Rhizome Experiment, Fall 2015

Media in time and space/black twitter

The first question that I will address is how media works in time and space. First, let us take a look an overly simplistic and limited time and space axis. Time is confined (in cliche terms) by the sunrise and sunset. Essentially, there is a window for productivity between when people wake up and when people go to bed. Spacially, people and ideas are confined to who they can see and talk too. In this limited view, white power and white supremacy still operates and organizes the world. However, in evaluating this question at a deeper level, I want to circle back to Raymond Williams theory about technology and society. Raymond Williams talks about "unresolved historical and philosophical questions" that arise from relationships between a technology and a society, culture, or psychology (Williams 291). Black Twitter is one such relationship between a technology and a society. People who use Black Twitter transverse the time and space axis. People can participate in Black Twitter from all different ethnic and geographic locations. They can participate at any hour of the day, even though the real world may "shut down" when the sun sets. Additionally, people on Twitter may or may not know each other in real life. However, when they go onto the Twitter platform and engage in conversation with each other, they become part of an imagined community. This community, although first established in the virtual, can have massive impacts in the real world. Anna talks about one such real world situation in her page on Black Twitter's Power in Media. Black Twitter is just one example of the mediums that are able to emerge through technology and social forces that allow people to transverse the primitive time and space axis and overcome many of the hardships associated with it. 









 

 

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