Social Integration On The Human-Device Networking Field:A Spatiotemporal Analysis And Cyborg Reflection On Telework

Nowadays,we have seen the visible mobile Internet characteristic in the process of China's moving towards informationization.The new media condition will profoundly reconstruct the interaction among individuals.Meanwhile,the transformation of the information society brought about by the change of relationship mode needs theoretical attention.As such,this dissertation proposes the concept of "Human-device Networking" to describe the physical essence of mobile Internet life.Then,combined with Giddens' concepts of the social system and social integration,it regards the contemporary telework practice as the empirical research field and puts forward the following questions: what interactive relationship has been formed in the practice of teleworkers who highly rely on "Human-device Networking" ? What social integration mechanism of the social system does this interaction unfold on the field of "Human-device Networking" ? What implications does this mechanism bring for the governance of the information society?For obtaining empirical materials,this study conducted ethnographic fieldwork on the telework of a think tank in Beijing and then conducted in-depth interviews with teleworkers who working remotely during COVID-19.It is found that telework exhibits the structure of "virtual regionalization interaction based on ‘Human-device Networking' +subordinate calls of related geographical locales".This kind of interaction takes the continuous working connection of teleworkers as the basic performance.In this relationship,the availability of teleworkers varies in degree and scope,which leads to increasing scope and decreasing degree of their interaction and domination.The interactive relationship among teleworkers constitutes an integral part of their locales.Therefore,they need to deal with various social relations in their locales,which can sometimes form reverse osmosis of the dominant relationship.Time-space is a well theoretical perspective to analyze social integration.Based on the theoretical concepts of scholars including Giddens and Castells,the social integration of the social system on the field of "Human-device Networking" can be understood as the time-space distanciation of collective spatiotemporal norms in the logic of "space of flows-space of places".However,through analyzing the empirical materials,it is found that such understanding shades actors' embodied experience of negotiating social relations in local space,because it presets the traditional dualism of "online-offline".Online interaction cannot be separated from offline places.Thus,we should pay attention to its characteristic in physical time and space.Hereby,this study introduces Haraway's cyborg theory as a tool for theoretical reflection.By emphasizing the cybernetic attributes shared by people and devices,the theory enables this study to re-understand the social integration mechanism of the social system on the field of "Human-device Networking" by realizing the information interaction relationship between individuals and other subjects in specific locales — In short,it is a process of inward time-space distanciation based on the indirect social integration mode.In this mechanism,on the one hand,the social interaction on the field of "Human-device Networking" is a process in which individuals interact directly with digital devices in locales to achieve indirect interaction with other individuals.On the other hand,benefiting from the above process,the social system spreads to the more individualized and less interactive time and space in the past so as to realize its density expansion.The above-mentioned social integration mechanism shows a contemporary development characteristic of the information society.Therefore,by referring to Rosa's resonance theory,the last part of this dissertation reflects on the potential problems that might inhibit high-quality social relations.