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Under Construction: (Re)Defining Culture and Community in Cyberspace

Meg Pickard, 10/98, MA (Econ) Social Anthropology Dissertation, University of Manchester.
Everything is under constructionAt the time this paper was originally written in late 1997 and early 1998, anthropology in (and of) cyberspace was just beginning. We were just starting to understand some of the social consequences of life online.

When I proposed this research topic to my supervisors at the University of Manchester, they laughed and said “there’s no such thing as culture online. It’s a technology thing,” and then tried to persuade me to do fieldwork in Papua New Guinea instead.

How wrong they were.

I was very broke and holding down two jobs while I completed my MA: working weekdays for a magazine about intermediate technology and community building, and at evenings and weekends in a cybercafe - I just couldn’t afford to leave the country for nine months. So I stuck to my guns and insisted my fieldwork would be done from the crappy 28.8kbps connection in my bedroom. No mosquitos, no dysentry, no jetlag and no shortage of tea.

But there was plenty of culture shock.

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By way of explanation...

This is an individual post, which may not be very recent. For the latest stuff on meish dot org, please visit the main page.

By the way, I'm female. It doesn't have much impact on what I write about, or how I write, but I thought I'd point it out because so many people who link to this site seem to assume I'm male.

The clue's in the name: Meg. Like all those other female Megs.

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What's all this, then?

This is a personal site, created and curated continuously since early 2000 by Meg Pickard, a creative geek, passionate photographer, anthropologist and web experience /community /social media specialist, who works for The Guardian & lives in London, UK.
 
The site includes a blog - a personal and evolving collection of links, opinions, thoughts, ideas, anecdotes and musings - as well as a variety of other projects. It is also a place to aggregate some of the author's distributed web activity, like photos, links and music.
 
More info about this site and its author.

Important note #1

This is a personal site. The contents and opinions contained within don't necessarily reflect those of my employer, family, or cat. They think for themselves (though mostly about tuna, in at least one case), and so do I.

Important note #2

Since the overwhelming majority of content on this site is historical, it should be regarded in light of the context in which it was originally published, and not as indicative or revealing of current perspectives, preferences or experience.

Important note #3

While I work and spend a lot of time thinking and talking about social media, participatory technologies and community development strategies, the vast majority of content on this site is not about that.

This personal site isn't about anything, except the perpetual unfolding of one person's experience, and the perspectives, observations and opinions that involves and inspires.

You still here?

Oh.