Introduction
The Research Question and Foundational Assumptions
Everything must have a beginning (14th Century English Proverb)
What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from (Eliot 1971, 46).
Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and that they dwell therein (Hurston 1942).
My research, at the broadest level, aims to understand how the Web is an integral part of the milieu of contemporary cultural practices and not dichotomously distinct from it (Green 1998, 59; Wakeford 2000, 31). As Miller & Slater (2000, 7) say “these spaces are important as part of everyday life, not apart from it.” Castells (2000, 1) similarly claims that “the Internet is the fabric of our lives.” The empirical work of the thesis identifies the most sought after artefacts of Web-based exchange practices. This research goal was achieved through the collection and analysis of search terms submitted to a Web-based meta-search engine over the course of 16 months from September 2001 to February 2003. Web users’ collective desire for these artefacts is critically examined in order to identify the predominant underlying cultural traits that can be associated with them. I argue that the most popular artefacts of Web-based search practices reveal a cultural complex that is representative of a consumption-oriented, media-obsessed and event-driven culture.
Exchange practices on the Web were the object of my empirical analysis as they are very clear exemplars of Baudrillard’s conceptualisation of symbolic exchange. Baudrillard views the social, economic and cultural spheres as being characterised by an evanescent, disconnected collection of “floating signifiers” that are free of any objective anchorage (Porter, 1993, 1-2). Analysis of Web search terms, and the patterns of searching in this world of floating signifiers, reveal the values of participants in these exchanges.
The collected data on search terms reveals the artefacts that users of Web based search engines seek. This thesis uses a taxanomic classification of these terms to reveal the central traits of contemporary mainstream western culture implicit in these Web searches. This critical analysis takes up the challenge laid down by Escobar (1995, 414) to engage in ‘interface anthropology’. He argues that,
the creation of human-computer interfaces has been treated narrowly as a problem of engineering design which attempts to match tasks to be performed with the tools at hand. Yet the key question of the distinct user populations for whom the technologies are intended is often ignored or inferred from statistical information, and the critical question of what the technology in question does to users and what it allows them to do is never raised.
The argument developed throughout the thesis shows that the answer to Escobar’s ‘critical question’ is to understand how Web technology enables ‘users’ to engage and participate in exchange practices that, in turn, inform and contribute to the shaping of culture.
I claim that the identified cultural complex reflects and reinforces contemporary, western and maintream culture but also acknowledge the presence of intertwined threads of masculine and hegemonic power relations (Plant 1996, 170). There is a gender bias within the contemporary presentation and application of technology that reinforces the historical and assumed traditional relationship between ‘men’ and high technology. Spender (1995, xvi) made the claim in 1995 that 94% of all Internet users were male. While the maleness of the Internet may have abated since that time, there is a clear relationship between high technologies and dominant cultural power relations. As Oldenziel (1996, 55) observes in an historical context, technological artefacts “represent the material, political and symbolic formation of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Material notions of technology accurately represent a social and cultural configuration...” In our age Web artefacts are equally expressions of contemporary hegemonic power. All participants in this culture are influenced by the activities that are conducted online, irrespective of their personal connectivity, because of the Web’s relationship to dominant contemporary power relations. Contemporary is also used here to reflect Baudrillard’s (1998, 8) argument regarding the contemporary relationship to the historical in what he describes as “the dilution of history as event: its mise en scene, its excess of visibility”. Baudrillard’s concerns focus on ‘western’, primarily English-speaking culture, which is not limited to any one ‘national’ culture. Although the influence of the United States is readily discerned in my research data, subtle variations such as the impact of celebrities from the United Kingdom and Australia can also be identified albeit with less regularity and repetition. My analysis of the search term data shows the presence of an identifiable cultural complex as an amalgamation of meanings associated with the artefacts and traits that can be identified from their classification. The cultural complex is consequently seen as a representation of contemporary western mainstream culture (Aunger n.d., 3). Contemporary culture is discussed in further detail in Section 6.3 in light of the collected data and subsequent interpretation.
The research questions and methods employed in this thesis are the result of a complex set of academic, professional and personal experiences. In terms of the questions it asks, the approach it utilises and its object of study this thesis could not exist as a viable project at the commencement of my candidature. The limitations imposed on the thesis by the continuing development of the Internet is an important caution in terms of my examination of previous literature and my judgements regarding the relative merits of the methods employed. Secondly, the relative youth of the field of study has allowed many texts to become accepted into the canon of research literature irrespective of their veracity, academic suitability or strength of argument (see Dyson et al 1994; Rushkoff 1994; Rheingold 1995; Negreponte 1996; Berners-Lee 1999; Silver 2000). It should be stressed that these observations are not a negative criticism of the texts. They offer interesting perspectives and intellectual energy and good commentary. But they also may themselves be seen as representative of the cultural practices of their time being conducted through the Internet (Castells 2000, 3). In this sense, these writings become part of the cultural activities being investigated by this thesis.
Technological development is not the pivotal focus of this work however I do take prudent account of recent technological developments. This thesis is not a work of technological determinism nor does it in any way reify recent digital technologies - a twinned set of assumptions found in many works regarding the Internet. The theoretical perspectives I have utilized here recognise the sophisticated and constantly changing relationships that human cultures hold with their manufactured artefacts. Baudrillard (1990, 43) claims that,
possession never applies to a tool, since the latter relates me to the world – possession always applies to the object abstracted of its function and thus made relative to the subject.
Richardson (in Hodder 1989, 189) also claims that artefacts are, “a framing and communicative medium…used for transforming, storing and preserving social information.” These theoretical positions do not deny the importance of digital technologies but rather stress the multiple ways in which all inventions and tools are always integral aspects of culture (Spier 1973, 25).
Two collections of literature have particularly influenced the development of the arguments in this thesis and inspired the pathway that its research has followed. In pursuing the approach initially defined by these works I eskew an ethnographic approach in preference for a more ‘experimental’ method that endeavours to capture an alternative perspective on the understanding of culture in relation to the Internet. These works are Schiffer and Gould’s Modern Material Culture: The Archaeology of Us (1981) and Hodder’s (1995) Interpreting Archaeology: Finding Meaning in the Past. Although Miller & Slater’s The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach (2000) has increasingly become a key point of reference for recent material culture studies and the examination of Internet-oriented cultures, it is the two earlier collections that best reveal the intricate interlocking relationships between cultural practice, artefacts, technology and ‘our’ understanding of them and, hence, inform this thesis. My thesis and its research impetus are different to that of Miller & Slater’s (2000) work in a second important way. The thesis confines its examinations to the Web itself and those artefacts - in the broadest sense of the word - that are sought through this technology. By contrast, Miller & Slater physically locate their research in the context of Trinidad and conveniently avoid the roblematic context of the ‘purely’ virtual environment. The first two works are therefore the principal starting point for my own investigations and perspectives on Web-based exchange practices. Schiffer and Gould’s (1981) collection is also one of the few available that treats material culture studies as something that can be studied contemporaneously by offering, for example, structuralist readings of supermarket shelves and interpretations of racist graffiti. The earlier two works present a series of frameworks for this research’s heavy focus upon the influences of artefacts on cultural formations. The perspective offered by these works and by material culture studies in general are discussed in further detail in Chapter 2.
In the complex environment of contemporary culture this research is multi-disciplinary with a heavy debt towards not only material culture studies but also cultural studies, sociology and those authors who have emerged almost ‘disciplineless’ during the postmodern turn(s) of the social sciences including de Certeau (1988), Baudrillard (1990, 1993, 1993a, 1996, 1998) and Gottdiener (1995). The intellectual heritage of these thinkers shapes the scope and range of my central argument in specific and narrow ways. Perhaps the most significant understanding that a focus such as this imparts is the emphasis on the interpretation of ‘culture’ (Geertz 1993). The use of taxonomic classification to analyse the gathered data and the significance that coalesces around artefacts also reflects a particular bias and preference within this thesis. Chapter 2 outlines a material culture oriented approach to research and justifies the use of such an approach by arguing that the Web is densely artefactual.
I argue that taking a material culture position overcomes many of the problems associated with ethnographically oriented studies of the Web and particularly the problem of locating the ethnographic object of research (Wakeford 2000, 35; Glimell & Juhlin 2001, 8). The approach employed here treats the artefacts being desired and sought as relating to a ‘mysterious’ and improperly understood culture in which its participants are indirectly observed through their publically inscribed activities. Aunger (n.d., 0724.015) makes the argument that
traits can be just some item of cultural content that the analyst finds it convenient to label – in effect they become ethnographic conventions.
Traits are utilised in this spirit to capture a view of contemporary culture – a culture that is suspiciously hard to define. De Bord (1994, Thesis 1) observed that
the whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.
Recognition of the ‘spectacular’ nature of contemporary culture is important for this thesis as the majority of previous research has adopted variously observational and ‘ethnographic’ (Hakken 1999; Gauntlett 2000; Hine 2000; Ford et al 2001), linguistic (Mehta & Plaza 1997, 53; Davison 2002; Fraim 2002) or conversation analysis-style (Micahelson & Pohl 2001, 40; Parrish n.d.) methods to understand the Web and its relationship to everyday life. Ethnography - as the most well-known method of anthropological research - has limits and biases that do not make it the exclusively ‘best’ method for the Web or indeed the only method that should be utilised within this field of research (Atkinson 1990; Silver 2000, 24; Wakeford 2000, 35; Wolfe & Wolfe 2001, 18; Crichton & Kinash 2003). Foremost among my critique of the ethnographic approach to Web-based phenomena is the tendency to reify and refer to the situation of ‘virtual’ research sites in distinction to corporeal ‘non-virtual’ sites (Stone 1991; Stallabrass 1995; cf. Silver 2000, 23; Liff, Steward & Watts 2001, 97). These concerns regarding ethnographically oriented works are discussed in detail in Chapter 2. The assumption that artifacts are meaningfully present in the context of the Web is also explored in Chapter 2.
While methodological approaches and theoretical positions stand as separate aspects of the ‘whole’ research task each relates intimately to the other. The use of taxonomies to order and frame the gathered data supports the theoretical assumption of this research. The argument that many of the gathered search terms relate to a desire for, or a seeking of, artefacts is a key difference between this work and previous considerations of the Web, particularly those that have ascribed an ethereal or heavenly quality to the Web or Internet (Wertheim 1999). In a similar vein, I specifically attempt to avoid dichotomising ‘virtual’ and spatial experience as definitional points of distinction. The theoretical decision to distinguish human experience in this way is a common and uncritical feature of much of the literature surrounding theorisations of the Web and virtuality in general (cf. Winner 1986, 21; Rushkoff 1994; Argyle & Shields 1996, 58). Unfortunately, spatial dichotomies offer little as an explanatory device and do not present pathways for critical understanding of the Web, or those artefacts that are sought and desired through the Web. The distinction of corporeal from ‘virtual’ is also used simply to place the framework of analysis outside the scope of culture (Turkle in Seidler 1998, 28; Dodge & Kitchin 2000, 13; but see Agre 2002). Such claims inevitably condemn themselves as the Web becomes, in some senses at least, ‘old’ and yet another aspect of everyday life. The dominant paradigms within existing literature are explored in Chapter 2 and an alternative perspective is offered through the description of my own methodology in Chapter 3.
This thesis makes a unique contribution to scholarship regarding the Internet and material culture studies in a variety of ways. The systematic examination of contemporary culture and its exchange practices that are reflected in the artefacts sought through Web-based search engines provides a different but complementary perspective to previous discussions that attempt to contextualise the Web as a phenomenon of contemporary culture. Jones (1999, 12) suggests that “the sheer availability of chat session, MUD/MOO sessions, e-mail, and the like provide us with a seductive data set, and it takes little effort to be of the belief that such data represent … well, something, some semblance of reality, perhaps, or some ‘slice of life’ online.” The use of data collected from Web-based search engines offers a broader perspective on the Web and its cultural practices than the examination of a single ethnographic site (Wakeford 2000, 35). The culture-wide holistic perspective focuses the discussion on the continuity and interconnectivity of cultural practices irrespective of the specific localites in which they are enacted. Taking up a cultural or more specifically culture-wide focus contrasts with many of the writings referenced here, and particularly the earliest theorising of the Web (Rheingold 1991; Dyson et al 1994; Rushkoff 1994; Negroponte 1996; Lessig 2000; Dodge & Kitchin 2000, 35; Silver 2000, 20) that tend to place high priority on the emancipating ‘newness’ of the phenomena and technology itself (Escobar 1995, 412). The literature reviewed in Chapter 2 shows the extent to which many of the issues regarding the cultural significance of the Web were left unaddressed or underaddressed by early literature in this field. The extent of this neglect is revealed by the range of popularly desired artefacts that are regularly identified in the research data but are yet to receive critical academic attention; hentai - Japanese pornographic animation - and the interest in electronic greeting cards are two indicative examples. Just as the original literature concerning the Web tended to be selective in perspective so too were its political claims. The cultural complex of desired and sought after artefacts that are identified by this research reveals a range of everyday life interests and desires that have little to do with social empowerment, change or improvement. Examination and analysis of the research data reveals that the cultural complex of desired and sought after artefacts incorporates a set of six predominant traits: freeness, participation, information-richness, do-it-yourself & customisation, perversion and privacy & anonymity. These traits reflect few of the directly emancipatory sentiments expressed in the early theorisations of cyberspace (Rushkoff 1994; Rheingold 1995; Negroponte 1996).
The second aspect of this work that can be claimed as significant is its use of a material culture studies perspective. Miller & Slater’s (2000) ethnographic work regarding Trinidad foreshadows and provides the initial impetus for the approach used here. Miller & Slater (2000, 1) argue for the utility of an ethnographic approach because, “contrary to the first generation of Internet literature – the Internet is not a monolithic or placeless ‘cyberspace’; rather, it is numerous new technologies, used by diverse people, in diverse real-world locations.” Miller and Slater’s (2000) work takes a specific geographic location and a particular set of cultural conditions as a focal point to support their injunction to “understand the very different universes of social and technical possibility that have developed around the Internet.” (2000, 1). Their discussions are consequently founded around a spatial anchorage.
In contrast to Miller and Slater (2000) this thesis looks at the Web as a collection of potential research sites and a focal point of interest for a set of cultural practices that are representative of an indefinite consumption oriented event-driven culture that is described here as being contemporary, western and mainstream. Material culture studies, in the context of Binford’s “New Archaeology” and through the output of many of its exponents, is primarily seen as a realist research perspective (Buchli 2002, 2 & 11). One of the key aims of the literature review in Chapter 2 is to position and extend the material culture studies approach and research worldview as both viable and useful for examining Web-based cultural phenomena. A further aim is to contextualise material culture studies’ utility for research of what has largely been seen as an ideational phenomenon (Argyle & Shields 1996; Wertheim 1999). More practically, in identifying a series of prevailing – mainstream - cultural traits that can be discerned through the Web provides opportunity for critical responses and positions to be developed as a consequence of the understanding gained from this work. De Certeau (1988, xvii) expresses this concern as a marginality of the majority,
Marginality is today no longer limited to minority, but is rather massive and pervasive; this cultural activity of the non-producers of culture, an activity that is unsigned, unreadable and unsymbolized, remains the only one possible for all those who nevertheless buy and pay for the showy products through which a productivist economy articulates itself.
The recent history of the Web
The writing of this thesis over a period from the mid 1990s until the present has impacted on its form and argument in a variety of noticeable ways. Attempting to locate the Web in a ‘bigger’ picture means negotiating a range of dynamic and ‘moving’ targets. The technologies and communications infrastructures that underpin the Internet and the World Wide Web are relatively recent and fluid. The primary research question could not sensibly have been asked a decade ago and even as recently as five years ago its viability as a research project may have been questionable. Identifying the attitudes and qualities that inform a cultural complex as it can be observed through the Web first requires that a particular locale of cultural practice has reached a level of acceptance and use. This acceptance has only occurred with the Web in this last five years. The readily observable dynamism of the Web also condemns this current work to rapidly become a work of historical reference (if such an event has not already occurred).
In a year or two’s time, when much of the web will be transfigured by high-bandwidth facilities, as well as by completed telecommunications deregulation, the common-sense view of what ‘the Internet’ is and what one should write about will have again been transformed. (Miller & Slater 2000, 15).
Technological change, itself an aspect of cultural change (Spier 1973, 31), may even eventually efface the relevance of any disentangled discussion of the World Wide Web in an intellectual context. However, this thesis emphasises aspects of observed phenomena that should retain a level of applicability to other similar technological developments, namely the global impact of western mainstream cultural practices.
The high degree of fluidity that is present in the current broad cultural context is not unique to research that examines contemporary experiences and contexts of technology (Johnson 1999, 95) or aspects of everyday life (Markus 1993, 4). The subject matter and research data I have used here offers many opportunities for interpretation and reinterpretations shaped by changing understandings of the specific artefacts and cultural traits being examined. The complexity of studying contemporary culture is further blurred, in part, by changing influences within the academy and its notions of scholarship that are themselves reflections of wider ranging social forces. The shifting paradigms and priorities of what constitutes university ‘work’ inevitably results in the construction of a received attitude regarding the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways to conduct research (O’Dochartaigh 2001). Current positions regarding Web-based academic journals and the undergraduate use of sources such as scholar.google.com, citeseer.ist.psu.edu, findarticles.com and amazon.com‘s ’search inside’ feature reveals the uneasy balance between academic attitudes and the examination of mainstream cultural traits and desires.
An additional historical context that should be acknowledged initially is the personal background of the author of this work - its ‘I’ and eye. In considering what might be described as ‘technical’ aspects of the Web and Internet the author’s own experience - my experience - with the technologies that are described here is also revealed in its authorial perspective and research biases. The dual role of researcher and actively participant developer clearly influences the conclusions that it ultimately presents. The process of taxonomic classification, for example, has been aided by software that was itself written by the author. The development of the taxonomic software used to classified the collected search terms is representative of the author’s background, experiences with the research locale and my development of software for use within Web development projects. My research has become closely bound with these information technology skills, professional experiences and - sometimes - recreational and personal interests.
My authorial combination of technical and professional influences, along with knowledge of Cultural Studies and Material Culture Studies research all shape this research. The process of taxonomic classification also reflects personal experience and general knowledge (de Certeau 1988, xviii). I do not apologise for these biases. It would be remiss to make any claim that the current work is in some unobtainable way unbiased or scientifically objective. The process of classification and categorisation is arguably more of an art - the result of a series of semi-structured selections - than a scientific certainty (Said 1985, 29; Koepping 1995, 88). Claiming that this work starts with acknowledged biases produces a stronger, more plausible, story of the research process than any attempt to position itself at the uneasy pinnacle of truth and legitimacy.
Research and Theoretical Context
Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing (attributed to Werner von Braun).
The acceptance of a theory as true does involve a personal choice in a way that a law does not. Different people do differ about theories; they can choose whether or not they will believe them… (Campbell 1985)
Facts per se can neither prove nor refute anything. Everything is decided by the interpretation and explanation of the facts, by the ideas and the theories. (Ludwig van Mises).
The context provided by previous literature and the uncritical received history of the Internet (see for example Rheingold 1994; King, Grinter & Pickering 1997, 23 & Tim Berners-Lee 1999) is at odds with the aims of this thesis. In attempting to understand the cultural connections and continuity between the Web and other cultural phenomena a more expansive historical context is required. In its entirety this wider historical context would be encyclopedic in size and scope and impossible to recount fully. It potentially reflects the problem of the Borges Map ruminated upon by Baudrillard (1994, 1). To accurately map the world the Borges map must become an exact replication of the world. To recount the complexity of influences and inventions that contribute in some way to what is now understood as the Web would require an exact replication of the activities and events that led to its development. Clearly this task is beyond the scope, skills or capabilities of any one research project.
The theoretical background for this work is primarily anthropological but the discussions of theorists of disciplines such as Cultural Studies and Sociology also influence it. These disciplines are not an exclusive list but rather indicative and other less readily pigeon-holed theorists such as Baudrillard (1993, 1993, 1996) and De Bord (1994) also play a role in assisting me to decipher and address the research question. The ability to pose and interrogate a research question, such as the one presented by this thesis, is itself a consequence of the intersection of theoretical perspectives that are critically addressed within a variety of disciplines.
This work resists the ready or ‘natural’ ascription of cultural phenomena to dichotomous relationships such as ‘real’ and ‘virtual’. In place of a crude binarism it seeks a synthesis of supposedly opposing positions to better understand the nuances and subtleties of cultural phenomena. Exchange, particularly, is not considered simply as the bartering of one artefact for another or the buying of an object but as an identity-shaping activity within a network of wider cultural practices that reinforce notions of self and group membership (de Certeau 1988, 27; Highmore 2002, 153) through the continuous consumption of symbols and artefacts. Baudrillard’s (1993a) claim that exchange is central to the construction of culture also resonates with this work. Articulating the relationships between culture broadly and exchange practices specifically is central to this research. The focus upon exchange practices that is applied here positions the gathered data within the context of the material culture consumption and the seeking of artefacts. The large numbers of those seeking artefacts through the Web implies that there is - or an assumption by those seeking artefacts that there is – in this location a ready availability of items.
The research impetus that is implied by these specific considerations also reflects a wider theoretical basis for this work. The argument that exchange practices can be discerned from the gathered data references a key theoretical position in material culture studies that makes the claim for the ability of artefacts - including human inscriptions - to ‘speak’ to us and that from this ‘speech’ the observer can garner some understanding of the culture(s) that produced and utilised a given item (Richardson 1989; Berlin 2001, 60). Prown (1996, 22) sees the researcher of material culture as a person who “reads the artefact as part of a language through which culture speaks its mind.” Artefacts are cultural items and simultaneously they are reflections of culture (Nguyen & Alexander 1996, 101; Tilley 2002, 27). The persistent presence of the culturally bound artefact is a founding perspective of this work. Extending the argument for the everpresence of culturally meaningful artefacts this thesis argues that interpreting the seeking and desire for artefacts represented by the gathered data from Web-based search engines reveals the cultural traits with which these artefacts interact and intersect. “The thin film of writing becomes a movement of strata, a play of spaces. A different world (the reader’s) slips into the author’s place.” (de Certeau 1988, xxi). Prown (1996, 22) concurs by claiming that “the quest is not to gather information about the object itself and the activities and practices of the society that produced it, but rather to discover underlying cultural beliefs.” That project is pursued here in the attempt to identify dominant cultural traits discernible from the gathered evidence.
The Methodological Approach
The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the mode in which all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and exact. (Huxley 1907).
Scientific method is the way to truth, but it affords, even in principle, no unique definition of truth. Any so-called pragmatic definition of truth is doomed to failure equally. (Quine 1960, 23)
Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best 20-20 hindsight. It’s good for seeing where you’ve been. It’s good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can’t tell you where you ought to go. (Pirsig 1974)
The methodological approach utilised in this thesis is qualitative and critically hermeneutic (Riceour 1981). Both exchange and cultural practices - more widely – are positioned as being inherently ‘qualitative’ phenomena in the sense that they are integral aspects of everyday life that are not readily reducible or quantified (Tashakkori & Teddlie 1998, 4-6). However, this position does not restrict or prevent the researcher from utilising what is generally described as quantitative data gathered from the observation of these phenomena. As a reflection of the broadly hermeneutic position of this work these two research perspectives are not considered exclusive or dichotomous options. The gamut of quantitative methods are instead seen as a particular subset of the range of available qualitative methods (cf. Sudweeks and Simoff 1999, 32). Some level of support for this methodological position can be found in Oakley’s discussion of the quantitative / qualitative debate in relation to feminist agendas to research (1998, 709). Oakley (1998, 709) observes that in “the methodological literature generally, quantitative and qualitative methods tend to be portrayed as mutually antagonistic ideal types, and even as representing two different”paradigms” of social science itself.” The cautions Oakley raises with respect to the gender blindness of research conducted as quantitative social science and consequently represented as mainstream truths are especially important to this research considering its own discussion of contemporary mainstream culture.
The central methodology utilised in this work built upon a framework of taxonomic analysis. Specifically, data has been collected from the primary research site over a period of approximately 16 months. The data was received in an emailed newsletter entitled “Top 500 Search Terms”. In order to manage and systematically interpret this data it was then collated to form a list of keywords that have been popularly searched for by users of the Web over this entire 16 month period. The terms from this list are then classified using a system for the generalised categorisations of knowledge and artefacts known as the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) scheme (NISS 1997). The UDC is utilised because it is one of the few general classificatory systems available - in contrast to, for example, those of the Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal systems - that acknowledge a range of qualities such as the form, language, size and age of the artefacts being classified. It is a flexible approach that offers a system of classification not intended solely for printed documents. The intention in using this classificatory schema within this research is not to create a ‘library’. My intention is to gather together the traces of desired artefacts observed through the gathered data and desired by users of Web search engines into more generalised categories. The compression of the received data into a small set of consistent categories is done in order to understand the ‘types’ of artefacts that are being sought through the Web. The classification enables some of the everyday connections between individual search terms to be seen in a broader, more aggregated perspective. The process of classification also reveals inter-connected common desires for particular artefacts and sets of artefacts that is not readily apparent in the collected data.
The data gathered from the “Top 500 Search Terms” newsletter is not treated as a form of ethnographic field note but rather as a collection of references to artefacts such as might confront a museologist or librarian in their catalogues. The task is to group together like-wise and closely similar elements. With this categorisation it is possible to examine exach class of artefacts for indications of dominant cultural traits and to identify contemporary cultural practices. There is clear analogy with museology within this observation. Ethnology museums conceptually group artefacts together in a variety of ways but most commonly artefacts are grouped by their original cultural provenance and assemblage (Hooper-Greenhill 1992, 6).
The Research ‘Site’
I should venture to assert that the most pervasive fallacy of philosophic thinking goes back to neglect of context. (Dewey 1931)
The data source utilised by this research has been chosen for a variety of reasons. The two major determinants in its selection were accessibility to the researcher and the researcher’s own familiarity with the primary purpose of the research site. Accessibility to the data utilised by this research is facilitated by its digital provenance. The “Top 500 Search Terms” newsletter (from wordtracker.com) was directly emailed on a near weekly basis. Gathering of the most popular search terms from meta-search engines distributed by this weekly email enabled automatic and systematic collection of the data used for the research. The “Top 500 Search Terms” newsletter was collected both for this research project and in the context of my role in the commercial development of a meta-search engine - a search engine that queries multiple Web-based search engines simultaneously. Access to the wordtracker.com newsletter has enabled me to have a sustained interest and familiarity with the research data over a much longer period than the one discussed in this work. In my role as a software developer the gathered keywords were used to indicate the Web’s ‘most valuable’ search terms. This is, not coincidentally, the stated purpose for the collation of this data by the editors of the “Top 500 Search Terms” newsletter. The collators of the “Top 500 Search Terms” newsletter sell a more complex and personalised dataset to the owners of Web sites who want to achieve higher placement and visibility on pay-per-click or pay-for-placement search engines. There are many examples of these types of eCommerce activity with the most well-known being Overture.com (formerly goto.com) and Bay9.com (formerly Rocketlinks.com). The issues surrounding this focus and the business imperative that informs the compiled lists of “Top 500 Search Terms” newsletter is discussed in more detail in Section 4.1.
A range of observations can be made regarding the data that has been collected for this thesis. In combination these observations provide strong support for the main arguments of this thesis. The relatively high frequency of terms and practices related to exchange in its broadest, most encompassing, cultural sense is visible as is the low frequency that the gathered data indicates actions or activities that can be associated with conventional ‘commercial’ exchange. In some cases, it could somewhat cynically be observed that the activities and documented through the gathered data are about avoiding eCommerce or more specifically it is about not directly paying for goods or services. However, it is disingenuous to cast popular search terms so readily or simply as a commercial anti-index. More subtle interpretation is required in order to convey the complex interrelation of the cultural phenomena that are articulated through search terms.
The similarities between interests and experiences found on the Web and in other cultural environments is clearly evident within the collected data. These observations support the claims made initially in the introduction and pursued in previous chapters for the significance and importance of cultural continuities between the Web and elsewhere. This also enables the presentation of a counter-argument to the existing literature that emphasises a dichotomous relationship of the virtual to the real. Perhaps, the most significant observation that can be made regarding the collected data is the degree to which it reveals a commonality of experience and the presence of a dominant cultural complex evidenced through the Web. This commonality is not easily delineated by regional or ‘simple’ national boundaries. While English is the language used almost exclusively to express ideas and to seek artefacts, it is spoken with specific dialects and, if the evidence of the collected data is examined closely, with a variety of spellings.
The data is analysed through the lens of social anthropology and material culture studies. This places a particular significance upon specific aspects of the data to the detriment of other interpretations that may reveal alternate positions. There is a tendency towards amalgamation and grouping, particularly in the construction of taxonomies. This is done purposefully and with the understanding that this produces an abbreviation of the observed and gathered data. This is an inevitable necessity in systematic social science research practice. The volume of data that accumulates rapidly in an environment such as the Web, which is full of readily collectable data, requires at least some form of abbreviation and generalisation to be systematically incorporated into the research design and consequently interpreted. This rationale is similar to that applied to the original use of taxonomies within material culture studies and archaeology. In these environments, the dig site or the museological collection, is, also, ‘data-rich’ and readily assimilated into the research process. Individual artefacts, in themselves, however, reveal only minimal information about the cultures that created, used, exchanged and collected them. In combination, as part of broad taxa, individual information about an artefact both combines and reinforces the meanings that are revealed about the peoples of these cultures.
The most dramatic example of the relationships between the cultures of the Web and ‘elsewhere’ was the September 11th, 2001 terrorism attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center. This act is acknowledged later in this section as a major methodological concern for this thesis. However, the brief attention to this act and the rapidity with which it was subsumed by more repeatedly seen interests is also reflected by the data and reflects the ‘short-term memory’ of participants in contemporary cultures (Baudrillard 2001; Piper 2002). This event reveals the extent that the Internet is an aspect of mass media oriented and mainstream culture and a mirror (in microcosm) of popular opinion. “The most striking thing about events such as those that took place at the Heysel Stadium, Brussels, in 1985, is not their violence per se but the way in which this violence was given worldwide currency by television, and in the process turned into a travesty of itself.” (Baudrillard 1993, 75). What is evident from the data gathered during this period was the regular presence of unpredictable ‘events’ and the prevailing political position that is being popularly presented for these events. The data reveals a relatively stable series of interests that vary in their specific detail but are classificatorily similar. The regularity and consistency of these interests are punctuated by a series of regular and irregular events - which include holidays, media & film releases, abductions and murders.
The “Top 500 Search Terms” newsletter gathers the most popular search terms utilised at Web-based search engines over two separate periods, in 2000/2001 and again from September 2001 to February 2003. This collection of search terms incorporates two separate groups of words collected at weekly intervals by the editors of wordtracker.com and distributed by email. The two separates periods of data-gathering were the consequence of changes made by the wordtracker.com site editors that involved an alteration in the form of their weekly report. The second dataset also incorporates ‘adult’ words that had been programmatically removed from the first dataset by the wordtracker.com system. The methodology employed by wordtracker.com to gather this data from meta-search engines is not explicitly stated on their web site. However, the data contained in the weekly posting suggests that an automated data gathering robot is employed to poll the search ‘spy’ at a meta-search engines such as MetaCrawler and DogPile at regular intervals and collect the responses. While the raw counts of individual terms must be treated cautiously the relative position of terms within the list of most popular terms is calculated internally by wordtracker.com and offers some measure of weekly comparability. The veracity of the data is obtusely confirmed by the stated commercial purpose of the site which is to help webmasters and web site owners bid for the most popular keywords on pay-for-placement search engines like Overture.com. The accuracy of the weekly data can be at least partly assumed from the persistence of the wordtracker.com site which generates revenue by creating longer and more specialised lists for their paying clients that focuses on their Web site’s specific areas of interest.
The long-term search terms list from wordtracker.com represents the top keywords used consistently over a four week period. The weekly list is ordered by the frequency that the term has been searched for over this period. These search terms offer a very consistent series of interests that appear almost continuously throughout the duration of the data collection. The terms that are found consistently at the top of the list tend to be generic terms that are, in many cases, representative for an entire taxa of more specific and detailed terms, for example ‘sex’, ‘autos’, ‘free music’ and ‘films’. A significant set of terms that repeatedly appear in the long-term keywords is the partial or full address of the most popular Web sites such as hotmail.com, yahoo.com and ebay.com. While this indicates the relatively low level of skill and understanding that users of Web browsers have in navigating beyond the links on their home page it also provides a rough indication of the most popular web sites. The presence of full web addresses in the list also suggests that users confuse the web browser’s address bar with a Web search engine’s input field. The consistency and longevity of the terms that appear toward the top of the list reveals an underlying understanding of the utility of the Web. This data also reveals the continual importance of file sharing technologies, the commodification of women’s bodies through pornographic Web sites (MacKinnon in Mehta & Plaza 1997, 55) and the use of the Internet to gather copyrighted or even illicit goods for free such as music, software, warez and serialz. While many of the purposes ascribed by commentators of the phenomena of the Internet and the Web are definitely exchange focused (Rutter 2001; Seger 2002; Sterne 2002; Stipp 1996; Surman & Reilly 2003), these exchanges do not readily conform to conventional commercial exchanges and exist, at best, on the fringes of what is seen as ‘legitimate’ eCommerce. This data also provides tentative confirmation of the lament of managers in failed or failing ‘dotcom’ companies that ‘adult’ Web sites are profitable when they are not (Brown n.d.; Mungo n.d.; Robinson 2000).
The short-term search terms list from wordtracker.com indicates surges of interest over the previous 24 hour period. The ‘surge’ keywords more closely reflect short-term ‘media culture’ interests and events. This collection follows the importance of recent news stories, the momentary surge of interest in the latest ‘hot’ actor, the current ‘fads’ and the current season or holiday in the Northern Hemisphere. Few of these interests persist throughout the duration of data collection. Seasonal events such as Easter, Halloween and Christmas do appear regularly, though. This does not discount the significance of the data however as few popular interests would be similarly reflected in print or electronic media consistently for an equivalent number of months. At a taxonomic level, the immediate and temporally fleeting interest in a specific person or activity is represented as a relatively consistent interest in each generic category. There is a generally consistent interest in some film, in some news event or some fad. This observation permits the application of a material culture and archaeological technique of analysis that focuses upon cultural continuity, typology and stylistic transition. This type of analysis is traditionally employed to temporally sequence pottery samples (Lauer 1974; Gibson 2002), or other tangible artefacts, in order to interpret the cultural relationships and situation of the peoples that ‘built’ and used them. These search terms and their grouping into taxa enables sequences of desires to be identified and their relationships to be interpreted in order to understand the cultures and contemporary situations of the people that created, and have, an interest in seeking particular artefacts.
The search term data represents the variety of interests and concerns that find expression on the Web. By examining the requests for specific aspects and artefacts of contemporary culture the search terms capture the range of immediate human interests and understandings. Alternative approaches that focus upon the content of Web sites (in isolation or collectively) have their access to the data mediated by the editorial influence of a single Webmaster. Access to collective cultural expression enables an understanding of the Web that emphasises its relationship to contemporary culture rather than its technological features, a particular history (e.g. Berners-Lee 1999) or a quantification of Web site traffic (Sterne 2002). This understanding also enables a broad taxonomy of desired and sought after artefacts discerned from exchange and consumption enacted and enabled through the Web. This taxonomy, in turn, guides the discussions of later chapters of this thesis by positioning specific examples in relation to cultural attitudes and traits as they are expressed through the Web.
An important caution must be acknowledged in the data gathered from the “Top 500 Search Terms” lists. The effects of the 11th of September, 2001 attack on the World Trade Towers in New York are a noticeable influence on the gathered data through the initial weeks of collection. This attack, at least temporarily, obliterates any longer term trends that might have been observed in the data. Contrariwise, it is a reflection of the ‘global’ and everyday life aspects of this list that the importance and horror expressed regarding the attack in terms of ‘search terms’ is rapidly overtaken by a normality that includes sexually explicit words and concepts. It is also a tacit confirmation of many of the claims of this thesis that memory of the attacks became consigned to an annual event. “This society eliminates geographical distance only to reap distance internally in the form of spectacular separation.” (De Bord 1994, thesis 167). Section 5.2 gives particular consideration to the relationship between the attack itself and the most popular search terms of that period. This section also offers some initial consideration of the relationship between the artefacts and traits of the cultural complex identified by this research and the gathered data itself. The attack provides an anomaly in the examined set of data that, while impacting on the identification of long term trends, accentuates and forms a tentative justification for the focus of the primary research question of this thesis upon cultural relationships.
The Structure of the Thesis
Style and structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash. (Nabokov in Plimpton 1976)
A special feature of the structure of our book is the monstrous but perfectly organic part that eavesdropping plays in it. (Lermontov 1992)
This thesis follows a relatively conventional structure for doctoral research. It specifically avoids becoming overly speculative in a field of research that is notoriously burdened with emancipatory and revolutionary claims for the future (Rheingold 1991, Rushkoff 1994, Benedikt 1991, Barlow 1996, Negroponte 1996). Bromberg et al (1996, 125) effectively claim that “The Net makes a type of equation: data = information = knowledge = wisdom = truth = freedom.” The various intersections of theoretical perspectives and the use of a methodology that has rarely been used for examining Web-based research sites necessitates a literature review of a number of interlocking areas of research in Chapter 2. The range of the literature review reflects the need to synthesise discourses found in cultural studies, material culture studies and cognate areas into an approach that can enable the achievement of the research task. Chapter 2 also positions and defines the key concepts utilised throughout the work and the key technical terms that inevitably become included in a work of this sort. Technical terms and the various jargons of academic disciplines are common in works of research such as this and are included to clarify the non-technological focus of research. The thesis does not, however, delve into the technical workings of the Internet. Such details are not directly significant for understanding and interpreting the primary research question. The literature review also develops the argument and justification for the central focus of this thesis; contemporary exchange practices and the cultural complex of artefacts around which these practices circulate.
Chapter 3 details the manner in which exchange practices and artefacts will be examined throughout this thesis. The ensuing discussion of methodology examines the archaeological and museological use of taxonomies. It also brings into consideration the range of critiques that have been leveled at classification schemes of human activity. Most important of these criticisms is the level of interpretation that is imposed by the researcher on the observed phenomena in the creation of taxonomy. These are not inconsequential criticisms and they are considered as an integral aspect of the development of the taxonomic approach used in this thesis. Consideration of these criticisms assists this thesis to construct a nuanced taxonomy that is indicative of the cultural situation it represents.
Chapter 4 details the data that was gathered for this research. An understanding of the source of this data and the rationale for its availability is developed from the descriptions of the research site’s individual history, the intended purposes of the gathered data, a discussion of its current commercial use and a portraits of the site’s users. This contextualisation of the research site is done in order to position the interpretations of the data and to critically position the research in relation to prior works. Understanding the participants of any Web site has proven to be a difficult task for academic research and has generated a great detail of debate among ‘virtual’ ethnographers who have a clear methodological imperative to get close to, understand and become one of these participants (Geertz 1993, 14; Hine 2000, 61). The sequence of methodological tasks that are imposed upon the ethnographer often forces this - the task of creating ethnography itself - to become the focal point for their research endeavors (Geertz 1993, 20; Atkinson 1990). This thesis locates and positions artefacts that are desired and sought by participants of contemporary culture through a grounded taxonomy of “their” artefacts. The process of classification and the resultant taxonomy produces a net advantage for the research by focusing directly upon the available evidence. The limitations of the available data means that the evidence examined are not the artefacts themselves but their consumption, description and constitution as Web search terms. In this way, the approach utilised in this work is a complementary offering to those provided by ‘virtual’ ethnographies.
Chapter 4 also details the form of the data that has been gathered. The newletter’s rationale and purpose shapes the limitations of what can be realistically interpreted from the available data. The data reveals contemporary cultural traits and artefacts that reflect hegemonic mainstream culture. The data offers a narrow window on this culture. Acknowledgement of this limitation sets the scope of the research project. The interpretive manner in which the data is used within this thesis is entirely compatible with its original commercial usage. The double application of this data is possible because the “Top 500 Search Terms” newsletter is itself enmeshed within the practices of cultural exchange and contributes to the continuity of contemporary mainstream culture. It is itself an artifact of this culture. It is for this reason that the “Top 500 Search Terms” newsletter is used to develop the taxonomy of artefacts most popularly sought and desired through Web-based search. The collected data presents a sample of prevailing mainstream attitudes, understandings and intentions that provides markers and evidence of the desire for particular artefacts. The individual terms from the “Top 500 Search Terms” newsletter reveal the extent that search activity is constituted as an individual and private aspect of cultural practice. These cultural activities are expressed visibly in the public location of the ‘whole’ Web that blur the conventions of public-private dichotomies.
The fourth chapter concludes with a taxonomic perspective on the research data. These observations present the framework from which the analysis of the cultural complex of desired artefacts is developed. Presenting a framework for interpretation also offers an opportunity to highlight issues that “don’t fit” with the overall classification of the research data.
Chapter 5 analyses the data gathered from the primary research site in three separate, but related, contexts: artefactual, historical and cultural. These contexts are identified as a consequence of the taxonomic approach employed by this thesis. The ‘summative’ effect of classifying individual search terms against the limited vocabulary of a recognized classification scheme such as the scheme offered by Universal Decimal Classification draws ‘like’ together with ‘like’. Without the effect produced by a taxonomic process related terms and words cannot be so readily grouped together and the impact of the cumulative influence of closely related terms would be obscured. It is similarly this conceptual grouping of terms that enables cross-reference with external evidence and the consequent identification of cultural traits. The artefactual context positions the desire and seeking of individual artefacts within the framework of a cultural complex that has six identifiably dominant traits. The artefactual context is a central focus for this thesis. It informs the methodological approach that has been employed throughout the work and shapes the understanding that is reinforced and further articulated in the historical and cultural contexts. The traits that are identified through all three contexts are described as freeness, do-it-yourself/customisation, participation, information richness, perversion and privacy/anonymity. At the core of the cultural complex are a set of 99 specific artefacts and events that are persistently and significantly represented within the collected data to such a degree that they appear as being iconic to the cultural complex as a whole and more broadly indicative of a contemporary mainstream western culture. At the core of the cultural complex are a haphazard and asemiotic collection of terms that include; search engines, portals, pornographic Web sites, ‘incest’, ‘lyrics’, cars, ‘warez’ (illegally obtained commercial software) and ‘Southwest Airlines’ as well as ‘Christmas’ and ‘Halloween’.
The subsequent sections of the fifth chapter develop this representation of the cultural complex by positioning the seeking of artefacts and classes of artefacts in historical and cultural contexts. While these examinations exist at a different level of granularity than the artefactual context they are nonetheless important as they present a persistent series of relatively stable interests in a narrow range of areas. These practices also support the claim - continued in the subsequent chapter - for six predominant traits that can be identified in the cultural complex. The historical context traces the consistent presence of many popular terms and sets of terms. An historical examination enables a recognition of the stability of the individual artefacts that are located at the core of the cultural complex.
The cultural context of analysis considers the entire complex of artefacts holistically. It identifies clusters of interests around specific parts of the taxonomy. The identified clusters of elements are presented as important features of contemporary western mainstream culture.
The penultimate chapter synthesises the individual contexts of the taxonomy and the hypothesised cultural complex. The chapter’s central claim and of the entire thesis is that understanding what is being sought and desired through Web-based search engines as the remnants of artefacts offers insight into contemporary cultural practices as an archaeology of us. The desire for particular artefacts enable a claim to be made that the hypothesised cultural complex represents a consumption oriented, media-obsessed and event-driven culture. Evidence for the significance of the six predominant cultural traits is drawn from other sources to support the conclusions of this work. The chapter also argues that this research reveals a clearer understanding of the significance of Web-based exchange practices. These practices are integral to the defining and continuity of contemporary cultural practices to the extent that their examination offers understanding of cultural situations beyond the locale of the World Wide Web itself. Exchange is seen, in the context of the examined data, to be a symbolic and heavily consumption oriented activity that contributes to the definition, perpetuation and identification with a culture.
The concluding chapter considers the value of taxonomies as an approach to contemporary cultural research. In this chapter I argue for the value of taxonomies in combination with other more ‘classical’ and ethnographic approaches. The relative worth of the Universal Decimal Classification system as the basis for the classificatory schema used in this work is argued to be a useful tool rather than the ultimate tool for taxonomic work. The wider value of this thesis’s research data is also considered in the final chapter. The ready availability of popular search terms over a relatively long period of time (in Web terms at least) to the researcher was perhaps the primary criteria for its use within this research. It is suggested that this research achievement contributes to a wider research agenda that addresses the need for more critical and subtle approaches to the examination of cultural phenomenon that are articulated “online”.
These concluding observations lead to consideration of the possibilities for future research that can be derived from this work. The possibilities are wide-ranging. The aggressively dynamic aspect of the Web already offers the possibility for historical comparisons through Lycos (50.lycos.com) or the many search engine ‘voyeur’ sites (fantomaster.com/fasmbres03.html). The public accessibility of Kahle Brewster’s Internet Archive in the form of the Wayback Machine (archive.org) and through the Recall search engine also provides possibilities for examination of shifting dominant cultural traits from 1996. Further work could also test the extent to which taxonomic and ethnographic works complement and extend each other. Collecting search engine activity through a regular sampling of one or more of the search engine ‘voyeur’ sites would also offer the opportunity to improve and refine the taxonomic scheme used by this work. At the substantive level this thesis considers how search terms reflect mainstream and contemporary hegemonic power but offers no investigation of national or other cultural distinctions. Sampling national search engines would show variations in cultural practice and allow researchers to consider whether the six dominant traits identified by this research persist in more specific cultural contexts. At a narrowe level, the approach utilised in this thesis could be applied to search activity at individual web sites including ecommerce and community oriented sites.