Concept 9

I found the subject of Concept 9 - Permanent Ephemerality to be quite an interesting one. On the surface, I guess many people think of the web, on the whole, as being ephemeral - never staying the same, a continually evolving cyber-universe where nothing is permanent. Looking at the web as an entity in itself, then I would say yes, it is ephemeral but some of it's facets are tending to become more permanent due to newer technology that enables the management, archiving and recording of web content.

The view that email is ephemeral in nature was and still is widely held, but was particularly so in the internets early years. This in turn naturally flowed through to how people perceived email as a communication tool. However, these days, email as an ephemeral form of communication, is by and large more of a presumption than anything else. There is a distinct shift from the ephemeral to the eternal in that email management now allows the storing, correlating and filing of our communications, whether initiated by a third party or ourselves.

When one considers email ephemeral, one is more likely to be careless with it's use and less mindful of how it can be perceived or used by the recipient or, in some cases, even other parties:

"Although email may seem ephemeral, producers should bear in mind that it may be treated like any other form of communication as far as legal discovery of documents is concerned. Programme makers should be aware that email may be required to be produced as evidence in a legal action e.g. where a court is attempting to discover the identity of a journalistic source." – BBC editorial online service guidelines

For most of us, even though email is a private form of communication, we need to remain concious of the fact that it quite often is or can be a permanent record of our online communications and interactions with others. In that respect, we should always be mindful of the way we manage our email.

The graph below is a good visual reference re ephemeral vs persisent forms of communication:

Karahalios, Karrie. "Ephemeral and persistent conversation." September, 2004.http://web.media.mit.edu/~kkarahal/generals/communication/ephem_pers.html (accessed March 23, 2007).

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I have decided that I will use the topic of Online Communication & Behaviour, as the topic for my annotations for Module 2 and will link them to Concept 1 - Asynchronicity and Concept 9 - Permanent Ephemerality.

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Web Resources:

Schneider, Steven M. , Foot, Kirsten A. "The Web as an Object of Study." 2006.http://faculty.washington.edu/kfoot/Publications/Web-as-Object-of-Study.pdf (accessed March 23, 2007).

"Internet Communications Concepts Document." http://webct.curtin.edu.au/SCRIPT/305033_a/scripts/serve_home (accessed March 09, 2007).

Karahalios, Karrie. "Social Catalysts: enhancing communication in mediated spaces ." September, 2004.http://web.media.mit.edu/~kkarahal/ (accessed March 23, 2007).