Dr Tim Jordan speaking at the University of Sydney

As part of the development of digital culture at King's College London, Dr Tim Jordan is speaking at the University of Sydney on his recent research into communication and the internet. He will be developing links with the  emerging digital culture and communications programme at Sydney and more broadly with the Department of Media and Communications at Sydney University.

 'Media @ Sydney' and Digital Cultures presents 'Communicative Practices Before and After the Internet' Dr Tim Jordan (King's College London) with responses by Chris Chesher, Kathy Cleland, and Gerard Goggin (Sydney).

 Abstract

How do we communicate? What makes it possible for a sender and receiver to exchange some form of meaning? What role do technologies play in communication? This paper will explore these questions by examining communication both before and after the rise to mass use of internet technologies. The everyday moment of communication is most often understood as the transmission from A to B of a message C. This transmission model of communication has been criticised in both communication studies and cultural studies and instead an idea of the cultures of communication or communicative practices has been proposed in the work of Carey, Peters and others. This will be critically examined in relation the work of Milne and Derrida on the importance of presence in communication and presence will be reconsidered in the light of Levinas' idea of 'face-to-face' and Haraway's criticism of Heidegger on boredom. Communicative presence it is argued can be understood as a being-with/becoming-with generated between selves and others that must be understood as both care and capture, as both conversation and hostage. Communication is then understood as the generation of presence which in enables the possibility of transmission. To examine this idea of communicative practices before and after the internet, two case studies will be presented. One case study is of pre-internet communicative practices and one of internet-dependant communicative practices. The first case study is of letters to colonial Australia 1835-1858 and the second is of mmpog gaming. In the former the techno-social practices of seals, letter folding, inks, greetings and farewells, signatures and so on, construct a presence based on confirmation that the body of the sender has touched the letter. This is examined in relation to over 200 letters between Australia and the UK between 1835-1858. A case study of a guild in mmpog gaming will demonstrate how the technologies of virtual worlds show presence to be based not on untrustworthy identity-markers but on the style of interaction. This comparison shows how different types of communicative practice enable the ability to 'transmit' messages based on forms of technologically-mediate presence which itself makes possible and stabilises senders, receivers and the message. Some consequences of this are examined in living simultaneously in two contradictory communicative practices.

 Biography

Tim Jordan is Senior Lecturer at King's College London, leading development of analysis of digital culture. He is a member of the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries and the Department of Digital Humanities. Tim has been involved in analysis of the social and cultural meaning of the internet and cyberspace since the mid-1990s, and his latest book will be forthcoming in January 2013 called, Internet, Culture and Society: communicative practices before and after the internet (Continuum).    

He has also published the books: Hacking: digital media and technological determinism (2008), Cyberpower (1999) and, with Paul Taylor, Hacktivism and Cyberwars (2004). He has also played a role in analysing social movements and popular protest, as a founding editor of the journal  Social Movement Studies. 
In addition to his books on social  movements and internet cultures, Tim has published on Pokemon, surfing and technology and social theory.