Finding your place in a virtual World.
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The internet and social media is a vast sea in which your can easily drown in if you do not know the way. Sure search engines can help the uninitiated to find their way but what do you do if there is no direct way to the page being searched for and no way to retrace your steps, you are blind.
Also, with websites such as Wikipedia popping up at the top of most search lists, the information may not always be overly accurate, which people unfamiliar with the reputation of these sites, are unaware of. Like in 'Songlines'(Chatwin, B. 1987), Arkady speaks about how the building of the railways disturbs the song lines of those who are trying to find their way when they go walkabout and that they have to make a new line so that they can continue their journey across country. However, Arkady said that the elders found ways around the interruptions to the song lines in order to continue on their journeys, and even to create a new path incorporating the disruptions to their lines like a stop sign at a main intersection for different paths.
This is comparable to those who manage to find their way through the Facebook sea and on to a page that they are interested in, and they can begin networking in that group of "fandom" in which a common interest or purpose has brought them together from all around the world, allowing them to build stronger friendships if they so choose. It is always helpful to have someone to guide the uninitiated through the early stages of web exploration and only provide assistance to them should they become stuck in something like an adult site after they have clicked an inoccuous link for baby photos. Language means different things to different people, in fact, the same word can have multiple meanings in several languages, i.e. "bae" has a different meaning in Dutch than it does in the current vernacular in English. Even different dialects in the same basic language there are lots of examples, i.e. "Thong" in Australian English and American English stir up two different images in peoples minds.
Also, with websites such as Wikipedia popping up at the top of most search lists, the information may not always be overly accurate, which people unfamiliar with the reputation of these sites, are unaware of. Like in 'Songlines'(Chatwin, B. 1987), Arkady speaks about how the building of the railways disturbs the song lines of those who are trying to find their way when they go walkabout and that they have to make a new line so that they can continue their journey across country. However, Arkady said that the elders found ways around the interruptions to the song lines in order to continue on their journeys, and even to create a new path incorporating the disruptions to their lines like a stop sign at a main intersection for different paths.
This is comparable to those who manage to find their way through the Facebook sea and on to a page that they are interested in, and they can begin networking in that group of "fandom" in which a common interest or purpose has brought them together from all around the world, allowing them to build stronger friendships if they so choose. It is always helpful to have someone to guide the uninitiated through the early stages of web exploration and only provide assistance to them should they become stuck in something like an adult site after they have clicked an inoccuous link for baby photos. Language means different things to different people, in fact, the same word can have multiple meanings in several languages, i.e. "bae" has a different meaning in Dutch than it does in the current vernacular in English. Even different dialects in the same basic language there are lots of examples, i.e. "Thong" in Australian English and American English stir up two different images in peoples minds.
Reference
Chatwin, B. (1987). The Songlines. London. Cape.
Dalziell, T., & Genoni, P. (2013). Kuttainen, V., Style, modernity and popular magazines. Telling Stories: Australian Life and Literature 1935-2012. Clayton, Victoria: Monash University Publishing.
Kuttainen, V. (2015). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, narratives and making of place, Lecture 5: Stories and Places. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au
Expanding on what you have mentioned here, I believe that there are actually quite a few connections between the Indigenous Australians’ Songlines, and the manner in which the Internet unfolds. It quite possibly has something to do with the neurological manner by which humans easily organise and process information, but that is irrelevant for this comment. Chatwin mentions that the Songlines are difficult to summaries for Western thinking, but that they essentially are “both map and direction finder” (1987, p. 13). Equating this to the Internet, are hyperlinks for the Songlines of the Internet? Through their metaphysical link to the next page, and their text describing what we will find there, they are a map—and to extend the similarities, when a hyperlink is broken, we can no longer get to the next page, just like a Songline being interrupted. Like Songlines stretching the entirety of Australia, so do hyperlinks stretch the entirety of the Internet.
ReplyDeleteREFERENCE
Chatwin, B. (1987). The Songlines. London, England: Franklin Press.