‘finding connection’ by means of tele-mediation may seem anachronistic
for persons formed in this way.
When agency-extended integration predominates, it is the expecta-
tion of embodied networks of intermediates which becomes the dominant
centre of ‘ontological security’ within a societal form. In such a setting,
word of mouth, recommendations, networks of knowledge and activity
offer far more of a guarantee of bonding to the social form than can be
achieved via an abstract market, telecommunications, etc. The dominant
form of this level of integration is the institution: church and state, guild
and corporation, media and the culture industry – and their various
constituencies, which each become trusted anchors.
Like agency-constituted integration, the interactive events of disem-
bodied integration usually refer back to the face-to-face (e.g. emoticons,
cybersex) whilst annulling the face-to-face by extension. Disembodied inte-
gration is the most paradoxical because it typically creates the very con-
ditions which it nostalgically attempts to overcome.Extension of communication by agent
An important level of communicative integration which the abstraction
thesis points to, but which is too often overlooked in current-day accounts
of ‘community’ and ‘interaction’, is that of extension by agent. For example,
almost always, analyses of technologically extended social relations limit
themselves to a comparison with ‘face-to-face’ communication, from which
follow familiar binaries of embodied/disembodied, virtual/real, etc.
What is overlooked is the way in which a communication process
which also forms part of the ‘reciprocity without interaction’, which we dis-
cussed above, is mediated by other actors, and is not simply a technical
means of transmission. This is more visible in broadcast than with the agents
who are at work in CMC – the software designers and programmers. In the
broadcast situation, Raymond Williams (1961) discusses an important
distinction between sourceand agent. Asourceis someone who offers an
‘opinion, a proposal, a feeling’ and ‘normally desires that other persons will
accept this and act or feel in the ways that he defines’ (293), whereas an agent
is someone whose ‘expression is subordinated to an undeclared intention’
(293), such as attracting audiences, editing a text to satisfy certain tastes, etc.
‘In social terms, the agent will normally in fact be a subordinate – of a gov-
ernment, a commercial firm, a newspaper proprietor’ (293), necessary to any
complex administration.But agency is always dangerous unless its function and intention are not
only openly declared but commonly approved and controlled. If this is so,
the agent becomes a collective source, and he will obser ve the standards
of such expression if what he is required to transmit is such that he can
wholly acknowledge and accept it – recreate it in his own person. (293)Interaction versus Integration 161Holmes-05.qxd 2/15/2005 1:00 PM Page 161