Page 223 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

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COMPUTERS, THE INTERNET,
AND VIRTUAL CULTURES

Steve Jones and Stephanie Kucker

In an essay titled ‘Thinking the Internet: Cultural studies vs the Millennium’,
Jonathan Sterne (1999) notes that a central issue for cultural studies approaches
to ‘thinking the Internet’ is quite literally how to think about it beyond trad-
itional dichotomous perspectives. Instead of asking whether the Internet leads
us to utopia, or whether it will destroy the fabric of society, how might we
examine the Internet as another media technology situated in routine social
practice and everyday life? Scholars must pay attention to the routines undergo-
ing transformation because of networking, for it is in the realm of the mundane
that we most clearly see the consequences of the Internet in culture and soci-
ety. Sterne asks us to imagine a day in the life of one of his students, and to note
the ways in which the Internet, or more appropriately perhaps Internetworking,
is embedded in mundane routines and practices. Stopping in a computer lab
between classes to check email, for instance, or sending a note to a professor
while doing homework, are examples he cites of common practices altered by
Internetworking.
To Sterne’s request we add another. We should examine the routine prac-
tices of myriad occupations, relationships and events (including ones within
academia) if we are best to determine the ubiquity of Internetworking and its
cultural consequences. For instance, a scholarly conference examining the
WorldwideWeb was held in 1998 at Drake University. Many of those
assembled had known one another for years, from other scholarly conferences,
from graduate school, or from publications. But prior to that conference only
one or two were known to be interested in studying the Web. How did it come
to be that all were in one place at one time discussing the Web, its metaphors,
and meanings?
What became clear at the Drake conference was the participants’ common
interest in a technology that somehow managed to encompass previous intel-
lectual interests (if not in some ways swallow them whole), but also managed to
put a ‘twist’ on previously held theories and concepts. For instance, those who
had been studying popular music and its audience quite literally had an entirely

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