I’ll admit that I’ve been relatively ambivalent about my courses this semester. Well I mean relative to last year, in which my interests started intersecting and overlapping so that I couldn’t help but enthusiastically articulate my Gallatin concentration. Inching back toward academic uncertainty is disconcerting because I have less than three semesters left at NYU (I’m graduating a semester early for the sake of saving money).
But as I was becoming blase about feeling blase, I started realizing a new common thread throughout my current courses. The internet. A lot of my class discussions have led to the phenomenon of the internet – questions of community, the individual, representation, knowledge, generational shifts, and the total collapse of spatio-temporal limits. So it’s the internet that is here and now (and the reason why this blog is here, now). It’s a rapidly-developing medium and, as my professor said, another Industrial Revolution.
A visualization of the internet, taken from Wikipedia. I think I see this blog at the top right?
The worldwideweb has basically permeated my existence – from my beloved internship at Undercurrent to my tutorial about “The Politics of Digital Media.” In my sociology class, I completely shut down the pretentious kid who was monopolizing the discussion in order to change the topic to a more interesting/relevant one – online social communities. And on a sadder note – following the recent death of an NYU student and a flood of comments to his Facebook, his self-created profile has become a digital memorial where friends have gathered as a community to mourn and remember.
No, my new concentration is not just “THE INTERNET.” I’m more interested in the relationship between the individual/the self and the social group; the power dynamics within those relationships; if/how people represent themselves or are represented in the media; (and now) how the internet completely transforms and expands the scope of all these questions.
Though I’m not planning on becoming the next Danah Boyd, I definitely have similar interests. I’m not sure where this digital fascination is headed but, in terms of commercial/popular use, the internet is still barely out of its teens (Yes, I just Googled “the internet” on the internet to find out when it was invented – how meta).
