Page 51 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

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CONNECTIVITY

has grown, competition between manufacturers has encouraged
connectivity and compatibility with a resulting decrease in the need
for regulatory intervention.
Connectivity also describes the aspect of society that ties us together
through complex flows of inter-relationship and dependency (see
Mulgan, 1998). A city exists in a state of connectivity. In order to live
in a city we must depend upon resources brought into the city by
others – our water, energy, food and entertainment. We use transport
that connects us between destinations, powered by machinery that is
constructed and maintained by others and organised by complex
systems of timetables and signals that tell us when to connect and
where. Cameras monitor our movements in shops and electronic
networks allowus to withdrawmoney from numerous locations and
record what we purchase. People come together in the city from
different cultures and communities. We create places where we can
meet others who share our values and at other times travel through
places where we will encounter difference through other cultures,
tastes and ideas, and create meanings even in the patterns of pedestrian
‘connectivity’ through the network of streets (de Certeau, 1984).
Connectivity is a state of interdependence, of links that tie us together,
allowus to communicate, and of systems that coordinate separate parts
to perform functions more easily or at a greater rate and speed. It can
denote a particular cosmopolitanism, a sense of ‘being connected’
rather than being isolated or restrained by parochialism.
Social connectivity is amplified by globalisation (and vice versa).
The pathways through the city that we follow and create in order to
meet others, to seek out and acquire what we want, to engage in
earning and spending, which enables others to do the same, are spread
across the globe. They move in irregular flows that are sometimes
directed by business or government but are often organically created
by peoples’ tastes and interests. Our connectivity is apparent in
environmental crises, when actions in one country affect the quality of
life in others. In 1986 the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear reactor
exploded, contaminating people in three (now) republics and causing
farming restrictions as far away as the UK. As with the story of IBM,
our social connectivity may at times require intervention in the form
of regulation and laws in order to be resolved.