Conclusion
My research uses a material culture perspective to investigate the symbolic exchange practices – and other cultural phenomena – that are conducted or aided through the use of the World Wide Web. The thesis has identified a series of artefacts and cultural traits that form a cultural complex representative of a contemporary western mainstream culture. Examination of the contemporary cultural complex reveals the interplay and blurring of public and private aspects of everyday life (Shade 1996, 15). By drawing upon the works of “postmodern” writers such as Baudrillard and De Bord I present this culture as being in constant movement from one event or spectacle to another. Event-driven activity creates cultural dynamism within the cultural complex however this thesis shows that this cultural complex is grouped around a relatively narrow set of interests. Symbolic exchange of cultural knowledges confirms and provisions this culture with shared meanings and understandings (Poster 1990). Porter (1997, xiii) observes that,
viewed collectively over a period of time, such [Internet-based] interactions come to take on these discernible features and to reveal those characteristic ‘ways of being’ in a virtual world that an anthropologist might regard as together constituting the culture of such a place.
In the context of the Web, exchange practices and activities are enabled through hypertext links and search engines. The legitimacy of the Web as a place of everyday cultural exchange and associated practices is extended by emailed information – including spam – and the incorporation of Web site addresses in print and electronic media. The research reported here confirms that these practices create a cultural complex within contemporary western mainstream culture.
Methodological contributions
The central methodological contribution of this work is found in its efforts to research and interpret Web based phenomena as an integral cultural aspect of “everyday life”. Inquiries conducted in and through a ‘virtual’ provenance have informed a wider critical analysis and practice. The relative depth of analysis possible with the approach employed here suggests a variety of problems inherent in earlier methodologies rather than an incompatibility between the methodology and the virtual space itself. Investigations of the Web, as has been done here, can provide an increasingly reflexive and critical venue for the researcher of cultural phenomenon - and a potential test-bed for more widely implemented projects. Tyler (2002, 204) describes the potential for the Internet to be used as a form of “social laboratory”. Tomas makes a similar claim that “advanced digital technologies, such as those that generate cyberspace, hold considerable promise as a testing ground for post-ritual theories and practices, in particular as conceptualized by a critical postindustrial, postorganic anthropology.” (1991, 31). The opportunity for ‘virtual’ research to stand as a microcosm of everyday is possible through the construction of the ‘virtual’ as one of many locales of cultural activities that are enacted and experienced across multiple provenances.
Through this thesis I have shown that the ‘virtual’ or more mundanely the Web – as a technologically mediated locale of cultural activity - does not obliterate everyday life distinctions such as socio-economic status, gender inequality, or ethnic intolerance but provides another place for their articulation and experience – albeit in a sometimes modified form. For those who have experienced the electronic enactment of racial hatred or sexual violence the effects are equally real irrespective of the locale. Utopian claims such as those of Rheingold (1994) and Rushkoff (1994) that the ‘virtual’, as a consequence of being virtual, can obliterate social inequality is ultimately a conservative position that obscures political and ethical issues (Wakeford 2000, 33). This position drives a technological determinist discourse that shifts attention from the concerns of cultural experience (and inequality) towards strategies to ‘wire’ everyone else (Bereano 1997, 31). There is a need to continue and further the investigation of ‘virtual’ spaces as another provenance for cultural activities. The approach and data utilised in this thesis has opened a number of opportunities to consider areas of contemporary cultural practice which, to date, have received little critical attention within the epistemology and methodological frameworks of everyday life.
I also make a methodological contribution through the use of artefacts and their desire as a central focal point for research of Web oriented practices. My approach is a critical but complementary response to the centrality of ethnographic works within the discourses of ‘virtuality’ and cyberculture. The necessary articulation of a definition of artefacts also contributes to material culture studies through its examination of the specific qualities of artefacts as the primary determinants of their “artefactuality”. The use of the artefact as a central concept of interpretation articulates a response to the “everything as text” position that engender specific ways of thinking about and interpreting cultural phenomena.
Natural history museums utilise the Linnean scientific taxonomy to order their collections. This taxonomy is perhaps the best known systematic representation of a particular aspect of the observable world. Despite arguable limitations, it is still utilised because, in part, it fulfils a need. The advantage of examining data in an electronic context, such as the Web, is that taxonomic classification (and subsequent interpretations) can present a systematised and interpretable view of a particular situation. This view is not restricted to any one definitive taxonomic representation - such as those found in the shelfmark order of a library. Interpretations developed from a taxonomy are, however, less tightly bound - physical examination of any library’s shelves reveals the variety of interpretations that can exist for this single, supposedly unambiguous, taxonomy. Multiple taxonomies are possible in an electronic environment and these taxonomies can be utilised simultaneously to provide a clearer articulation of the cultural traits and artefacts (or other phenomena) that they reflect and ‘speak’ of. The potential for multiple taxonomies and interpretations is not explored here, but remains a possibility for future endeavours.
With further formalisation of the taxonomy of popular search terms that I have employed there is an opportunity for studies comparing competing interpretations to be conducted. A parallel can be seen with the Linnean taxonomy when individual and groups of animals can be – as a consequence of further research and debate – reclassified in the Linnaean hierarchy. In the context of the Web and the extension of understanding of its relationship to cultural practices and traits the broad perspective offered by the data gathered from Web-based meta-search engines could be compared against other search engines including regional and national search engines or searches conducted at ‘ecommerce’ or community sites. The approach used here to examine culture can be conducted nearly contemporaneously with the moment when the desire for a particular artefact is expressed and a search is enacted. In contrast to the methods used here to gather search terms data through an intermediate aggregator, the ‘real time’ sampling of activity and desire could reveal the cultural significance of emerging events. Additional search-term data – built up over a period of time - would also enhance identification of nuances in search activities that reveal the differences between media-inspired, annual celebratory, terrorist-driven or other “types” of events. My research contributes to the decipherment of the ‘maps of meaning’ (Hall in Hebdige 1979, 14) that are consolidations of cultural practice and create semiosis around and through artefacts.
In my research I have offered an interpretative methodology to the examination of the Web that is not bound to specific Web sites as the locus of communities of action (Foster 1997, 25), or to Web or Internet metrics such as site impressions (Sterne 2002) or to the examination of the “interface” of Web sites (websitesthatsuck.com). The lack of these anchorage points exposes my work to a range of alternative criticisms – which are hopefully recognised through the critical perspective employed here – but the advantage of the approach lies in its capacity to achieve the same degree of fluidity that the culture(s) under examination itself exhibits.
The experimental nature of the methodology employed by this thesis presents its own advantages and disadvantages. The type of data that has been used to develop the discussion is readily available - in such an information-rich culture - but the sheer volume of data that information richness provides requires systematic and consistent treatment. My own previous experiences with large datasets, with Web based resources and with programming technologies have clearly shaped the methodology of the research represented here. The relationship between methodology and theoretical (as well as ethical and political) positions has also been a strong influence on how and what has been presented. A central motivation for the use of a classificatory methodology is as a response to the current predominance of observational and ethnographic based research that focuses around a single self-contained ‘virtual’ site such as a chat group or newsgroups. The implication in these approaches is that such groups are ‘whole’ in the sense of a community, a sub-culture or even some type of culture. The use of taxonomic classification to discern cultural traits that can be evidenced through Web search terms offers a new direction for disentangling and understanding the relationship of high technology environments such as the Web in relation to “our” everyday lives. The systematic nature of a taxonomic approach also offers possibilities for further and future comparison.
The methodological contributions of my research are:
An experimental approach for examining Web-oriented phenomena
Enables critical interpretation of observed Web-oriented phenomena
A systematic and consistent approach
Offers comparability
Applicable at the micro-level of a single Web site as well at the > macro level employed here
The theoretical contribution
In the face of the threats of a total weightlessness, an unbearable lightness of being, a universal promiscuity and a linearity of processes liable to plunge us into the void, the sudden whirlpools that we dub catastrophes are really the thing that saves us from catastrophe. Anomalies and aberrations of this kind re-create zones of gravity and density that counter dispersion. (Baudrillard 1993, 69).
Proving or evidencing Baudrillard’s often pessimistic worldview is not an aim of my research. Despite the acknowledged theoretical influence of his work on this research, the contemporary culture being discussed here is not represented as irredeemable, morally bankrupt or at its self-destructive zenith. The “end of history” debate represented by Fukuyama (1993) and Baudrillard (1993a) does have relevance in the shaping of an understanding of contemporary culture but ultimately both arguments become nihilistic calls to lethargic apathy. I have taken a critical view of contemporary culture and the multitudinous forms in which it presents itself. Culture itself cannot be judged as bad or wrong as some commentaries, including that of Baudrillard, sometimes imply.
“Culture” - arguably the central subject of this research - however, is no more and no less a complex conceptual framework for interpretation both explicitly by researchers and implicitly by participants within a given culture. I make no claim that there is one culture “on” the Web or that the Web is exclusively western or masculine. “Our culture is a culture which conceives and knows itself as culture and as one among many: a culture for which ‘culture’ has become a theme of reflection and a practical problem.” (Markus 1993, 3). What I do claim is that the defining and labeling of a contemporary, western, mainstream culture is a tentative and fluid identification developed from the indications offered by a particular collection of observed artefacts and traits. As such the culture being described is part of, and interacts with, a multitude of cultures that continuously shape and define one another. Porter (1997, xi) observes that “if the Internet can be understood as the site of any culture at all, it is not, presumably, culture in the sense either of an elitist enclave or of a homogeneous social sphere.” The concept of subculture is not present in this work - all that is present are cultures that are more or less inclusive within “contemporary western mainstream culture” representing a more expansive and consequently generalised culture. From a material culture perspective, “it is not just consumption but mass consumption that lies at the basis of contemporary relations to object.” (Ashkenazi & Clammer 2000, 5). A central premise of this work - which embeds the fluid definition of culture - is the notion that culture is an aggregative concept that incorporates traits, learning and understanding – the ‘mental’ and ideational aspects of culture, as well as artefacts - the extra-human, shared and ‘material’ aspects of culture. Within the framework of discussions regarding the Web and the Internet arguing for the primacy of the ‘material’ - or material culture - aspects of culture ostensibly appears to contradict claims regarding its form (Geertz 1993, 10). Emphasis is, however, placed on the persistence and distanciation of an artefact, irrespective of its form, from explicit association with a single human rather than any particular material quality (Aunger n.d., 0724.022). Artefacts are the identifiable traces of human action and cultural practice. As a consequence, while the search terms have been classified and analysed here as indicators of a desire for, and seeking of, artefacts, my approach is founded on the implicit understanding that these search terms are themselves cultural artefacts. In light of this observation, the technologies, tools and components that considered together are called the Internet are all equally cultural artefacts. Hebdige’s (1979) work reveals the degree to which various artefacts obtain a definitional significance in the many discussions of culture. In many of his case studies Hebdige (1979) interweaves a representation of the attitudes and beliefs of individual (sub)cultures with descriptions of their clothes, their footwear, accoutrements (such as a jar of vaseline) (1979, 1) and the built environment in which a particular culture interacts. Culture, for Hebdige and a sentiment shared by myself, incorporates and is at least partly defined by those artefacts that can be exchanged, spoken of and discarded.
The unpredictable identification of culture does not invalidate the research conducted here or the claims that are being made. Culture as a frame of analysis is defined in many ways. By utilising an understanding of culture heavily informed by material culture studies the culture that is actually “seen” and described may be indiscernible to other works regarding the Internet presented with differing nuances – including, for example, those of Miller & Slater (2000), Holmes (1997), Benedikt (1993) or Rheingold (1991). The combined use of artefacts and cultural traits to define a cultural complex is itself potentially contentious in the light of those works that emphasise the ideational aspects of culture (cf. Lemonnier 1993, 11). Similarly, describing the identified cultural complex as being representative of a culture would be antithetical to processual archaeologists (Gibson 2002), sociologists and ethnographers (Geertz 1993, 5). The strongest criticism of the claims that I am making is the lack of “self-identification” that can be found among the unidentified (in this thesis) participants of contemporary western mainstream culture (Brumann 2000). As this research treats the culture and its participants as “unknown” and directly inaccessible through the received research data, it is not possible to tell if such a quality is, in fact, present. Aunger (n.d.), however, partially rejects the need for self-identification as an essential aspect of culture. He (Aunger n.d., 0724.017) argues that
the actual group influenced by some cultural process or knowledgeable about some domain of belief or practice may vary from domain to domain. This suggests that there is a fluid boundary to the social group to be identified as sharing cultural traits. At best, one might be able to identify a network of people who tend to be linked together for a wide range of cultural traits but, in the end, no easy solution to this problem has appeared.
Sproull & Faraj (1997, 35) share a similar view when they observe that “discussion about network access and use are based on assumptions about people who use the net – who they are, what they want, what they do.” Throughout this research caution has been applied in assuming too much of the culture(s) that leave, and are leaving, artefactual traces of their presence in the form of search terms. The most significant assumption surrounding these observations of cultural practice and presence is that they are the product of at least one and probably more cultures. Markus (1993, 21) argues; “everything that is produced by human effort, that is brought into existence solely by our makings and doings, pertains to the proper realm of the cultural.” The claim is supported, at least in part, by the third party evidence utilised to support the definitions and claims regarding the six dominant traits of the cultural complex and, by implication, of the culture itself. In a similar vein many of the works drawn upon here leave such an articulation unstated or assumed (Costigan 1999). Baudrillard speaks of components of what may be described as a culture but he is generally careful not to speak of “a society” or “a culture”. De Bord (1994) speaks critically of the “society of the spectacle” but ultimately his society is defined by implication through his explication of the spectacle.
The combined frustration and satisfaction of the “culture concept” is that there is no one required parameter that definitively makes a declaration and definition of a culture correct or incorrect. “It is not culture, but its concept – a concept, however, which practically permeates the way we comprehend and exercise our activities – that indicates something fundamental and specific to modernity.” (Markus 1993, 3). Culture is, as a concept, very much what is made of it. As a central defining term and framing concept to the research endeavour, culture is a loaded political device that emphasises certain aspect of everyday life and shapes what the researcher (chooses to) see. So why use culture at all? Irrespective of the various (academic) demands for some formal definition of culture there is an underlying sense of connection, understanding and even logic in the description of what has been “seen” of the cultural activities and knowledges that are revealed in the interpretation of the gathered research data. It is a somewhat disturbing and somewhat predictable view of everyday and contemporary life. It is not a culture that any one person would assume or participate with in toto or unreservedly. However, despite these concerns, an examination of the popular search terms and events that shape the weekly lists of popular search terms presents a level of familiarity to “us”.
The significance of the identification of a contemporary western culture is that it is a culture of the mainstream and of hegemonic dominance (Nguyen & Alexander 1996, 107). Resistance to mainstream culture and to the attitudes that are being presented here is not represented – and probably could not be in the current research framework. As the data is based upon the most popular search terms and access to less popular searches are restricted, identifying moments of resistance directly as a search term would be unlikely unless resistance reached a certain popular and ‘critical mass.’ Similarly acts of resistance that are linked to more popular terms cannot be contextualised with the currently available data – a limitation of the data more generally. Negative and positive attentions to a specific search term are received without any form of positive or negative qualification. However, individual and personal readings of the most popular search terms will variously reveal the forms of resistance and arguably other cultural formations that exist simultaneously and symbiotically with this particular culture. “We” are connected to mainstream culture but we do not necessarily accept, appreciate or enjoy such a revelation – an observation which distinguishes my research from the nihilism of postmodern commentaries. Resistance does occur and at times, and in various forms, is recuperated by mainstream culture through these same practices of symbolic exchange. Specific examples of this reinvention of, and reintegration into, mainstream culture can be identified from the research data. For example, the interest in tattoos and Web sites such as gay.com reveals the constantly changing orientation of mainstream culture.
My research reveals a logic to the cultural practices enacted on and through the Web that is intimately bound to broader socio-cultural configurations. From the data examined these practices reveal and reflect the traits and power of a mainstream culture that has been labeled here as being contemporary, western and mainstream. Contemporary culture is consumption oriented and shaped by a never-ending sequence of events that are variously managed, regular or unexpected. Exchange, and particularly symbolic exchange, figures heavily in contemporary culture as a means for defining its continual reconfiguration.
At its broadest level I address the debate regarding the meaning of culture. Drawing upon many of the understandings of culture offered through Material Culture studies and, to a lesser degree, archeology and applying them to what is seen as an almost “ethereal” environment forces attention on the arbitrariness of many classificatory boundaries that are often uncritically assumed within social science (and other) research. An examination of this type also questions the need for basing and understanding cultural distinctions and differences ‘simply’ on environmental differences, specifically the relevance of the division of ‘virtual’ from physicality. At no point is there an attempt here to claim that the ‘virtual’ is absent from our contemporary everyday experiences but stresses that basing interpretation around one distinction potentially disregards the increasing range of connections that run between the ‘virtual’ and the ‘physical’ and will minimise the significance of any consequent research observations. The general argument I make here is that the Web is an integral part of the everyday life of participants in contemporary, mainstream, western culture. The integration of the Web into contemporary culture is occurring irrespective of personal access to the Internet or individual exposure to specific technologies.
The theoretical contribution of this thesis encompasses:
Critical examination of the meaning of culture
Effaces (or at least minimises) the significance of the > ‘virtual’/physical dichotomy
Argues that there is an integration of high technology environments > within the everyday life of contemporary culture
Argues that contemporary culture is event-driven, media obsessed and > consumption oriented
Argues that the Internet can be utilised as a ‘social laboratory’ > for contemporary culture
Limitations of this research
This thesis has a number of limitations in its scope and final presentation. Preference has clearly been given to “culture” as the primary framework for my research. A “cultural” approach does not introduce any discussion of the equally amorphous concepts of community or communities of practice. Such an absence is a limitation imposed by the scope of the research and of the data that was examined. However, as Costigan (1999, xxii) observes “community on-line is fluid.” “Unlike off-line, on-line communities are often constructed and destroyed not because they have challenges with structure…but because the connection is not time sensitive.” (Costigan 1999, xxii). Such a distinction is a crucial aspect for the focus and identification of an event-driven culture focused on by my research. The data that was collected is not associated with any specific location or site unlike many of the works that consider the Web and the ‘virtual’ (Bukatman 1995; Adams 1997; Fisher 1997; Seidler 1998; Dean 1999; Hakken 1999; Mitra 1999; Miller & Slater 2000; Galusky 2001 Michaelson & Pohl 2001; Crang 2002; Watt et al 2002; Parrish n.d.). The research data eschews the cultural association of users of the Web to a particular Web site – a predominant theme and approach for a research locale of this type (Argyle & Shields 1996). This results in a focus on a “bigger culture” that is not so readily identified as being constituted “at” a particular Web site than it is found “between” many Web sites – the many potential selections that are the result of any single search. This perspective consequently avoids the many assumptions of both the online and offline communities discourse. Anderson’s (1991) Imagined Communities argument, while focusing on the discourse of nationhood and nationality, provides the basis for a range of critiques for the communities’ discourse in relation to the Web and contemporary cultural practice in general.
The scale and scope of the current research limits the conclusions that can ultimately be drawn. The data was collected over a sixteen month period. This period was initially seen as being lengthy in “Web terms” where the compression of time (Kershaw 1999, 193) is emphasised and the influence of rapidly developing technology can render many observations obsolete in very short time spans. The focus taken here and the general line of argument being made has proven to be largely impervious to these influences. The claims regarding a contemporary western mainstream culture hallmarked by a continuous sequence of events could be more appropriately shown across many years of collected data. A traditional longitudinal approach would reflect the influence of annual events, for example Halloween and Christmas, which are not affected by any claimed time/space compression on the Web. Similarly, the influence of terrorism and open warfare on the gathered data needs to be examined in the light of a longer term study. The purpose of the current work would not be to disprove the significance of the influence of these events or activities but to identify whether the range of expressed desires continue to reflect a similar dominant set of cultural traits.
The source and form of the data used in this research places limitations on what can be “seen” of the Web and contemporary western mainstream culture. The popularity based criteria for listing and representation search terms restricts the available view of contemporary culture. As the received data is based around individual search terms rather than concepts or groups of terms it is possible that some of the groups of desired artefacts and the cultural traits that are identified through them unduly emphasis some aspects of cultural practice. Of greater concern is that the significance of many concepts and even some individual terms is obscured because of their complexity or vulnerability to misspelling. The many variations on the spellings of “Osama bin Laden” and “Nostradamus” that did make it into weekly search term listings suggests that a great many more variations were also used in the weeks following 11th September 2001. Search logs of individual Web sites also reveal the range of permutations that are employed by individual users of the Web for more complex concepts. The logs at spaceless.com where the World Wide Web Virtual Library for referencing online resources is hosted, for example, reveals a range of terms used to access the same place on the Web. These terms include, ‘citing internet references’, ‘citations’, ‘scholarly citations’, ‘academic referencing form’, ‘how to cite references from the internet’, ‘academic citation references’ and ‘citation for referencing primary sources’ (spaceless.com/logs.html). Conceptually and taxonomically these search terms are the same but, in the mechanistic gathering of words rather than concepts or terms, such an interest could easily be obscured. However, the regularity with which the most popular terms appear in the weekly data appears to minimise these concerns.
The limitations of this research include:
The fluidity of the culture being examined
Although considered a ‘long time’ by Web terms there is still a > constraint in having ‘only’ 16 months of collected data
As the collected data only provides the most popular search terms > more subtle phenomena are obscured
The interpretative and subjective nature of the classification > process
Possibilities for further research
Given the identified limitations there are many possibilities for future research with the perspective outlined here and with the research data that has been used. What commends the utilised approach and data for further investigation is its immediacy, scalability and detail.
My research is already open to direct comparison against other data sets and other historical periods. Further collection of search terms in a method similar to the present work or with an expanded list of popular and consistent search terms would reveal the event-driven basis for contemporary culture. Further collection of data would help to clarify and refine the types of events that are significant and predominant within contemporary culture. An extension of the time-span of the data collection, and potentially an ongoing process of data collection, would reveal the further subtleties, patterns and variations of everyday life within contemporary western mainstream culture. Further data collection would also help to further refine and reveal the traits of contemporary western mainstream culture. Longevity of the research protocol may ultimately prove or disprove the presence of a culture or of many cultures. In many respects such an approach argues for attempts at the multiple representation of culture - in the spirit of the paradox revealed by Baudrillard’s reflections on the Borges’ map of the world. This may also, over time, refine the “culture concept” and its relative worth as an interpretative classification.
Further research would not only extend the data collection process and subsequent interpretation through time but also in scale. The current research is limited to analysis and understanding based upon weekly lists of the 300 most popular search terms in the past 24 hours and the 200 most popular search terms over a four week period. The received data offered no further flexibility or depth. Examination of a wider set of terms in these and other time frames may offer further clarification and explication regarding the relationship of Web search terms to desire for artefacts, to cultural traits and to “culture”, in its broadest sense. Gathering the 1000 most popular terms over longer and shorter time frames may provide additional understanding and help to reveal whether popular interests cover a wider range of classes of interest or whether there is “more of the same”. Shorter time frames of examination would further reveal the relationship of interest and popularity for individual events to mass media reporting and representation. Shorter time frames of analysis would also enable recognition of the rise and fall in interest of “micro” events. Wider sampling over shorter timeframes would also help to articulate and identify the way in which events, and the interest in them, evolves. The current research was able to chart and follow the extreme example of the terrorist attacks of the 11th of September 2001 because the scale of the event was of sufficient magnitude to be recognised in the collected data. The terrorist events revealed the shift in interest from the building and attack itself, to the attackers and their organisation, to the predictions of Nostradamus and then to the patriotic fervour embodied in the US flag (Collins 2004). Less extreme events could similarly be identified and traced with greater detail.
The concerns and limitations expressed here regarding my research could be addressed with further examination of similar data with a similar perspective. Most significantly, work conducted in a similar framework to that outlined here could address the issue of regional and national variations to what is this work’s “big” identification of culture by making use of search engines based in a single country. Australia, the UK and Germany are particularly good candidates for this research as all three have well-established national search engines that are well known within each country. Somewhat ironically the United States is the most difficult nation on which to conduct more detailed research. Such an unexpected situation is a result of the close interweaving of a US orientation with what is seen as an international perspective in the major search engines and directories including the most popular of these categories, Google and Yahoo. With access to the private data of other national search engines or directories the research could be readily extended. Some directories offer search facilities on their Web site that simply point to Google or another international - and generic - search engine. However, if the content of the searches that are initiated at a site with a regional or national focus could be captured this would assist in identifying whether the person conducting the search is more likely to identify with a specific nation or region irrespective of whether their search is completed at a generic search engine that, itself, does not recognise these distinction. National research could contribute to debates regarding national identity and the notion of the imagined community. National representations of culture lend themselves to comparison both between nations and with the work conducted here. The expectation, and perhaps the hope, of my research would be to articulate the meaning of cross-cultural difference in the context of Web based searches.
At a still greater level of detail the approach and direction employed here could readily be incorporated with more specific ethnographic examination of a single ‘site’. The searches and other activities conducted by people at a single site could be associated with ethnographically oriented observation and interaction. The examination of search terms would then complement other observations.
Further investigation suggested by the directions outlined here is the possibility of introducing considerations of the community into the research. Taking an approach like this would also extend the previous suggestion for national comparisons and cross-cultural research. The claim (Pew Internet 2002) that search engines are the primary way in which users of the Web locate Web sites points to a need for examination of search engine terms in conjunction with the Web sites that become the destination for these activities and thus, in effect, tracing and understanding the next click of the person who is utilising the Web. I have made some minor use of the server logs generated at spaceless.com to consider the many permutations and variations of search terms that result in access to the same Web site, or even, single Web page. These type of logs are stored by almost all Web sites as a standard feature and a simple means for judging the popularity of a Web site. Examination of these logs for activity that was generated from a search engine reveals the search term, and consequently the visitor’s enacted desire, that prompted this visit. Bringing the type of data used in this research into communication with the information revealed by examination of Web site logs offers the means to examine the achievement of individual desires and to further pursue research on the exchange practices that are being engaged in at individual Web sites. Connection of a Web site to search term(s) also offers benefits for the processes of taxonomic classification and national identification. De Certeau (1988, xii) argues for the significance of these connections when he claims “the analysis of the images broadcast by television and of the time spent watching television should be complemented by a study of what the cultural consumer ‘makes’ or ‘does’ during this time and with these images.” Being able to “see” what is being desired can assist the taxonomer in their classificatory judgment while also offering a confirmation of their assessment. This improves a taxonomy not because it becomes “more” correct but by reducing ambiguity. Similarly, the logs of a Web site include the address of the machine being used to make the request. Increasingly sophisticated techniques are being applied which can help to identify the physical geographic location of that machine with a good degree of certainty. Applying the knowledge gained from this research could, in turn, help to articulate more nuanced understandings of the collected search engine data itself.
A final area for future research includes the use of taxonomic based methods. As an interpretative approach, there are many opportunities to extend the current taxonomy. Long-term data collection will continue to add to the current list. The opportunity exists for debate to develop around the classification of a specific term and for alternative schemes to be offered. With critical engagement and debate the use of the Universal Decimal Classification schema could evolve to more closely reflect the locale in which it is being applied. An updated scheme would emphasise and offer more detailed forms of classification for important classes while other classes may be allocated less significance within the schema. Auxiliaries that are less useful or irrelevant in the context of the Web might be replaced or subsumed by more appropriate indications of particular and significant contemporary qualities. A contemporary schema would produce a new taxonomic scheme that more closely reflects high-technology enabled culture itself. Any ongoing engagement with general categories of artefacts would necessarily be dynamic.
The possibilities for the development of future research include:
Further insight gained from longer term collection of data
Additional nuances available through expanded examination of less > popular terms
Comparisons that are possible based around national, regional or > single site data
Greater use of Universal Decimal Classification auxiliary tables for > more nuanced classification and consequently greater level of > comparability and understanding
Final Observations
The introductory chapter recognised the multidisciplinary aspects of the research as well as its founding connections to Anthropology and Cultural Studies. I have actively sought to avoid the criticism leveled by Hampton (1999, 1579) that,
like many who have written in this field of CMC [Computer-Mediated Communication] there is a general failure to recognize that this is the continuation of a debate into the nature of community relations and the effects of technological change on community and society that is as old as sociology.
The Internet and the World Wide Web are complex artefacts of contemporary western mainstream culture. Identifying and understanding the cultural practices that these artefacts have enabled in a critical and insightful manner is fraught with distractions and, to use a netspeak term, trolls. The temptation to overly emphasise technological wizardry over people, even when the discussion is overtly stated to be about culture, is a route that has been followed by even the most experienced researcher. The excess of nihilistic postmodernism in which everyday life and every “thing” becomes abstract is an alternative extreme that has, also, appealed to researchers in their efforts to understand the multiple intersections of culture and the Internet.
I make a contribution to the examination of the Internet as a cultural phenomenon and in its definition, discussion and treatment of culture more generally. The identification of a cultural complex as a combination of artefacts and traits commends itself to the examination of the Web by acknowledging that the people of a cultural complex are as unknowable and as mysterious as is found in the archaeological use of the material culture of prehistoric groups (Graves-Brown 2000, 5). The general thrust here is to reveal the mystery of contemporary people through the examination of the remaining traces of their everyday activities. From the available data six dominant cultural traits can be discerned. These are freeness, participation, do-it-yourself/customisation, privacy/anonymity, perversion and information richness. Interest and identification with these traits is especially evidenced among the one hundred most popular search terms examined here. Most of these terms are able to be associated with more than one of the major traits. The documentation of these traits is supported by evidence from additional secondary sources. The artefacts that are desired by these people and the traits that these, in turn, reveal enable a tentative identification of a culture that is consumption orientated and event driven.