Some
people call it procrastinating; others love Facebook and embrace their inner
flaneur. A flaneur can be described as somebody who strolls through an
environment and takes in their surroundings, they have no clear destination,
they only want the experience of observing the environment.
It
can be said that those (like myself), who log on to Facebook everyday for no
real reason than to see what is there, can be classified as cyber-flaneurs. In
this weeks lecture we discussed how maps create networks. Facebook in itself is
a virtual network that we as cyber-flaneurs, like the original flaneur, tend to
not use maps to navigate, but instead navigate in a manner Prouty (2009) describes as “distracted”. Most of the time
we simply follow a never-ending chain of hyperlinks that lead us to various;
images, videos and posts of our friends, with no real recollection of how we
got there.
I do not want to
say that it is impossible to map someone’s navigation through Facebook as that
would be untrue. The cognitive map we create when we use Facebook is still
similar to those we would use for travel, as Barnes (1997) noticed the
correlation that “just as the magnitude on the freeway is measured
in minutes, rather than miles, the amount of travel within the Internet is also
measured in time, rather than kilobytes” (para. 13). An example of this would
be :“I spent 30 seconds reading through the comments on the photo I posted
until I saw my sister’s, I then clicked on her profile and looked through her
recent posts for about 2 minutes until I found a funny video she posted a month
ago”. That example is of how someone
could map a cyber-flaneur’s movements through a virtual environment, from an
recently posted photo to an unrelated funny video that was posted a month
prior.
References:
Barnes, G. (1997). Passage of the cyber-flaneur. Retrieved from http://www.raynbird.com/essays/Passage_Flaneur.html
Prouty, R. (2009). Turtle on a leash. Retrieved from http://www.onewaystreet.typepad.com/one_way_street/2009/10/a-turtle-on-a-leash.html
Flaneur (2015).
Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flâneur
Image
Reference:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs9RPFp_eTLvXuIMc4I8BBgwkBoS67aeqJ71FLICf2CpzjxKTxG_sSSv0ioK0QHN67oqm2ddGxmBx7Q5PAceEZzXklfzUBWhBLFYt4MWMZ3Z1aclq7g1D8BOxbo9MYtSSRz2oFNztJb29l/s1600/Cyberflaneur.jpg
The example you give about Internet travel being measured in time puts me in mind of a newer form of flâneurie, which some have dubbed “Face-stalking.” You’re exactly right – it’s easy to see a comment from a familiar face, or more commonly a familiar name, and feel immediately compelled to browse through their other activity. Many do this out of sheer curiosity, but for some it becomes a dangerous obsession, which is one reason that I hold cyber-flâneurie in a negative light. The arrival of Facebook has changed flâneurie for good, and while the effects can be both good and bad, it means a huge deprivation of privacy for Facebook users in general. Your description of aimlessly clicking from link to link is as accurate as it gets, but I still question the meaning behind it. Are all those who do this becoming cyber-flâneurs, or are we really just a bunch of serial procrastinators?
ReplyDeleteReferences
Smith, J. R. (2007). Facestalk. Retrieved from http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=facestalk
I found your connections on how to map cyber-flaneurs rather interesting. I have been thinking of a spatial map created in our minds as described by Barnes (2015) that ‘all people create a mental model of the space they inhabit due to a controlling drive to 'organize the environmental impressions into meaningful patterns’. As such my ideas of mapping cyber-flaneurs are more physical based off how the brain creates connections through neurotransmitters; the more immaterial nature of time as a measurement for mapping is a connection to cyber-flaneurs that I have not considered until you mentioned them. It can definitely be said that our time is a valuable currency on the internet and the way we spend it can be considered a form of mapping our movements. Just as you point out with Prouty, a cyber-flaneurs distraction can be measured with time spent on various seemingly unrelated meanderings.
ReplyDeleteReferences:
Barnes, G. (1997). Passage of the Cyber-Flaneur. Raynbird.com. Retrieved 18 August 2015, from http://www.raynbird.com/essays/Passage_Flaneur.html