In the Wired UK edition from November, Andrew Blum wrote about the relationship between physical and virtual space in cities, how technology - social networking, mobile phones, etc. - are adding a layer to the physical cities. He argues that technology is not killing real communities but reshaping our interactions inside these communities (in organization studies, work on online communities such as open source (O’Mahony and Ferraro, 2007) or my work with Gerry DeSanctis on public online forums show the importance of geography and location for these online communities). It also reminded me a post  discussing an article in the NY Times on local communities blogs and how they ‘enhanced’ the physical.

Andrew Blum quoted Anthony Townsend, an urban planner and forecaster at Silicon Valley’s Institute for the Future who talks about “blended urban reality”: “neither cyberspace nor an urban landscape blanketed with blinking television screens, but the regular old city, albeit socially fused with real-time electronic interactions”. It evokes for me the move in organizational studies on the importance of materiality in organizations (despite the increasing number of “virtual” organizations, “virtual” teams and “virtual” communities). It also highlights the complexity and subtlety of the phenomenon, where usual interaction patterns, communicative practices are blurred and redefined - something we started exploring in building_space_with_words.

Townsend makes a surprising argument that as cities grow bigger, and mega-cities multiply, technology make them manageable: “Cities maybe be much bigger, but the social graph is the same” (Townsend quoted by Blum).
Yet Blum rightly reminds us that even if technology is a tool that helps coping with the city’s chaos and scale, it does not mean that physical space should be not taken into account, on the contrary I would argue.

“Density increases the need for thoughtful public space. For the cities of the future to work, the physical and the virtual have to stick together” - Stick together to allow people to develop a sense of place…

I arrived nearly 2 weeks in London and was planning to get a phone fast but realized one needed a bank account to have one, and this takes some time.

I could have taken a pay-on-the-go phone, but thought, “better just to wait, I can survive a few days without a cell phone”. I can, this is confirmed but along the way I also realized how my perception of the city changed. When I go and meet people, I always have this worry that I might be late, or they might and they won’t be able to call me. I could go to a public phone but it is as if the phone booths don’t seem efficient anymore.

I went to this meeting in Hampstead and I got lost and was late. There were no public phones around. I had a few seconds of frustration and then I thought, “I’ll get there when I get there”… I was 20 minutes late and apologized. It was OK but I don’t think the person I was meeting could really picture someone without a cell phone.

What does all this tell us? How connected, technology dependent we are. I guess so. It also shows the materiality of these connections - cell phone, public phones, etc. More deeply I realized that I had this mix feeling of being alone, not being able to talk or text anyone, and a sense of freedom. Text messages are often these tags we send to each other, sharing our perceptions, waving at the other. They create a second layer of space. Yet, once this habit is put on hold, there’s a sense of freedom, even maybe adventure to walk in the city “on your own”. From being “disconnected” I became “unconnected”.

al

Yasmine Abbas is involved in a book project Taking from, leaving in, moving on by the Austrian architect and artist, Renate Mihatsh

Her contribution will be about neo-nomads whom she defines as “individuals constantly on the move who construct and reclaim a sense of belonging to places through digital means.” She argues that technology allows people to recreate a sense of place and notes that neo-nomads “sample cultures and the urban environments they roam in to reuse in the creation of a comfortable, personal and movable space.” Technology seems to allow people to carry with them, in their laptops, Iphone, Ipod, or any other portable devices, as well as by allowing access to various platforms, much more than one could put in a box, a bag or a suitcase. Our letters, packs of photos, favorite CD (or tape)… can be saved “online”. Yet, what is then the evocative object? The content or the object which allows to store or gives us access to the storage place?

Related to the theme of the suitcases, an interesting exhibition on immigrants: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/gallery/2009/mar/11/communities-immigration?picture=344441838

to follow up on Yasmine’s post about distributed spaces (April 5th) and her idea of “simultaneous happenings in various locations”

and just a cool project aiming to create a sense of place through sound

on the relationship between virtual and physical space… when the “nomad” finds a home - “virtual” yet “real”.

“I soon realised that the site would evolve into some parallel living space, some sort of lateral existence in connection with a different world, through the lens of design. (…)”

See “behind the scenes” at  http://www.bazartropicando.com/home_works.html

Hi,

Milena was telling me yesterday that she found interesting that the blog “seems to be taking a turn for physical space…and urban environments which is really interesting too”.
My first reply was that I liked the idea that the discussion was evolving and taking its own path. I also highlighted that for me while issues about physical space were coming up, it did not mean that the “virtual space” topic has disappeared, but it was discussions about online communication, mobility, etc.

Moreover, the two last posts by Yasmine and Claudia were for me about practices, perceptions, and not so much physical space per se: How do you keep a sense of home (place, identity) when you’re away, on the way? What is home if it’s not the physical house that one might associate with home?

Yet, Milena’s comment made me reflect on the evolution of our conversation and I wondered whether we have taken another path (which is not a problem in itself) forgetting the original question:

How to interpret the metaphor of the virtual space that so many people use? is it a metaphor or an oxymoron? Are some of the affordances of physical spaces (affordances which are not only material but also social) reenacted in online (virtual) spaces? Or do these spaces have completely different affordances / dimensions? (more…)

This morning Claudia sent me an email asking me to post the following message as a “reply” to Yasmine’s post “Is Home a spatial matter?” (Funny as I had mentioned Claudia’s work in my comment to Yasmine’s post).” To follow up on Yasmine’s question “Is home a spatial matter?”, here is part of my exploration of a related question “What is home?”.The question “What is home?” inspires today very different reactions, than it did only 20 years ago. Transience has driven us to loose the sense of place. In that process, we have gained a sense of us. Today, ‘Home’ is an inner-self construction that we carry wherever we go. It is a collection of memories, values, assumptions, priorities and invisible qualities we keep in us. Today, Home is us.“What is home?” is a series of landscape photographs where the horizon is playing the primary role. These images were exhibited at Luis Serpa Gallery in Lisbon, for the occasion of “The Ulysses Fascination” Group Exhibition in May 2008.In each image is quoted a sentence. Some of these sentences are from answers I got to the question ‘what is home?’ This question was sent to a list of people by email…Above are 3 photographs with 3 quotes (more on my blog):1…. and we lose something, don’t we? When we are not able to say “this is where I’m from”. We lose not only a sense of place but a sense of identity. (Pico Iyer)2. HOME is a myth. HOMEish is a more realistic concept, is a place that almost feel like home but there is always someone or something that is missing (Ana Foseca)3. Home is what we are running from: what we are dreaming of. What we try to avoid because we’re dreaming of freedom: what we try to build because we need roots (AL Fayard)ByeClaudia

As  I continue exploring Kolb’s work, here are a few interesting distinctions he makes (http://www.dkolb.org/sprawlingplaces/generalo/placethe.html):

1. distinguish an area, which is a stretch of space, from a place, which is one or more areas that are permeated with social norms or expectations for what “we” do there.
2. Places are areas of physical or virtual space permeated by social grammars, which prescribe divisions within the space and govern what is expected or appropriate to do and not to do there.

This notion of “social grammars” is very close to the notion of social designation that we defined with John Weeks (Fayard and Weeks, 2007) as an affordance for informal interactions.  Indeed our study of copier rooms in different organizations shows that ” settings such as photocopier rooms afford informal interaction to the extent that they bring people into contact with each other (propinquity), allow people to control the boundaries of their conversation (privacy), and provide legitimate rationalizations for people to stay and talk to each other (social designation).” It also reminded me of Alexander’s work and esp. a quote I posted on January 5th on the relationships between physical and social spaces. (more…)

Marc Hansen suggested me to look up Sprawling places by David Kolb.

There is a book and a website: http://www.dkolb.org/sprawlingplaces/index.html. I’ve started exploring the online version of the book and there are many interesting ideas, photos and narratives.

The main questions addressed in the book are: “Are contemporary places as bad as some critics claim? Are we building “non-places”? Are we imprisoned in a universal Disneyland?”

Kolb argues against some of the current criticisms which describe “contemporary places as inauthentic or unreal or totally commodified”. He argues that instead of just criticizing current places, one should try to understand the process and looking for new possibilities (e.g.  Do our new kinds of places make room for new kinds of community?).

I’ll post more tomorrow on the specific issues of virtual space and what Kolb calls “social grammars”.

Thanks Mark for a very interesting reference. If you have time to share more thoughts with us on Kolb’s work, or more references, please do so.
al

We’ve been talking a lot about space, but not so much about discourse, about how we can do things with words - even such things as creating a space, a sense of place, where we can meet with others and share ideas and feelings. I “explicitly” learnt that language was performative - i.e. that language does more than describing things - in my courses on the philosophy of language, reading Austin’s How to Do Things with Words (1962) or reading Wittgenstein’s and working on my master thesis on the language games of colours.  Austin provides several examples such as the naming of a ship: if you say, “I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth” (and the circumstances are appropriate in certain ways), you not only utter a sentence, but you do something-namely, you perform the act of naming the ship. The pragmatist or discursive approach focuses on the use of expressions in speech situations and implies that discourse organizes experience and reality (Austin, 1962; Wittgenstein, 1963). It assumes that language is not only a tool to report and describe reality, but is also a tool to create a context within which we “know” reality and orient our actions.

As I was thinking about my research work on discursive practices on online forums, I re-read the introduction of Sherry Turkle’s Life on the Screen and what she said about the imaginary experience of people writing in MUDs, it made me think of my own experience as a reader.   Indeed, when one reads a novel, it is about entering in an imaginary world created by the novelists, and I am taking the metaphor seriously. It is really about entering another world - a world that is offered to you by the novel, but that you can also rewrite, reinvent.I remember my parents calling me for lunch or dinner and never getting an answer. I remember this situation in a very lively manner as I see my son doing the same, or when he bursts into tears because something sad happen in the story - that happened to me too; that still happens to me: the tears are real; the impact of words are real. Literature is a proof (if needed) of the performativity of language, and it was my first experience of it.

Literature includes not only novels, but also poetry - following the maze of emotions, perceptions and thoughts created by Mallarme or T.S. Eliot - and theatre. You might say, yes, but novelists, poets, playwrights are gifted individuals, not everyone can create these worlds where one can enter. You might be right, yet it does not take away the fact that words can create such experiences. Moreover, I have been working during the last two years with Anca Metiu on correspondences and our analysis showed the power of writing, its ability to allow people to share ideas, to build and maintain relationships. Our work focuses on correspondences of famous writers such as Descartes, Einstein, Virginia Woolf and Kafka. However, we also read correspondences by anonymous persons and there is this same power of words allowing people to share moments, feelings, thoughts, and maintain a relationship. My argument about the performativity of discursive practices in public online forums is very similar to some of the findings of Sherry Turkle’s of people’s interactions in MUDs. Hence, she mentioned a virtual rape that took place in one MUD and she wrote: “although some made light of the offender’s actions by saying that the episode was just words, in txt based realities such as MUDs words are deeds.” (Turkle, 1995, p. 15).

Most MUDs like online forums are purely text-based and people create a reality, and even a self, a multiple self, Turkle argues. My focus is more on how people co-create this sense of place, of belonging despite the absence of co-location. Hence my question regarding the possibility to enact some of the affordances of space through discursive practices. Of course, there are differences. For example, you can be part of several forums, MUDs, and engaged in many other activities as highlights Turkle (in fact her studies show that dedicated MUD players are often involved in several worlds at the same time thanks to the affordance of the computers - the ability to open several windows on their screen). This possibility to be in at least two places at the same time is illustrated by the possibility to have a virtual coffee break, chatting with a friend on skype (maybe both even drinking coffee). You could in principle have coffee at the same time with different friends - you in NY, another one in London, and a third one in Paris or a few blocks away… al