Mobility and Literacy: Development of the Public Network Concept
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.20360/G2ZC7MAbstract
This paper briefly historicizes English language mail services, postal reform, and the inauguration of global delivery systems for material mails in order to outline the origins of junk mail and discursive excess in network concepts and systems. These historical developments not only made mail services affordable to common people, but also created the conditions necessary for inexpensive, rapid delivery---and dumping---of bulk advertising and circulars (the precursor of spam email) throughout the literate field of personal correspondences. From a contemporary perspective, electronic mail alters conventions that have evolved through epistolary practices. Situated on a background of a formal, dialogical ethos of personal answerability among a distributed public, mass mail makes global populations the object rather than a dialogical subject of literate relations, with consequential changes to social and cultural habits and attitudes toward personal correspondence. To conclude this paper explores global dynamics of digital correspondence that place unanswerability at the core of twenty-first century dialogical relations.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).