In this dissertation, I look at the history of cloud computing to demonstrate the entanglement of history, metaphor, and materiality. In telling this story, I argue that metaphors play a powerful role in how we imagine, construct, and maintain our technological futures. The cloud, as a metaphor in computing, works to simplify complexities in distributed networking infrastructures. The language and imagery of the cloud has been used as a tool that helps cloud providers shift public focus away from potentially important regulatory, environmental, and social questions while constructing a new computing marketplace. To address these topics, I contextualize the history of the cloud by looking back at the stories of utility computing (1960s-70s) and ubiquitous computing (1980s-1990s). These visions provide an alternative narrative about the design and regulation of new technological systems. Drawing upon these older metaphors of computing, I describe the early history of the cloud (1990-2008) in order to explore how this new vision of computing was imagined. I suggest that the metaphor of the cloud was not a historical inevitability. Rather, I argue that the social-construction of metaphors in computing can play a significant role in how the public thinks about, develops, and uses new technologies. In this research, I explore how the metaphor of the cloud underplays the impact of emerging large-scale computing infrastructures while at the same time slowly transforming traditional ownership-models in digital communications. Throughout the dissertation, I focus on the role of materiality in shaping digital technologies. I look at how the development of the cloud is tied to the establishment of cloud data centers and the deployment of global submarine data cables. Furthermore, I look at the materiality of the cloud by examining its impact on a local community (Los Angeles, CA). Throughout this research, I argue that the metaphor of the cloud often hides deeper socio-technical complexities. Both the materials and metaphor of the cloud work to make the system invisible. By looking at the material impact of the cloud, I demonstrate how these larger economic, social, and political realities are entangled in the story and metaphor of the cloud. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation tells the story of cloud computing by looking at the history of the cloud and then discussing the social and political implications of this history. I start by arguing that the cloud is connected to earlier visions of computing (specifically, utility computing and ubiquitous computing). By referencing these older histories, I argue that much of what we currently understand as cloud computing is actually connected to earlier debates and efforts to shape a computing future. Using the history of computing, I demonstrate the role that metaphor plays in the development of a technology. Using these earlier histories, I explain how cloud computing was coined in the 1990s and eventually became a dominant vision of computing in the late 2000s. Much of the research addresses how the metaphor of the cloud is used, the initial reaction to the idea of the cloud, and how the creation of the cloud did (or did not) borrow from older visions of computing. This research looks at which people use the cloud, how the cloud is marketed to different groups, and the challenges of conceptualizing this new distributed computing network. This dissertation gives particular weight to the materiality of the cloud. My research focuses on the cloud's impact on data centers and submarine communication data cables. Additionally, I look at the impact of the cloud on a local community (Los Angeles, CA). Throughout this research, I argue that the metaphor of the cloud often hides deeper complexities. By looking at the material impact of the cloud, I demonstrate how larger economic, social, and political realities are entangled in the story and metaphor of the cloud.

The figure of the user is often overlooked in Internet histories, which frequently focus on larger treatments of infrastructure, governance, or major contributions of specific individuals. This thesis constructs a philosophical and ideological history of the Internet user and examines how that figure has changed though the evolution of the Internet. Beginning with the Web 2.0 paradigm in the early 2000s, a growing state and corporate interest in the Internet produced substantial changes to the structure and logic of the Internet that saw the user being placed increasingly at the periphery of online space as the object of state surveillance or behavioral tracking. The three case studies in this thesis investigate the combination of technological constraints and discursive strategies which have aided in shaping the contemporary user from active architect of the Internet itself to passive, ideal consumer of predetermined online experiences.

This study is a qualitative, blended methods, online ethnography that seeks to explore how youth (re)negotiate what it means to be Asian through their participation in online, user-created, racialized groups within the popular social network site Facebook. What are the relationships and social processes between their online and offline interactions that contribute to the construction of a singular or multiple Asian identities? Through face-to-face and online interviews with youth participants in Vancouver, three broad themes emerged around: 1) the negotiation of Asian as a process of negotiating authenticity, 2) the use of humour and jokes as a means of resistance and reproduction of Asian stereotypes and 3) how the performance of one or multiple Asian identities are dependent on dramaturgical concepts of audience and stage. The data from this study highlight the complexity of racialized youth’s identity negotiations in an increasingly growing online world and the relevance and need for further research in this specific niche area. / Graduate

Internet and new communication technologies have drastically changed the way we send and receive messages, changing also the professions engaged in the gathering and diffusion of information. The Internet is by many presumed to have had a democratising effect on journalism, as it can be used to spread counter-hegemonic information and dismantle false objectivity (Castells, 2009, Rodriguez 2012). In this thesis, I examine this assumption by targeting one example of alternative journalism practice online. Through a case study of Paraguayan independent news site E’a, the thesis investigates how digital media affects newsroom structures and organisation as well as the role and objectives of the journalists. Previous theories and research on old and new alternative media, offered by scholars such as Susan Forde, Chris Atton, Leah A. Lievrouw, Olga Guedes Bailey, Bart Cammaerts and Nico Carpentier, are set against the voices of the practitioners producing E’a in this qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews. The thesis comes to the conclusion, that the Internet brings both benefits and drawbacks in the case of E’a. As a cheap way of publishing news, the digital platform serves as a lifebuoy for a project with a very limited commercial base. But the low Internet access in the country (and therefore presumed low impact of the project) and the change in organizational structure (web journalism resulting in a less collaborative form of working) leave the majority of the practitioners with network pessimism and a growing desire offline. Potential future research could look closer at alternative newscontent online, how it is perceived by the readers, as well as group dynamics and gendered participation in the digital era.

Dans un contexte de convergence culturelle et médiatique, nous proposons d'aborder la culture de l'internet sous l'angle de ses figures épistémiques de hacker, gamer et geek. C'est dans l'entrelacs de l'historiographie du web que ces dernières se lient entre elles et à des registres d'actions et de pratiques qui donnent sens au social sur le réseau. Des matrices idéelles qui réifient un monde social de savoir-cultures, de savoirs-techniques et de savoirs-être dans un espace-temps dématérialisant. Dans une ligne de tension entre l'imaginaire et le réel, l'acteur se produit lui-même sujet. Entre mobilité et motilité, les identités s'ajustent, s'indexent voire se distancient. Ainsi s'énonce l'archétype utopique du cyborg, dans lequel l'individu se désincarne dans la machine. Mais malgré l'idéal de développement en puissance, libérés des cadres injonctifs, coercitifs et régulateurs du monde matériel, les enjeux sociaux ne se nivellent pas pour autant. Les systèmes et biais de reproduction demeurent nombreux. Parmi eux, nous avons fait de la surreprésentation masculine l'angle d'approche de notre travail. Résistantes structurellement au changement et à toute forme d'exogénose sociale, ces communautés réifiantes du web reproduisent une structure de genre dans les atavismes de l'ancien monde, tel que décrit dans le concept sociologique de maison-des hommes. Entre récurrences et particularismes, notre projet théorique tend, d'une part, à ceindre et identifier ces communautés pour, dans un second temps, en étudier l'androcentrisme statistique. Notre approche est celle de l'ethnographie du virtuel, nos cadres théoriques sont ceux de la sociologie du genre, de la sociologie des médias et de la sociologie critique. / In the context of a cultural and media convergence, we will address internet culture from the perspective of some of its epistemic forms: hackers, gamers, and geeks. In the latticework of web historiography, these forms relate to each other and to registers of actions and practices which give meaning to online sociability—idea matrices which reify a social world of cultural, technical and social knowledges in a dematerialized space-time continuum. In the tense relation between imagination and reality, agents produce themselves as subjects. Through mobility and motility, identities get adjusted or indexed, or even distance themselves. This is how we can articulate the utopian archetype of the cyborg, into which individuals are disembodied into the machine. But despite ideals of potential development and freedom from the injunctive, coercive, and regulating frameworks of the material world, social issues still do not get resolved. The systems and ways of their reproduction remain numerous. Among these social issues, we take male over-representation as the focus of our study. Structurally resistant to change and to any form of social intervention by exogeneous elements, these reifying online communities reproduce a gender structure in the atavistic manner of the old world, as is described in the sociological concept of the “men's house”. Through an examination of their recurrences and particularities, our theoretical project is, on the one side, to define and identify these communities in order to, in a second step, study their statistical androcentrism. Our approach is that of the ethnography of the virtual, our theoretical frameworks are those of gender sociology, media sociology, and critical sociology.

In recent years, the salience of obesity and body image in society has given rise to a "fat activist" movement dedicated to defending non-normative body types. This activism has extended to the online environment, in which groups who are ostracized from the traditional realm have taken to blogging as a form of resistance and expression. The term "fat" has been reclaimed by the movement as a term of emancipation and defiance. The so-called "fatshion" blogs have a growing audience, and there is a burgeoning scholarly literature on this phenomenon. The aim of this research was to investigate college-aged females who identify as "fat," who may or may not have been exposed to the online fatshion (fat fashion) market or blogs. Are these blogs being used as resources for these women? Do they even know these websites exist? Thus, the aim of this study was to discover what the current fashion sector is like for those who may not participate as heavily within these communities. The main objective of this study was to find how plus-size women's fashion choices are shaped by the dominant discourses of the body and how this, in turn, influences their shopping experiences. By conducting semi-structured interviews along with participants filling out a small questionnaire, an in-depth look at the personal thoughts and feelings of fat women outside of this movement was explored. Fatshion was studied through four theoretical lenses: as a counter-discourse, as a place for identity construction, as a mode of gender performativity, and how fatshion is informed by intersectionality of race, class, and gender. Based on the interview data, the study found that the messages found on fatshion blogs have the potential to spark opposition in ways that mobilize a more positive self-image as well as nonconformist self-presentations through a heightened awareness of the possibilities for opposing dominant ideologies.

With mounting criticisms on the relevance of communication studies, both to train future professionals as well as for academic enquiry, and with the influx of changes coming from society’s digital transformations, a review of the different interaction between the professional and technical aspects that constitute the field allow for elucidation of the actual specificity of the discipline or set of disciplines that are grouped under the banner of “communication sciences” or “media studies”. This essay strives to propose an understanding of these interactions through an specific metaphor, and then how this understanding can be used to facilitate academic thinking and professional undertakings cross-dialog. / Frente a las críticas sobre la relevancia de los estudios de comunicación tanto para formar comunicadores como para trabajar académicamente, y con el influjo de cambios producto de las transformaciones digitales, una revisión de las distintas interacciones entre las vertientes profesionales y técnicas que constituyen el campo permite esclarecer dónde yace la especificidad de la disciplina o conjunto de disciplinas que se agrupan bajo la lógica de “ciencias de comunicación” o “estudios de medios”. Este ensayo plantea una manera de comprender estas interacciones utilizando una metáfora específica, y cómo se puede usar esta comprensión para facilitar el encuentro entre la reflexión académica y las preocupaciones profesionales.

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<p>This dissertation is a study of social interaction in virtual worlds and virtual world design. A virtual world is a synchronous, multi-user system that offers a persistent spatial environment for iconically represented participants. Together, these form an example of social interaction design. I have applied an arena perspective on my object of study, meaning that I focus on these socio-technical systems as places.</p><p>I have investigated the persistent qualities of social interaction in virtual worlds. What I have found is that virtual worlds are as real as the physical world. They are filled with real people interacting with each other evoking real emotions and leading to real consequences. There are no fixed boundaries between the virtual and physical arenas that make up a participant’s lifeworld.</p><p>I have found that participants in virtual worlds are not anonymous and bodiless actors on a level playing field. Participants construct everything needed to create social structures such as identities and status symbols. The qualities of social interaction in virtual worlds cannot be measured against physical interaction. Doing so conceals the qualities of virtual interaction. Through the concepts of levity and proximity, I offer an alternative measure that better captures the unique properties of the medium. Levity is related to the use of avatars and the displacement into a virtual context and manifests itself as a kind of lightness in the way participants approach the interaction. Proximity is my term for the transformation of social distances that takes place in virtual worlds. While participants perceive that they are in the same place despite being physically separated, the technology can also create barriers separating participants from their physical surroundings. The gap between the participant and her avatar is also of social significance.</p><p>As a theoretical foundation for design, I have used Michael Heim’s writings and practices as a base for a phenomenologically grounded approach, which provides an alternative to the dominating perspectives of architecture and engineering. Based on an explorative design project and the earlier mentioned findings regarding social interaction, I have formulated a model for virtual world design called interacture. This model takes the interaction between participants as the fundamental building material and the starting point of the design process. From there, layers of function and structure are added, all the time balancing the design between fantasy and realism.</p><p>I have explored the possibilities of using ethnographic studies as the foundation for a participant centered design approach. I have aimed for an inside view of my object of study both as an ethnographer and as a designer. One outcome of this approach is that I have come to understand virtual worlds not just as places but also as processes where the experience of participating can change drastically over time as the participant reaches new stages in the process.</p><p>In conclusion, the method of integrating ethnography with design and the understanding of social interaction as the fundamental building material is woven into a general approach to the study and design of socio-technical systems called social interaction design.</p>

This dissertation is a study of social interaction in virtual worlds and virtual world design. A virtual world is a synchronous, multi-user system that offers a persistent spatial environment for iconically represented participants. Together, these form an example of social interaction design. I have applied an arena perspective on my object of study, meaning that I focus on these socio-technical systems as places. I have investigated the persistent qualities of social interaction in virtual worlds. What I have found is that virtual worlds are as real as the physical world. They are filled with real people interacting with each other evoking real emotions and leading to real consequences. There are no fixed boundaries between the virtual and physical arenas that make up a participant’s lifeworld. I have found that participants in virtual worlds are not anonymous and bodiless actors on a level playing field. Participants construct everything needed to create social structures such as identities and status symbols. The qualities of social interaction in virtual worlds cannot be measured against physical interaction. Doing so conceals the qualities of virtual interaction. Through the concepts of levity and proximity, I offer an alternative measure that better captures the unique properties of the medium. Levity is related to the use of avatars and the displacement into a virtual context and manifests itself as a kind of lightness in the way participants approach the interaction. Proximity is my term for the transformation of social distances that takes place in virtual worlds. While participants perceive that they are in the same place despite being physically separated, the technology can also create barriers separating participants from their physical surroundings. The gap between the participant and her avatar is also of social significance. As a theoretical foundation for design, I have used Michael Heim’s writings and practices as a base for a phenomenologically grounded approach, which provides an alternative to the dominating perspectives of architecture and engineering. Based on an explorative design project and the earlier mentioned findings regarding social interaction, I have formulated a model for virtual world design called interacture. This model takes the interaction between participants as the fundamental building material and the starting point of the design process. From there, layers of function and structure are added, all the time balancing the design between fantasy and realism. I have explored the possibilities of using ethnographic studies as the foundation for a participant centered design approach. I have aimed for an inside view of my object of study both as an ethnographer and as a designer. One outcome of this approach is that I have come to understand virtual worlds not just as places but also as processes where the experience of participating can change drastically over time as the participant reaches new stages in the process. In conclusion, the method of integrating ethnography with design and the understanding of social interaction as the fundamental building material is woven into a general approach to the study and design of socio-technical systems called social interaction design.