A Path in the Jungle

One of the peculiarities of ethnography is that it relatively quickly integrates all the new technological innovations that make the capturing, interpretation and sharing of the complexity of the field experience easier and more efficient. Thanks to these integrating processes, by now there is a separate methodology for the ethnographic research of a variety of fields from the media to the cyberspace. The theoretical background of these methodologies is many times of varying standards and level of elaboration; while cyber-ethnography can rely on a professional literature significant both in size and quality, we can hardly find any literature on the ethnographic application of hypertextuality. Even what we can find is more of a “tutorial” than a theory. Th ere is an even more compelling lack of such texts, which would try to elucidate these methods and theories, and bring them under a common horizon, or just raise the possibility of doing this. This is what I attempt to undertake in my study. I try to conceptualize a possible interpretational framework in which these theories and methods can be evolved. My train of thoughts covers a collection of considerable works, from Margaret Mead’s and Gregory Bateson’s in the 1940’s to the experiments of Luke Eric Lassiter, and focuses the concept of collaboration.

Released: Replika 90–91, 39–56.
Replika block: