Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Jargon Watch

Glocalisation - the 'ugliness' that ensues when global and local are shoved into the same digital service in a manner which is uncomfortable.

It impacts web service design and touches on hard issues like economics through to soft issues like social relationships and the users values. There is a diacotomy on the web between being able to be part of a global village, by connecting around the world (example: this blog is hosted in the US by a US company (Google) and yet written in the UK).

At a personal level however people are most concerned with their own culture (example: I live in London yet follow a
northern rugby league team and GAA county games, eat traditional Irish food that I grew up with like soda bread, a fried breakfast, brown stew, drink Barry's Tea and Bolland's Biscuits).

More information on this subject and how it pertains to the web from danah boyd's paper presented at the O'Reilly Emerging Technolgies (E-Tech) conference 2006.