Comparative+Positioning+(how+your+book+will+be+different+than+others+on+similar+topics)

 I think that my project will distinguish itself methodologically from other anthropological project focusing on technological communities. My project is not focused on a single site as is Tom Boellstroff's study of Second Life, nor is it exactly multi-sited like Christopher Kelty's study of free software. As such, my particular project has //no distinct sites// in that most of my interlocutors either never congregate together or do so for very limited periods of time during conferences or particular project phases or learning periods. Because of this particularity, I've begun focusing on the technologies themselves as my actual fieldsites because they often represent the only avenue for collaboration or interconnection between my various interlocutors. If the technologies did not exist, the communities would dissipate. This is why I've begun thinking of my methodology as distributed ethnography as opposed to classical or multi-sited ethnography. I am not so much studying a particular time and place nor am I exactly following a particular object across distinct sites. Rather, I am exploring how particular technologies enable the creation of momentary community-alliances between disparate groups by influencing the ways of being and acting of those who interact with the technology. As such, distributed ethnography locates the site both in the user and in the technology.  In effect, this particular methodological distinction also gives an ontological bend to my work that is absent from many studies of technological communities. While the utopian proclamations of early cyberspace studies have been greatly toned down, there is still a preference for studying the emancipatory possibilities enabled by digital technologies. For example, Lawrence Lessig's work understands cyberspace as creating new possibilities within which intellectual property rights can be redefined. Also, the open access movement understands digital environments as an avenue to create new collaborative and creative possibilities. Within such projects, ontology often is cast aside in favor of hybridity and multiplicity. However, distributed ethnography will hopefully enable me to bridge the gulf between these concepts by relocating ontology at the level of practice as opposed to locating it at the level of being. Within such an understanding, I hope that ontology can become a generator of possibilities as opposed to an imposition of form.