I have this theory that new media research is on the wrong track.

There’s a fundamental problem with examining the internet and other computer-mediated communication – it’s that the means of research doesn’t factor in a couple of core issues. The usual social, political, content analysis, qualitative and quantitative, economic, uses and gratification and other methodologies and frameworks are being employed – not because they have been scrutinised and deemed the most suitable, but because things move so rapidly in information technology. The need to simply keep up has driven researchers to employ whatever method seems expedient or convenient, in order that the research is not already obsolete by the time it is completed. Of course, whether or not it’s obsolete a week or two later seems beyond the scope of the enquiry.

That’s looking at things the wrong way around, from my way of thinking. If time is indeed speeding up exponentially (whether actually, metaphorically, or just from the point of view of technological process), then focusing on detail is perhaps less important than looking at the overall picture.

Anthropological study normally deals in long time frames – aeons, in fact. Human evolution is a result of survival adaptation to a changed or changing environment.. As environments have traditionally changed over long periods, so evolutionary analysis has been associated with time frames of thousands of years – geological time. One such change of primary significance in that context was the development of physical tools: the stone axe, the flint, etc. In anthropological terms, the appearance of the tool-user marks an evolutionary shift to a different category of human being. The sufffix ‘user’ is significant here.

Prior electronic communication media were experienced by an ‘audience’ – essentially a passive group of onlookers. Digital communication, while it also includes audiences, is primarily negotiated by ‘users’, rather than ‘audiences’. Not physical tool-users as such, but abstract (digital) tool-users. It is therefore appropriate that these new tool-users are examined from an evolutionary perspective. They necessarily constitute a new form of human being. Not ‘better’, just one that differs as a result of a survival adaptation response to a new environment.

While it is valid to talk about the ‘effects’ of digital technology, these effects do not take place as a one-way, technologically deterministic, causal relationship. They are co-causal. Users negotiate meaning. Shifts in digital technology are both symptom and cause of changes to users. Effects are both imposed and a result of socialisation of the medium.

Digital technology is not, however, a human artefact in the same sense that a stone axe is. It is instead the (hostile?) environment which both necessitates change and is responded to by its inhabitants. Environment and actor shape each other simultaneously. Perhaps a better word than user is inhabitant (although that suggests a space-defined conception of digital environments, which I do not agree with).

The argument as to whether existing media analysis methodologies are sufficient or whether new methods are required to observe and study them is actually the wrong question. Different methods, rather than new ones are called for. Those previously used to describe phenomena that occurred over long periods should and can be employed. New media operate within (and cause) exponential spatio-temporal acceleration. Evolutionary time-frames are much shorter as a result, so evolutionary analyses become valid – if not actually essential.

An evolutionary anthropology of users is called for, as is a description of the environment in geological terms. The emergence of Homo-digitalis, and the geology of digital landscapes. To use the ‘fast methodologies’ of media analysis is to try and capture a fleeting moment online. It is also to focus on detail, without looking at the bigger picture.

While it is perfectly reasonable to attempt to describe the shape of the feather, perhaps it’s more significant to note that the lizard has grown wings.

Listening to: ‘Journey in Satchidananda’ – Alice Coltrane feat. Pharoah Sanders (Impulse!)