Bevan, Paul

The Circadian Geography of Chat

Abstract

As the mechanisms, discourses and paraphernalia of digitally mediated communication become increasingly woven into our lives, social and recreational use of the Internet is becoming an increasingly popular practice. The ability to synchronously interact with users from around the world is heralded as a leap in the increasing globalisation of society, perhaps even signalling the beginning of the end of geographical distance. And yet, this paper argues, the temporal disjuncture related to geographical distance still has an impact upon the nature of social interaction in virtual spaces.

Building on Greg Staple and Zack Schrag's "Circadian Geography of the Network" (Telegeography Inc. 1998) I propose that, by replacing the contingent of network use with chat room use, and rejecting the idea that binary flow can be representative of discursive flow, we can gain an insight into the ways in which this disjuncture is disproportionately inclined towards data flow. Hence, this paper exposes the underlying biases of resource based quantitative studies that effectively belie the character and geography of virtual interaction.

This paper argues that rather than seeing the 'death of distance', the increasing popularity of chat rooms has led to a fractured temporality between 'virtual time' and Śreal time' which is still grounded upon the geographical base of the user.