Materialising the Virtual: a Critical History of Contemporary Popular Conceptions of the Internet

The popular Anglo-American conceptualisation of the internet is notable for its uniformity: it is singularly conceived of as an abstracted, immaterial, and virtual space. The language of the internet is saturated with the linguistic simulacra of this notion, which considers the internet as distinctly separate from reality itself: the widespread distinction between online and 'IRL' (In Real Life) is symptomatic of this, distinctly separating the supposed unreal of the internet from the real of everyday lived experience. As sociologist Nathan Jurgenson has described it, the internet is conceived of as an 'elsewhere' distinct from material reality, a notion he has termed 'digital dualism' (2012). This distinction further comes with a value judgement, whereby the consequential 'real' world is distinguished from an immaterial online. This view has seen the development of a body of popular literature on 'digital dualism,' perhaps most notably Sherry Turkle's 'Alone Together' (2011), which has suggested a turn away from the virtual internet and a return to material reality.

This proposed research intends to address this conceptualisation of the internet as the subject of a historical enquiry which will trace the development and growth of the idea of the technology as an abstracted, virtual space with the intent of critiquing it. In order to do so, a developing body of work concerned with the formulation of a material conception the internet will be drawn from and mobilised to form a counter-narrative, providing the means of establishing an alternative framework for conceptualising the internet against which the dominant model might be juxtaposed.