commentaries... of sorts

on the state of myspace.com and facebook.com

the where of digital geographies

last week's class kept me awake for a few nights. i wasn't quite sure if our conversation had moved us forward. i wondered whether soja had helped us or put up unnecessary roadblocks. i had to wonder why i had included him in our readings - what kind of prior discussion and exploration is necessary to engaging with a spatial trilectic framework?

but it wasn't just that. i read lance's blog posting and i, too, am wondering now about the use of language to describe phenomena, and to what extent languaging is merely a linguistic exercise, and in what ways language and discourse, more broadly, is constitutive of realities in a foucauldian sense. what is the utility of engaging with the spatial dynamics/dimensions/tensions/possibilities of (essentially) "what people are doing in an increasingly digital landscape?"

so far, the usefulness of thinking spatially has been the inclusion of aspects of social interaction and purposes that might go unrecognized from a variety of other approaches to the same phenomena. so a question about "what's going on?" can be approached from a standpoint of "who's involved?" and "who's being represented?" and "for what purposes?" and "using what modalities?" and "what's not being said?" - thus the nature of geography is no longer one of terrestrial constraints but rather a shifting, performable landscape.
...or, perhaps i've just been duped into buying soja's book.

the jury is under healthy deliberation...

some thoughts on "why space?"

so it occurs to me that we kicked up a lot of spatial dust last night, asking some key questions like "what do we mean by space and geographies?" and "what's the difference?" and "how might these metaphors be important, or even relevant for what we want to do and explore?"

what i think we get from the folks who think, talk, and write about space is a way of making sense of some of the changes in ways of being that occuring as our digital landscape continues to evolve. so what? for one, it seems like to consider these changes through spatial lenses might make us pay attention dimensions that we hadn't thought to look at before. but the question remains: why think of these moments/events/changes/ripples/shifts as spaces?

about this blog

this blog is a virtual extension of the physical ongoings of the course digital geographies and virtual spaces