[ecrea] 'Teletechnologies, Place, and Community': new book

Teletechnologies, Place, and Community (New York: Routledge, 2011), 
260pp, _http://bit.ly/loeGUX
_by Rowan Wilken (Media & Communications, Swinburne University of 
Technology)

Summary:
Teletechnologies, or technologies of distance, cannot be ignored. 
Indeed, the present electronic age is said to have wrought profound 
changes to how we think about and experience who we are, where we are, 
and how we relate with one another. Place and community have 
traditionally formed key concepts for thinking about these issues, but 
what relevance do these concepts now hold for us? In this wide-ranging 
study, Wilken re-evaluates how ideas of place and community intersect 
with and help us make sense of a world transformed by information and 
communication technologies.

This interdisciplinary investigation ranges across diverse textual and 
contextual terrain, exploring approaches from media and communications, 
architectural history and theory, philosophy, sociology, geography, 
literature, and urban design. The rich analysis of these myriad texts 
reveals the complex and at times contradictory ways in which notions of 
place and community circulate in relation to these technologies of 
distance. Wilken's examination underscores both the enduring importance 
of ideas of place and community in the present age, and the urgent need 
to continue to engage with, think about and reconfigure these twin ideas.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
1. Techno-Sociality: Computer-Mediated Communication and Virtual Community
2. The Problem of Community
3. Haunting Affects: Place in Virtual Discourse
4. Machines of Tomorrow Past: Early Experiments in Architectural Computing
5. Fantasies of Transcendence and Transformative Imagination: 
Architectural Visions of Cyberspace
6. Domesticating Technology, Mobilising Place
7. Rethinking Teletechnologies, Place, and Community


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Department of Media and Communications
University of Sydney
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