ALLIE ❤ HARTHas anyone done a good theorizing of modern social internet space? I attempted an Ahmedian reading in college but it's hard enough just deciphering internet *location*. I know danah boyd does good work with internet affordances but I don't remember her speaking so much on space in particular.
For example: Two people can go to the same internet *location* (facebook.com) but have mutually unintelligible experiences—literally, not in the same language. Are these the same spaces? Different spaces? Where is that space located: The URL? The server location? Do we consider the Facebook page for NYC as belonging to NYC-as-space, or is it distinct? What about photos posted at a party? Are those posts also "at" the party, even though they can be viewed by non-attendees?
Consider the rules of this space, where the limits of movement are constrained by the affordances of the technology as strongly and forcefully as our bodies are constrained by the laws of nature. But wait: these affordances, unlike the laws of nature, are the products of human labor, and subject to continual change!
"You do you" is Eu-gen-ics.@u2764 Here "space" can be a productive lens. I often compare online environments to urban environments, where human interventions such as highway construction profoundly reshaped the "places" they bisected as a function of different uses and limits of space.