Epilogue: Writing of Connectivity at a Time of Isolation (original) (raw)

Communication and space, or the materiality of association

Diverse approaches over the last few decades have emphasized space as an active part of social processes. However I wish to explore this relation in a different way to most of these analyses – in particular by foregrounding the role of space in association, or relations between actors performed through communication. My proposition is that if communication processes are really central to social life and the reproduction of societies, and if there is indeed a profound relation between social processes and spatial forms, then we can identify a potential role for space in the communication that constitute the connections between our everyday acts. Here I look to show that although space is becoming a central theme, a systematic theory of how our practices are related through webs of communication and their spaces still appears to be missing. My aim is to explore the inherent relation of communication to space as an effect of meaning – to be sure, a Husserlian property of meaning as “reference”, a way to trace connections between our acts able to clarify the role of space as both referential context for communication and a referential system capable of supporting and fostering associations.

Reviewing mobility and interaction

The present book would be impossible a couple of decades back because sociology and philosophy paid less attention to the effects of visual technology in daily life. Today, emotions and experiences may be captivated from home without moving. To date, the existent specialised literature in mobility and ethno-methodology has agreed that space and sign are determined by the process of social interaction. Linguistics revealed how the body itself seems to be embedded in the roots of language. At time of speaking the other is represented on me and viceversa (being in this world with). Equally important, interaction and mobility are concepts very well enrooted in the expression of body and language. The evolution of talk not only produces the content of communication, but evidences the details of how talk is formed.

Network and Everyday Life: Beyond 'Local Space'?

After describing what it is known as quotidianity – or everyday life- , the text focuses on the way it is influenced by the Network, paying special attention to the space-time experience. How does the Network flow determine a new temporality? How does Cyberspace interact with the place? To finish with, we comment on the opinion according to which Cyberspace goes beyond the boundaries of what is local.

Absent to Those Present: The Conflict Between Connectivity and Communion

In this chapter, I analyze the technologically mediated connection, which I call “connectivity,” and contrast it with others ways of communing with family members, neighbors, coworkers, and friends, which I refer to simply as “communion.” I argue that connectivity competes with communion, because such connections make it possible to be always present to those that are absent, which correspondingly makes us absent to those who are present. I provide a phenomenological description of immediate and mediate interpersonal presence (in person, by telephone, by video call, by letter, by email, by text, and by social media) to show how and why recent technology differs from older forms such as telephone and letter-writing. I then call attention to the importance of bodily presence for affording communion. Finally, I point to the importance of absence and thoughtfulness for giving us something real to talk about when we are together. Interpersonal presence draws its life from our bodies and our thoughts.