The Art and Science of Everything

Writing about power geometries of time-space compression, geographer Doreen Massey writes:

[D]ifferent social groups, and different individuals, are placed in very distinct ways in relation to these flows and interconnections. [… A]t the end of all the spectra are […] the jet-setters, the ones sending and receiving the faxes and the e-mail, holding the international conference calls, the ones distributing the films, controlling the news, organizing the investments and the international currency transactions. These are the groups who are really in a sense in charge of time-space compression, who can really use it and turn it to advantage, whose power and influence it very definitely increases. […]
But there are also groups who are doing a lot of physical moving, but who are not ‘in charge’ of the process in the same way at all. The refugees from El Salvador or Guatemala and the undocumented migrant workers from Michoacán in Mexico, crowding into Tijuana to make a perhaps fatal dash for it across the border into the US to grab a chance of a new life. Here the experience of movement, and indeed of a confusing plurality of cultures, is very different. (Massey, 1991: 149)

One site that might be interesting to study is looking at World of Warcraft “gold farmers” - low paid workers outside the US who play WOW full-time, collecting gold and other artifacts that are then sold to players for in the open market. How do their perceptions of networked time-space differ from their customers? Does this perspective spill over into meanings of other networked artifacts, such as mobile phones?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 3:52 am and is filed under research idea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.