3pm Journal of Digital research & publishing - artichoke web design

3pm Journal of Digital research & publishing
US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton in Washington DC just after the Haiti earth-
quake:
“the technology community has set up interactive maps to help us identify needs and target resourc-
es. and on monday, a seven-year-old girl and two women were pulled from the rubble of a collapsed
supermarket by an american search-and-rescue team after they sent a text message calling for help.
now, these examples are manifestations of a much broader phenomenon. the spread of information
networks is forming a new nervous system for our planet.” (clinton 2010)
Hillary Clinton recognised the changing nature of global technology transfer, epitomised
by Ushahidi, an application moving in postcolonial directions from Africa to Silicon Valley.
This may be the sociopolitical reflection of the democratising ‘many to many’ relationships
of Web 2.0 applications, where centres and peripheries are in flux. Marshall McLuhan, who
was deeply inspired by Innis, concluded his ‘information as new nervous system’ metaphor
by predicting the abolition of space and time (1964, 2000). Manuel Castells has refined
this idea as a collapse or simultaneity of time due to the expansion of space through media
and internet in the ‘space of flows and timeless time’ (1996). But if, as Clay Shirky puts
it, ‘these days the internet is becoming less a source of information and more a source of
coordination’ (2006), then the actions over time of internet/communications media are
increasingly important. There is a shift away from Innis’s description of space-binding
empires to a balance with time-binding cultures.
METHODOLOGY:
A new technology is frequently mistaken for a cultural change, says media theorist Mark
Deuze (2006), who cites the implicit conflation of the shared norms, values and practices of a
certain group with its communication technologies. Deuze also calls for a critical reflection
on the values and expectations expressed in digital culture (2006). In 1999, Jonathan
Sterne (1999, Bell 2007) called for a theoretical approach to inform studies of the Internet,
considering context, construction and knowledge production. Sterne suggested mapping
media theory onto digital technology, to ‘effectively describe and analyse cyberspace and
cyberculture’ (1999, Bell 2007).
Both Chris Chesher (2009) and Caroline Frost (2003) have positively evaluated
the relevance of pioneering media theorist and economist, Harold Innis, to the digital
communications of today. At the start of the twentieth century, Innis described the
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