both focused on a single cause and exists in a decentralized manner. (24)

 

The notion that mapping the internet as a wide network of hyperlinks can elucidate “relationships between the local and the global” is of great interest to me because it suggests new ways of thinking about anthropology and the study of human relations. If we can, in fact, map each and every hyperlinked connection on the internet, we could see the relative strengths of connections between different areas (measured by web traffic) as well as the ways in which the developing world and the developed world are interacting virtually. Hyperlinks could provide a useful tool for anthropologists, revealing the manifold global connections that link local populations and permit the transfer of cultural norms, language, and ideas across national and geographic boundaries.

 

Approaching the internet as a site of ethnographic research raises new questions about issues of access, usership, and representation. Is a “user” in Canada the same as a “user” in Nigeria if they are accessing the same website? If not, what (besides IP address) differentiates the two users? How do local political, economic, and social contingencies determine access to the world wide web, and can we better understand certain cultures or countries by looking at their patterns of internet access? Furthermore, do local cultural differences correspond to differing approaches to and understandings of the internet, or is the internet inherently multinational and cross-cultural? Does the internet reify, erode, or have no effect on cultural differences?

 

In examining the internet as an entity situated within dominant sociotechnological regimes, Langlois has opened the door for a new type of “ethnotechnological” analysis that could be extremely useful for better understanding the world, both the virtual and the “real.”