This week's reading...
Mobility, Portability and Placelessness - Joseph Kupfer
Information, documentation and information are more portable than ever before. This portability facilitates an individual’s mobility to the extent that physical place is no longer relevant. As a result we are becoming so absorbed in our “electronically fabricated environment” that we risk becoming completely detached from our surroundings. Kupfer suggests that when this happens, we cease to inhabit our environment in any meaningful way, “over-reliance on virtual, electronic connections erode our connection to actual physical places”.
Kupfer suggests that the result is that we experience three dimensions of loss:
1. Loss of place - deprived of the aesthetic experiences that places provide
2. Loss of touch - with ourselves and others
3. Loss of sense of place
Electronic displacement has resulted from burgeoning use of electronic communications - email, mobile phones, blackberries, laptops, wireless internet connections. We are also disconnecting from physical places as our ability to perform an increasingly amount of tasks online grows - online banking, online shopping, online education and working from home. We are increasingly living our lives online.
Physical imagination is decreasing. That is that “aspect of imagination that is grounded in bodily and sensory vitality”. This occurs as we no longer have the need to visit physical places such as the library or school.
Isolation is becoming the norm as we interact online rather than interact directly in person with others. This is compounded by the fact that much of our time online is spent communing with ourselves or engaging in solitary activities. “Electronically produced experience is isolating” and we are experiencing an increasing loss of community.
Kupfer suggests that “the privatisation of space has undermined our sense of public place” and that portable electronic experiences have intensified this phenomenon.
Kupfer suggests that the result is that we experience three dimensions of loss:
1. Loss of place - deprived of the aesthetic experiences that places provide
2. Loss of touch - with ourselves and others
3. Loss of sense of place
Electronic displacement has resulted from burgeoning use of electronic communications - email, mobile phones, blackberries, laptops, wireless internet connections. We are also disconnecting from physical places as our ability to perform an increasingly amount of tasks online grows - online banking, online shopping, online education and working from home. We are increasingly living our lives online.
Physical imagination is decreasing. That is that “aspect of imagination that is grounded in bodily and sensory vitality”. This occurs as we no longer have the need to visit physical places such as the library or school.
Isolation is becoming the norm as we interact online rather than interact directly in person with others. This is compounded by the fact that much of our time online is spent communing with ourselves or engaging in solitary activities. “Electronically produced experience is isolating” and we are experiencing an increasing loss of community.
Kupfer suggests that “the privatisation of space has undermined our sense of public place” and that portable electronic experiences have intensified this phenomenon.
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