redressing the imbalance between the poles of broadcast circulation.
Secondly, the bandwidth and ability to convey complexity in image,
music and text allows for richer forms of ‘impression management’ than
are achieved in face-to-face interaction. Thirdly, it is emancipatory
because it ‘insulates’ the author from any embarrassment, and avoids the
possibility of rejection that is experienced in mutual presence (Cheung,
2000: 49).
But Cheung does not explore the nature of web-page audiences, or
deconstruct the idea that their authors are ‘ordinary’ and ‘amateur’ (43).
The fact that such characterization is assigned already indicates the
necessarily ‘reactive’ nature of such a practice. Which is to say, personal
home-pages are not a derivative of Internet communication, but are in fact
yet another ritual of audience communities.
To go back to Anna Voog, who manages in practice to make of her
own person a viewer and a producer, such a convergence, which Andrejevic
makes into a vignette of old and new media convergence, can be argued
to have already been attained within the dynamics of broadcast architec-
ture itself. Voog merely has recourse to the technological means of dis-
placing the aura of the image onto the apparatus or means of
communication. It is the apparatus which becomes reified, as the image
becomes a metonymic condensation of the audience. The television audi-
ence can see themselves in such images, without making this the reflexive
subject of a further broadcast on web-cam.Telecommunity
Electronically mediated communication to some degree supplements
existing forms of sociability but to another extent substitutes for them.
New and unrecognizable modes of community are in the process of for-
mation and it is difficult to discern exactly how these will contribute to or
detract from postmodern politics. (Poster, 1990: 154)The term ‘telecommunity’ can be found in the text of Alvin Toffler’s The
Third Wave(1980). Without endorsing the historicism of this text, we can
say that Toffler’s description of technologically extended community as a
social form is one that is useful in a general way.
Long before the Internet, Toffler points out that technological exten-
sion is a general feature of late-capitalist societies, but that the distinctive
form of community which it makes possible is by way of the ‘selective sub-
stitution of communication for transportation’ (382). For Toffler, the dis-
persal of populations across cities, and between home and work, creates
unnecessary anomie. When communications begin to replace commuting,
he argues, it can actually revitalize face-to-face relationships insofar as it
enables work-from-home (a prophecy of modern telework) where family
bonds and time for neighbourhood bonds are enhanced.^35 At the sameTelecommunity 221Holmes-06.qxd 2/15/2005 1:03 PM Page 221