In
the past five week that I have been observing Twitter, I have not
experienced it as anything more than a space that people fill with their
thoughts and experiences of their day to day lives. As Dr. Van Luyn
showed in her lecture this week - "Location is
transformed into place through art and stories." (Van Luyn 2013) - I can now see that it is
through these experiences, these stories that Twitter or any other
network changes from just a space to a place for people to interact not
just exist.
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| Image taken from 'The innovation of loneliness" via Webschnorcheln |
In a short video released by Shimi Cohen earlier
this year, he states: "The invention of language and gossip has helped
us form larger and more stable [social] groups" (The innovation of loneliness, 2013) this can be
seen in social networks - how members are brought together through
common language, and gossip is used to include members of the group in the lives of others. Cohen
also touches on how the environment of the network has power over you by
allowing you to always be heard and included in the place that the
community considers to be special.
"Almost everything that we say
illuminates some object and casts shadow over others" (Tuan, 1991, p. 694)
in a place where everything you say is recorded and re-tweeted, there is no
such thing as a throw away comment, although the use of less formal language in the
structure of tweets invites you to speak your mind at the touch of a button
with little -if any- editing.
Words and stories are a vital force in human culture (Tuan 1991) that allow us to transform a virtual space such as a Twitter, into a place for people to exchange their experiences and stories. In doing this we have built a community that holds these places as sacred and centres of meaning (Tuan 1991) where we strive to have the stories of our life heard and to included in the stories of others.
Words and stories are a vital force in human culture (Tuan 1991) that allow us to transform a virtual space such as a Twitter, into a place for people to exchange their experiences and stories. In doing this we have built a community that holds these places as sacred and centres of meaning (Tuan 1991) where we strive to have the stories of our life heard and to included in the stories of others.
References
Van Luyn, A. (2013). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narratives
and the Making of Place, Lecture 5, Stories
and Place. [Power Point Slides] Townsville, Australia, Retrieved from http://www.learnjcu.edu.au
Cohen S. (2013) The innovation of
loneliness [Streaming Video] Tel Aviv,Israel.
Retrieved and embedded from http://vimeo.com/70534716 Tuan Y. (1991). Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative-Descriptive Approach. Page 694
In Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Pages 684 - 696
Association of American Geographers.
Image Credits
Cohen S. (2013) The innovation of
loneliness [Still image] Tel Aviv,Israel.
Retrieved from Webschnorcheln: http://webschnorcheln.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/the-innovation-of-loneliness.html
Video Credits
Cohen S. (2013) The innovation of
loneliness [Streaming Video] Tel Aviv,Israel.
Retrieved and embedded from http://vimeo.com/70534716 
This was a very interesting read Adam. I also enjoyed the video by Cohen and found it to be quite enlightening. I thought Cohen words were all too true when he said "We're sacrificing conversations for mere connection". These days our society seems to care more about the appearance of happiness than actually being happy. We accumulate large numbers of "friends" online, however only a small percent of them are in real life as they appear online. We are not really making friends with the people doing the typing, but with a more polished and perfected version of those people. As Tuan suggests, speech has the power to make the invisible or non-existent - visible and real(1991, p. 685). Those people doing the typing are creating another identity of themselves through words.
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