Jonathan P. Allen, Professor of Management at the University of San Francisco, offers these comments on Matthew Wilson’s article in issue 3 of the 2014 volume of Society and Space. Titled “Continuous connectivity, handheld computers, and mobile spatial knowledge“, it is open access until 26 October 2014.
Matthew Wilson’s paper introduces a new concept, “continuous connectivity”, to analyze the emergence of a new digital culture where people are always connected to a network. The main contribution of continuous connectivity is to open up for investigation both the origins of an always-connected culture, and the implications of this relentless connectivity for a future of shared, highly intimate information.
The paper ends with the phrase “the presumed normalcy of life always connected” (p. 552), which I think perfectly captures the need for this kind of contribution. A modern digital culture of continuous connectivity, as defined by Wilson, may appear natural to those most deeply immersed within it, but this particular form of cultural practice is a human accomplishment with historical roots, requiring continual maintenance as its rougher edges rub against other facets of human existence.
Despite its unproblematic appearance, a careful look at our current digital culture reveals that some rather unbelievable things have been commonplace. Continuous location tracking by government authorities has become tacitly accepted, or widely ignored. Personal location information is shared with friends, but also with strangers such as potential romantic partners. Product codes are openly scanned in local stores, to be purchased through a remote business online.
Other attempts to change cultural practice in the name of continuous connectivity have not fared as well. Here in my hometown, San Francisco, people attempting to wear internet-enabled glasses with video recording capability have been assaulted in local bars. If we move our thinking beyond the language of technology acceptance and rejection, there is the possibility of seeing the interplay over time between new cultural practices, and responses to them. Photo sharing is widely adopted, but over time the nuance of reaction and counter-reaction results in new practices, such as the six-second temporary photo share, or tutorials for deciding when to enable or disable automated cloud backups of sensitive images.
One aspect of this work I find especially valuable is its identification of the culture of continuous connectivity as rooted in history. The paper usefully, and I believe correctly, identifies its origins in a third narrative, distinct from the two major narratives used in the history of computer technology: the command and control narrative from the military, and the countercultural narrative from the personal computer movement. The connectivity narrative is, instead, profoundly shaped by the business context. As an “idea born in Silicon Valley venture capitalism and competitive entrepreneurialism” (p. 539), continuous connectivity has been guided by a unique set of imperatives. These include the need for mass consumer scale, rapid product releases that favor the recombination of existing infrastructure and technologies over basic research, and less concern for regulatory protections. Origins matter, because visions drive development and deployment trajectories, and the visions that can mobilize sufficient support are heavily context dependent. We have learned this lesson again and again in cross-disciplinary efforts to understand digital culture, such as in the computerization movements approach (e.g., Elliott and Kraemer, 2008) and in social informatics (e.g., Fichman and Rosenbaum, 2014).
I look forward to this paper opening up new investigations of continuous connectivity, and digital culture generally, especially across academic disciplines. Studies of digital technology and culture are located in fields as diverse as computer science, business, information science, sociology, and geography. These investigations tend not to connect to each other. Humanity has created a new and uniquely powerful digital culture in a very short period of time, which has already captured significant amounts of human time, space, attention, and communication, but has had relatively little scholarly investigation. Let’s give this new culture the scrutiny it deserves.
References
Elliott MS and KL Kraemer (eds) 2008 Computerization Movements and Technology Diffusion: From Mainframes to Ubiquitous Computing. Medford, New Jersey: Information Today.
Fichman P and H Rosenbaum (eds) 2014 Social Informatics: Past, Present and Future. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
