How is an IRC channel like a Caribbean street-corner?
My friend Biella, a tireless EFF volunteer who’s also finishing a PhD in anthropology, studying hacker culture, has posted a really gnarly paper that she presented at the Digital Genres conference. The paper posits that IRC channels and Caribbean street-corners share a lot of conversational and behavioral norms, and are driven by much the same impetus. (The meaty stuff about IRC starts about halfway down — search for “IRC and Caribbean” in the page). IRC and Caribbean street talk, both a result of diasporic realities, are public spaces in which clever word play, performance, and stream of consciousness conversation predominate. In the Caribbean, the Diaspora was a historical moment in time that brought disparate peoples together as slaves and indentured laboreres. Forced over across the Atlantic with materially nothing, cultural elements were revived and refashioned though such avenues as music, language, food, and religion to produce the dynamic character that now stamps Caribbean cu
