(Related back to my own self of course.)
The other day I read this chapter from Geography and Technology by Matthew Zook, Martin Dodge, Yuko Aoyama, and Anthony Townsend: “New Digital Geographies: Information, Communication, and Place”. They talk about the initial utopian vision of the Internet as seamless and uniform connectivity all over the world - something surpassing space and geography. In reality how people connect and what they connect for has been dependent on financial and cultural factors. Differences in accessibility and use among countries, cities, neighborhoods, and people has created a form of digital geography which is very interesting to study.
I recommend reading the chapter…right now I am going to continue talking about myself as I always do. I read this and something struck me. Here I have access to the same content online that I did when I was in Vancouver. Content that is produced mostly in various parts of the US or Europe…far from Vancouver. But now that I am here, I feel so far away from it. I feel like besides having travelled far, shifted days, changed time zones, and become an alien, I`ve also entered another info-sphere. What mattered and what was interesting to me before has changed. It`s not that I am getting my content from Japanese sites because I cannot read the majority of them, it`s more like…
…it is like when you are at a party and you`ve been sitting at this one spot on a couch for a long long time. Overall, you are enjoying the going-ons around you and the conversation, but you are starting to nod off from the sitting and the alcohol consumed. You decide that it`s time to move around. You get up and walk to the kitchen where people are laughing. You missed the joke so, still standing, you focus your attention back to the area around the couch you were sitting on, this time with a different perspective. Party geography would be interesting to study.