Materialising the Virtual: a Critical History of Contemporary Popular Conceptions of the Internet

流行的英美互联网概念以其一致性而闻名：它被奇怪地设想为一个抽象的、非物质的和虚拟的空间。互联网的语言充斥着这个概念的语言拟像，它认为互联网与现实本身截然不同：在线和‘IRL’(在现实生活中)之间的广泛区别就是这一点的症状，明显地将互联网所谓的不真实与日常生活体验的真实分开。正如社会学家内森·于根森所描述的那样，互联网被认为是有别于物质现实的“别处”，他将这一概念命名为“数字二元论”(2012)。这种区别还伴随着一种价值判断，即由此产生的“真实”世界与非物质的在线世界区分开来。在这一观点的推动下，出现了大量关于“数字二元论”的通俗文学作品，其中最著名的可能是2011年雪莉·特克尔的《孤身一人》(Alone Together)，该书建议远离虚拟互联网，回归物质现实。这项拟议中的研究旨在解决互联网的概念化问题，作为一项历史调查的主题，该调查将追踪技术作为抽象的虚拟空间的观念的发展和成长，并意图对其进行批评。为了做到这一点，一个与互联网物质概念的形成有关的正在开发的工作机构将被吸引并动员起来形成一个反叙事，为建立一个可供选择的互联网概念化框架提供手段，主导模式可能被并列在一起。

The popular Anglo-American conceptualisation of the internet is notable for its uniformity: it is singularly conceived of as an abstracted, immaterial, and virtual space. The language of the internet is saturated with the linguistic simulacra of this notion, which considers the internet as distinctly separate from reality itself: the widespread distinction between online and 'IRL' (In Real Life) is symptomatic of this, distinctly separating the supposed unreal of the internet from the real of everyday lived experience. As sociologist Nathan Jurgenson has described it, the internet is conceived of as an 'elsewhere' distinct from material reality, a notion he has termed 'digital dualism' (2012). This distinction further comes with a value judgement, whereby the consequential 'real' world is distinguished from an immaterial online. This view has seen the development of a body of popular literature on 'digital dualism,' perhaps most notably Sherry Turkle's 'Alone Together' (2011), which has suggested a turn away from the virtual internet and a return to material reality.This proposed research intends to address this conceptualisation of the internet as the subject of a historical enquiry which will trace the development and growth of the idea of the technology as an abstracted, virtual space with the intent of critiquing it. In order to do so, a developing body of work concerned with the formulation of a material conception the internet will be drawn from and mobilised to form a counter-narrative, providing the means of establishing an alternative framework for conceptualising the internet against which the dominant model might be juxtaposed.