Within the last days there have been quite a few very interesting and valuable discussions going on … all regarding ethnology, the actual purpose of this blog. Although I won’t make a great fuss out of it, I just would like to let you know and welcome you to join. So here is No. 1:
„At the city of Munich’s southern fringe, bordering to the rich people’s pseudo-gated-community Grünwald, there is a quite remarkable location to be found right at the river Isar’s shore. In between the forest’s majestic trees there is a literal chaos of ramps, ridges, holes, rootwork, and hillocks. There you can see youngsters (…) speeding and jumping havoc on mountain-, downhill-, and BMX-bikes.„
My dear friend and colleague Zephyin_Xirdal, somehow I could understand him as one of my mentors as well, at least my source of critical long- discussed ethnological and everyday-life resemblance for some time now (as you can see I cannot describe him right), found out that there is a close connection to „Meatspace hardcore bike-tricking (…) with practices stemming from computer- and online-culture„. As part of his research he soon came up with a theory on how to sort this example into the whole object of cyberculture and cyberpunk.
He argues (in my own words):
„that bikers at the Bombenkrater use computer-based images and ideas to transform the way of use of the environment and of technology vice-versa use the environment and their doings-with-it to fit into the computer-based representation. In each case definitely a kind of appropriation, either way. The difference between ‚real‘ and ‚virtual‘ actually is not that much of a difference but ‚aspects of the same Lebenswelten‘. Because of this type of appropriation we can call the crystallising lifestyle … cyberculture.„
I figured, because I wanted to draw his example on a higher level of ethnological theory, that
„On a higher level this lifestyle, the manifestations of cyberculture, could then be a conscious othering in the real world to escape from a homogenised global world, but on the other hand a conscious assimilation into the homogenised virtual world to bridge heterogeneous barriers.„
Well now, as I said, I do not want get into a serious discussion on my own blog. To read my own and others thoughts on the topic, just go to the Bombenkrater at Zeph’s place. He told me today, he has about one page and more of an answer to all my questions… personally, I am desperate.
