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Anthony Lambert

Document Type

Article

Abstract

[First paragraph]

The notion of connection refers to both metaphorical and material practices informing our understandings of the flows of energy and information within human bodies, communities, geographies, and technological networks. Cranny-Francis offers a definition of connection which accounts for the term's significance in the contexts of both Cultural Studies and multimedia literacy:

    It refers to the ways in which texts generate meanings through their relationship with other texts, to the development of multimedia technologies that are characterized by their connectivity (the web, the net), and to the ways in which meanings are generated crucially by the connection between texts and their users. (Cranny-Francis, forthcoming)

Connecting demonstrates in a very real sense the ways in which human "being", culture and technology cannot be understood separately, but as always bound up with each other. This paper explores the ways in which our culturally mediated understandings of human selfhood, materiality and community shape the development and enactment of technological connection and connectivity. Connections, both inside and outside of our bodies, involve growth, existence and functionality on the one hand whilst simultaneously impacting on the production of subjectivity on the other. Mapping bodies, movement and systems of exchange foregrounds the centrality of connection to human life. Connection is about people and meanings. Identifying the inseparable flows and networks of both developing technologies and developing selves can help to productively explore the meanings and importance of connection and connectivity.

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