In the History of Text Technology grad seminar I took last semester, I had to give a short (two minute) presentation relating a modern art book to a 6,000 year old cuneiform tablet, using the theme “all technology is social networking.”
It really wasn’t that hard.
The idea that “social networking” is some digital phenomenon is utterly misleading. We’ve been social networking since we emerged from the muck. It’s not the use the tool is put to that makes the use unique; the tools change but our needs don’t.
The purpose of a cuneiform tablet, especially in regards to storytelling, was presumably to remove the burden and inaccuracies of oral transmission; yet, only someone who could read the cuneiform script could relate the story, and only do so verbally. Thus while we may view a cuneiform tablet is an isolated text with discrete boundaries, in actual use it was a flexible, portable device for sharing information across a wide variety of social spectrums.
It is these kinds of basic presumptions about “text” that need to be addressed before making broad judgments about social networking tools like Facebook or Twitter.
One argument that comes up is that using digital tools is different, and implicitly inferior, to talking to people in real life. However this is as disingenuous as saying the modern art book is different from, and therefore implicitly inferior to, the 6,000 year old cuneiform tablet. It is easy to dwell on the vast, complex difference and claim one or the other as superior. But in the end, it is all a method of delivery, and what they all have in common—social networking—is far more important.
This is the crux of the matter in regards to information culture and materiality; while humanities scholars have wrestled with these concepts for decades, they are just now becoming critical questions for the information studies field. It does not behoove our profession to reinvent the wheel by asking these questions as if they are new; but neither does it serve to pretend that they have already been answered.
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