My current thinking on my thesis topic still circles around this idea of the hybrid. Its enjoying popularity right now in reference to cars and science fiction plots, but if you look it up in the OED, find something quite generic:
Anything derived from heterogeneous sources, or composed of different or incongruous elements; in Philol. a composite word formed of elements belonging to different languages
When it refers to animals and plants, the meaning becomes almost derogatory:
The offspring of two animals or plants of different species, or (less strictly) varieties; a half-breed, cross-breed, or mongrel.
How do these ideas translate when you are talking about our relationship to technology? To have something become a hybrid, you must start with two (or more) ideas or objects that have - until this point - been dialectically opposed to one another. When I started expanding on this idea, the two most obvious ones to me were the old and new production methods within the field of graphic design, and the tension between online and real-world social interactions.
Over the last few weeks, though, I've begun a longer list:
- Personal vs Detached
- Individual vs Community
- Isolated vs Connected
- Digital vs Physical
- Real vs Perceived Social Connections
- WWW vs interactive media
- Location-based vs topic- or interest-based social connections
- blind acceptance vs engaged questioning